It arrived…
The Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis, with about 18 stamps on it too. The card was very heavy and thick, as it is almost entirely smothered with a gigantic Zalman heatsink-heatpipe system with ramsinks for good measure.
Since it is about as thick as a deli corned beef on kaiser, the manual stated that it would obstruct the PCI slot below the AGP slot. OK, fine. What they didn’t tell me was that the lower heatsink would rest about half a centimetre from the top of my sound card in second PCI slot, exhaling its stale hot air as it flexed its juicy pixel shading muscles.
So, the Audigy had to move to the fourth slot, some wires had to be loosened, and all was well. The internal temp of my PC has shot up about 5 degrees, but I think I’ll wait on the cooling upgrades this time. One the good news, I’m scoring 5226 3DMarks in 3DMark03, and Half Life 2 here I come!