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ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition: One Card for All

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 19, 2005 12:54 PM EST
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  • Mac
34 Comments | Add A Comment
34 Comments

Application Pixel Shader Performance

For our last tests, we have two applications that use pixel shaders and thus GPU acceleration, Apple's Motion 1.01 and iMaginator 2.0. 

Motion is Apple's motion graphics software package and many of its effects are rendered on the GPU.  For this particular test, we use the Motion Mark RAM Preview test described here.

Application Pixel Shader Performance - Apple Motion 1.01 Fire-Mortise 2 Test

As is expected, the more memory bandwidth and pixel throughput that you have, the faster the test runs.  There are no real surprises here.

Next up, we have iMaginator 2.0, a image processor that uses OS X's Core Image framework to apply GPU accelerated filters and other effects to images.  For these tests, we standardized on the benchmarks introduced by Macwelt.  The three tests used basically combine a number of filters and play 200 frames of their effects with a 0-second delay between frames, timing how long they take to play back.

Test 1 performs the following filters in this order: Kaleidoscope, Bump Distortion, Bloom, Bloom, Glass Distortion, Glass Distortion, Transition: Mod.  Our test 1 is slightly different than what was introduced by Macwelt. 

Application Pixel Shader Performance - iMaginator 2.0

Test 2 does the following: Perspective Tile, Glass Distortion, Gloom, Edges, Ripple.

Application Pixel Shader Performance - iMaginator 2.0

Test 3 does the following: Vortex Distortion, Glass Lozenge, Pinch Distortion, Gaussian Blur, Disintegrate with Mask.

Application Pixel Shader Performance - iMaginator 2.0

With iMaginator, we see that having more pixel pipelines can really impact application performance where pixel shaders are extensively used.  If you find yourself using a lot of applications that leverage Tiger's Core Image, you may want to think about moving to a 9800 Pro, X800 or 6800 Ultra based GPU instead of the 9600 Pro. 

It is interesting to note that in Test 1, the 256MB frame buffer of the Radeon 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition actually gave it a significant advantage over the 128MB Radeon 9600XT, despite the fact that the 9600XT has more memory bandwidth. 

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  • Fulie - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link

    I just stumbled on to this write up and trying to get information on blending systems has been a major pain. I have a pc that is used for viewing images at high res. and an unused 23" older mac lcd (clear surround with a seperate power source and ADC TO DVI connector) display that I would like to use with this pc. I don't need game speeds but use dvd video on occasion. From the specs. It sounds like it will work, any ideas?

  • sprockkets - Saturday, August 20, 2005 - link

    the pinout of the card looks agp 2x and not 4x/8x

  • PrinceGaz - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link

    Just a minor amendment. On page 2 you mention that "The actual GPU isn't any different than what we've had on the Mac and PC side for a while; it still runs at 400MHz like the OEM Radeon 9600XT and 9650".

    The GPU of a 9600XT is clocked at 500MHz, not 400MHz. It is the 9600Pro which has a GPU clocked at 400MHz. Which is what you would expect as the card you reviewed is a 9600Pro.

  • a2daj - Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - link

    The Apple OEM Radeon 9600 XTs were clocked at the same speed most PC manufacturers clocked their retail Radeon 9600 Pros. The OEM 9600 Pros were clocked even slower when they were first introduced.

  • tooki - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link

    1. This is not the first cross-platform card. Most 3Dfx cards were cross-platform.
    2. The Power Mac G5 does not use a SATA optical drive, it's standard parallel ATA.
    3. ADC's high power requirements are because of ADC's ability to drive a 17" CRT display, not because of large LCDs.

  • stratusgd - Saturday, August 20, 2005 - link

    Actually, all G5 systems that Apple sells come with SATA drives, not PATA. Go look at Apple's website.

  • SDA - Saturday, August 20, 2005 - link

    The poster you are replying to is referring to optical drives, not hard drives. Optical drives are drives that read or write optical media such as CDs and DVDs.

  • a2daj - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link

    "1. This is not the first cross-platform card. Most 3Dfx cards were cross-platform."

    A Mac specific firmware had to be on the 3dfx cards starting with the Voodoo3s. The Voodoo3s were unsupported but you can flash them to run in a Mac. You had to reflash them to run in a PC. The Voodoo 4s and 5s had Mac specific firmware. They had to be flashed to run in PCs. You couldn't take a PC version and put it in a Mac and get it to run without flashing it.

    The Voodoo1s and 2s were just pass through cards which only did 3D so they didn't need Mac firmware to handle the 2D 16 bit Mac OS issues (5551 (Mac) vs 565 (PC))

  • lancediamond - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link

    Not entirely clear if you could do that unless I missed it - if so, that'd be sort of cool maybe?

  • a2daj - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link

    Yes. That's the target PC audience.
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