Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 3: ATI's Radeon 9600 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 15, 2003 10:26 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness Performance no AA
As we mentioned before, we were unable to test the NVIDIA cards under TROAD. The Ti 4200 would only run with PS1.1, and as such we couldn't make a fair comparison. The 5600 Ultra was unable to run at 1024x768 as we received an out of video memory error. We have run into this issue in previous reviews. Unfortunately, even if a future patch fixes this bug, we are still stuck with v49 for benchmarking.
The gains the 9600 XT made over the Pro in this game were less than we had expected to see. This tells us that core clock speed is less of a factor in performance than other DX9 games like Halo, X2, and Aquanox. This is counter intuitive to the trends we have seen in shader intensive games, but at the same time, we can't really draw any solid conclusions from this. All we know is that TRAOD performance is less affected by core clock speed than some other games.
Note also that the 9700 Pro leads the 9600 XT by somewhere near 50%.
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness Performance with AA
In benchmarking with more ATI cards, it is very clear that enabling anisotropic filtering degrades image quality in a very unacceptable way. When trilinear filtering is enabled, everything looks fine, and anisotropic filtering on NVIDIA hardware doesn't exhibit this problem. This is the worst of the image quality problems we have seen with either ATI or NVIDIA in any game we have tested.
Since memory bandwidth between the 9600 XT and the 9600 Pro hasn't changed, its not surprising that our performance delta decreased when we turned on AA and AF.
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PrinceGaz - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
You can infer how a 9500pro would do by considering it a bit like a slightly faster 9600xt in core speed, but with slower memory. That isn't as daft as it sounds.The 9600xt is a 4-pipeline 500mhz core while the 9500pro was an 8-pipeline 275mhz core, so the older 9500pro at default core-speed could be thought of as being a 550mhz 9600xt, before the improvements in the RV350 core over the R300 are considered. I doubt a 9600xt is gonna reach 550mhz easily so the 9500pro should have a slight edge in core-horsepower.
Memory-wise, the 9600xt should be in front both in memory-speed and efficiency which would suggest, so at least in theory the 9600xt should be somewhat faster than the 9500pro in DX8 titles but not so far ahead when DX9 shaders are used intensively.
I still think including the 9800se in the benchmarks is essential thanks to its high memory-bandwidth, especially when its over $50 cheaper than a 9700non-pro, let alone the even more expensive 9700pro.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
hmm...so why wasnt the 9500pro used in the review?was there any reason that was given ?
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
good review, good conclusion...i totally agree in almost everything. only overclocking performance wouldve been an interesting additionAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
On a side track, can anyone tell me a decent cooler for the ATi brand of cards? Seems like there is a serious lack of good heatsinks and fan combos for these parts. All I have seen are two different heatpipe applications that seem like a step in the wrong direction. Why can't someone produce a good chunk of copper with a good fan for my 9600 Pro???Wiley
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
damm i though that 9600 XT would be great. but all i can see is another product from ati that steals your money. i prefer to buy a 9500 proAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Beyond3D benchmarked the 9600XT against the 9500 Pro as well as the 9600 ProAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
#25: $216 at GameVE. Considering the 9600 XT is $199 though, i think Anand has a point.http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_viewitem.asp?id...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
It would have been great if Anand and Derek had put a 9500 Pro to the review. I'm curious how it stacks up against 9600 Pro/XT and 5600 Ultra in all these benchmarks. Does anybody know?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
I was really hoping to see the 9600XT do better, but the scores are still great for the price range. It's amazing that my 9700-pro, which I bought almost a year ago for $300, still keeps up so well.I agree with #26 in regards to anonymous posting. I like it, but if it bothers everybody else, please lift the 'no free e-mail address' requirement, or I, the single greatest poster ever, would no longer be able to post, and Anandtech would lose at least 50% of it's reader base. :) Besides, I really don't mind trolls. It shakes things up.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
#29, you and me both wish =(But remember, why use logic when you can use Flash?