Well, it's that time of year again; the time when the big two graphics chip vendors try to wrestle your hard-earned cash out of your wallet. Both ATI and Nvidia have come out with new, high-end 3D graphics cards. But ATI's replacement for the Radeon 9800 Pro is not, as you might expect, something called the Radeon 9900, nor is it a real replacement.

The 'XT' part of the card's name tells you all you need to know. It stands for 'Extended' and it's an extension to the ATI product line rather than being a replacement for anything, as both the 9800 and 9800 Pro will continue to be part of ATI's range.

Nor is the core of the 9800XT, the R360, a new design; it's basically the same 0.15-micron R350 core of the Radeon 9800 Pro with some internal changes. These are solely to do with improving heat dissipation which allows some increase in clock speed; by a mere 32MHz to 412MHz. The standard memory size for the 9800XT is 256MB, and this has had its speed increased to 365MHz (730MHz DDR), increasing the memory bandwidth to 23.4GB/s.

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What is different, however, is the cooling heatsink and fan design, which will help the overclockers out there. The new unit is copper-based and covers the GPU and top memory chips, while the lower chips are covered by a large copper plate. You certainly notice the change in the heatsink from the 9800 Pro, as the card feels like a solid lump when you pick it up.

The cooling fan is a large, slow spinning unit, and is positioned slightly off the centre of the GPU. It is also variable speed, that speed being controlled by the temperature of the chip. Despite its size it doesn't obscure any PCI slots, although you should leave the one directly under the card free to allow air to circulate around the card.

This 3D Prophet Radeon 9800XT from Hercules sticks to the reference design with the only difference being the graphics on the heat sink. This is because, with the exception of one company (Asus), all 9800XT cards are made in the same factory; ATI partners then attach their own graphics on the cooler.

As you'd expect, this is a very quick card. There's little between this and the Nvidia-based cards in terms of either price or performance, although driver revisions may see some leap-frogging taking place over the next few months.

Like all the 9800XT cards currently available, this one claims to have a copy Half-Life 2 bundled with it. Unless you have been immersed in your own virtual reality game you must have heard all the rumblings about the game being late; no, make that very, very late. So late that instead of a copy of the game you get a voucher to be redeemed when the game actually shows up. A shame, but not Hercules' fault.

The software you do get consists of a driver CD, which includes Hercules' own overclocking utility and CyberLink's PowerDVD. Hardware extras provided are a DVI-I to D-Sub adapter, S-Video to RCA cable, TV extension cable and a power supply cable.

If you already own a Radeon 9800 Pro or similarly swift card, then there is no need to splash out on the 9800XT, but if you are looking for a new high-end graphics card then the 9800XT will put you on top of the game. Just don't expect that game to be Half-Life 2... yet.