Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI is also announcing the Radeon 9600 XT; a much more exciting derivative of the Radeon 9600 Pro based on a low-k dielectric 0.13-micron process. The benefits of a low-k dielectric are mainly related to shielding from crosstalk in high transistor density chips; the benefit of a low-k process is mainly the ability to scale up clock speeds, which is why you will see that ATI is able to clock the 9600 XT at 500MHz. According to ATI, the Radeon 9600 XT should be the first mainstream part to outperform the Radeon 9700 Pro in all situations – not bad for a $199 card.
The Radeon 9600 XT will hit the streets sometime in November and we’ll be sure to bring you coverage of that card as soon as we get our hands on one.
Finally we have the NV38, NVIDIA’s Fall refresh part; we won’t see NV40 and R4x0 until next Spring so both companies are bringing out higher clocked versions of their current cards in order to compete during the holidays.
Just like the Radeon 9800 XT, the NV38 is basically a higher clocked version of the NV35 (GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) with a new cooling system. Now running at 475/475 (950MHz DDR), the NV38 boasts a 5% increase in core clock and an 11% increase in memory frequency.
The card will officially be launched next month but we’re going to be able to bring you a preview of the NV38’s performance today.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
263 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Cheatonators are NOT USING True Trilinear filtering in EVERY DX game.
WAKE UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
who cares about Nvidia anymore.....
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Why not stating if these games are rather OpenGL, DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 Games...Looks Like Nvidia is ahead in OpenGl games (Homeworld 2 and Never Winter Nights for example). And ATI in Direct X Games...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
WOW, look at all those DX9 benchmarks!!!!!!LOL
He is using drivers that are NOT available to the public(51.75), there are no IQ test(yet) and he has already come to a conclusion.
Bye bye Anand you are over for me!!!!
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Cheatonators 5x.xx are used in this review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!REDICOULOUS as ANAnD
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
ANAND + NVIDIA = this review of shit.PERIODianmills - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I've lost my faith in you as an impartial reviewer.The idea to do all tests at 1024x768 was just PLAIN STUPID.
The difference between the cards is way higher at higher resolutions... The results are much different at the other sites
Reading this interview one could conclude that the 9800xt is only 20-30% faster than the 9600pro
This is crap Anandtech. Either shape up or you've lost another reader.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I would Like To see widely played Driving games like Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2,4X4 Evo 2not that driving Anadtech Put in.I Request Anadtech to atleast include Need for speed Hot Pursuit 2.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#121...Quake 3 is used because it's CPU limited, not limited by video cards... so if a new CPU can run the game faster, that's an indiciation of it's performance... new games like HL2 and Doom3 tend to be more video card dependant than CPU dependant.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
lock on:modern air combatcall of duty
NASCAR Thunder 2004
Need for speed:HP
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I think it is becoming clear that ATI cards are superior in DX9 games, and are the way to go. Sad for us Geforce owners. Hopefully though, Nvidia will address this and come to market with their next gen cards (not this new batch...the next) having a lot better DX9 performance--for the entire DX9 spec.If I were buying a card now, it'd be an ATI....but I don't think Nvidia is going to sit still, their new cards will be competitive.