ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition: One Card for All
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 19, 2005 12:54 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
UI Performance
Mac OS X relies on a fully OpenGL accelerated GUI to, in a sense, make things look pretty (and enable features like Exposé). But despite what you may think, the majority of UI performance is still dependent upon the CPU. Until Apple enables Quartz Extreme 2D in Tiger, all UI elements are CPU rendered and, with the appropriate GPU, are simply treated as AGP textures and composed on the GPU itself. Although the majority of the work is still done on the CPU, there is an element of GPU interaction that can impact performance.In order to measure the GPU's impact on overall UI responsiveness, we turn to XBench, a synthetic test that can give us a slight idea of UI performance. The three tests that we focus on are XBench's Quartz, OpenGL and UI tests. The latter is possibly the most important to UI performance, but all are interesting.
The Quartz test focuses on Quartz rendering performance and is mostly CPU bound, but as we mentioned earlier, there is a slight impact of graphics performance. More than anything, we're looking at driver maturity here, since the test uses almost 100% of the CPU (it is only a single threaded test).
The OpenGL performance test is more of a primitive 3D test than anything else. It doesn't really impact UI performance at all - it's more of a basic texturing test as it makes no use of complex shaders.
The most interesting test is the UI test, which basically tests multiple UI elements and scrolling performance under OS X.
The rest of the ATI solutions perform basically identical to one another, with the Radeon 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition falling to the bottom of the list.
With the synthetic benchmarks out of the way, let's look at some games...
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Cuser - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
I don't see the use for a video card that is cross-platform compatible, except in the corporate environment....yet it seems like this would be a good direction for future cards...which, now that I think of it, will be a moot point being that Mac is going x86...A side note though...
Wow, there is a "gamer" base for the Macs? With framerates like 44 fps from their highest performing systems, I feel for them! Come on over the the x86 side, we'll take good care of you...
IceT - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
I also don't understand why ATi is launching such product @ this time...It seems (my opinion) that they are bringing us backward, unless you can provide me with some rationale.sirfergy - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
The dual link functionality is why. Only other card for mac was the 6800 and that was very expensive.Doormat - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
If someone can afford a 30" Cinema display to utilize the dual link capability, they can splurge on a 6800DDL over this card.a2daj - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
Unless they have a G4 and want to use the 30" in it. Then the 6800 wouldn't be compatible. Only the new Mac Radoen 9600 Pro.MrFantastic - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
"As a card, the Radeon 9600 Pro Mac & PC Edition is an excellent offering."LoL.
It may as well NOT support PC's since no pc owner in their right mind should choose this '£200' oldie over something like a 9800pro/6600gt/800gt
a2daj - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
And how many of those "9800pro/6600gt/800gt" cards offer a dual-link DVI connector to run the 30" cinema display?Scott66 - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
There are many mac users looking for an upgrade in video cards to take advantage of the new graphic abilities in the new Tiger OS software. (similar to what Vista is now announcing and will be included in subsequent beta versions). A 9600 card is just what the Mac doctor ordered. So I guess ATi is looking to provide a similar card for Window users who just want to get all the graphic features Vista can provide but not interested in gaming. If they keep the price low it will be a good sellervijay333 - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
yes! I've always wanted to buy graphics cards 3-4 years after everyone else has had a chance to stress test them...funny thing is that I just upgraded from my 9600 Pro to a 6800GT :)
Questar - Friday, August 19, 2005 - link
Wow, a review of a three year old GPU.My guess is that Anand had to give ATI a good suck in order to get 520 parts before launch.