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It wasn't that
long ago that
VisionTek was one of the top manufacturers of nVidia
based graphics cards. The Xtasy line offered a wide
range of solutions, from the budget MX series, to the top
card of the day, the GeForce 4 Ti4600. Then suddenly
VisionTek was "gone". Those of us who were familiar
with the company were quite surprised. There were a
few rumors of trouble brewing, but no major signs that
they had planned to cease production of their "Xtasy"
nVidia based product line. Instead, we just woke up
one morning and the "old" VisionTek was no more.
Legal wrangling and asset liquidation commenced and all in
all, it was a bit ugly.
A lot has
changed since then. VisionTek has since been
resurrected.
Hartford
Computer Group, based out of Connecticut, bought up
the remaining VisionTek assets, realigned the inner
workings of the company and found themselves a new partner
in ATi. Today VisionTek manufacturers all of the OEM
ATi products directly for ATi and they've brought back the
Xtasy product line with a whole new look. The bottom
line is, however, this is an entirely new company that is
striving to make a new name for itself again in the retail
video card market.
Today we have
our first opportunity to review the new VisionTek Xtasy
9800 Pro 128. Seeing how VisionTek manufactures
these cards directly for ATi, we were curious to see if
they were going to add a little flavor of their own, or
simply stamp their name on an ATi box. Let's take a
look.
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Specifications & Features of the VisionTek 9800
Pro 128MB |
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Powerful Yet Refined. |
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RADEON? 9800 Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
380MHz Core Clock
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
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Eight parallel rendering pipelines process up to
3.04 billion pixels per second
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Four
parallel geometry engines process up to 380 million
transformed and lit polygons per second
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High
precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
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256-bit DDR memory interface
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AGP
8X support
-SMARTSHADER? 2.1
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Full
support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable
pixel and vertex shaders in hardware
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2.0
Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per
rendering pass
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2.0
Vertex Shaders support vertex programs with an
unlimited number of instructions and flow control
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128-bit per pixel floating point color formats
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Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
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Shadow volume rendering acceleration
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Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL via
extensions
-SMOOTHVISION?
2.1
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State-of-the-art full-scene anti-aliasing
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New
technology processes up to 18.2 billion anti-aliased
samples per second for unprecedented performance
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Supports 2x, 4x, and 6x modes with programmable
sample patterns
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Advanced anisotropic filtering
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Supports up to 16 bilinear samples (in performance
mode) or trilinear samples (in quality mode) per
pixel
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2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
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Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
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2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
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Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and
trilinear (quality) options
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Bandwidth-saving algorithm enables this feature with
minimal performance cost
-HYPER Z? III+
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Hierarchical Z-Buffer and Early Z Test reduce
overdraw by detecting and discarding hidden pixels
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Lossless Z-Buffer Compression and Fast Z-Buffer
Clear reduce memory bandwidth consumption by over
50%
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Fast
Z-Buffer Clear
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8.8 : 1 Compression Ratio
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Optimized Z-Cache for enhanced
performance of shadow volumes
-TRUFORM? II
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2nd
generation N-patch higher order surface support
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Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per
polygon for dynamic LOD
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DirectX 9.0 displacement mapping
-VIDEOSHADER?
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Seamless integration of programmable pixel shaders
with video data
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High
quality, hardware accelerated de-blocking of
internet streaming video
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Noise removal filter for captured video
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Integrated MPEG-2 decode
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Hardware accelerated iDCT, motion compensation, and
color space conversion
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Top
quality DVD and all-format DTV/HDTV decode with low
CPU overhead
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Back-end scaler delivers top quality playback
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Upscaling and downscaling with 4-tap horizontal and
vertical filtering
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Filtered display of images up to 1920 pixels wide
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Unique per-pixel adaptive de-interlacing feature
combines the best elements of the ?bob? and
?add-field? (weave) techniques
FULLSTREAM?
video de-blocking technology
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Noise removal filtering for captured video
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MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and
color space conversion
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All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
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YPrPb component output
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Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
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Dual
integrated display controllers
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Dual
integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
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Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI and HDCP
compliant)
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Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768
resolution
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Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow!
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PC
2002 compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
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Dual
integrated display controllers
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Drive two displays simultaneously with independent
resolutions and refresh rates
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HYDRAVISION? software provides complete control over
multi-display configurations with a user-friendly
interface
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Dual
integrated 10-bit per channel palette DACs operating
at up to 400MHz
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Integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter supports
resolutions up to QXGA (2048x1536) and complies with
DVI and HDCP specifications
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Integrated TV-Out support up to 1024x768 resolution
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YPrPb output for direct drive of HDTV monitors
DISPLAY SUPPORT
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15-pin VGA connector for analog CRT
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S-video or composite connector for TV/VCR
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DVI-I
connector for digital CRT or flat panel
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Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any
two connected displays
GENERAL FEATURES
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Comprehensive 2x, 4x, and 8x AGP support
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High
performance quad-channel DDR or DDR2 memory
interface supports 64/128/256MB configurations
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Fully compliant with PC 2002 requirements
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Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow!
processor instructions
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Supports optional THEATER? 200 companion chip for
NTSC/PAL/SECAM video capture
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Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support for
new Windows® XP GDI extensions
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The Bundle:
There
were a couple of things, right out of the box, that caught
our attention. The box is constructed from a clear
plastic material with the artwork painted on, which
creates an interesting translucent effect. The Xtasy
logo remained virtually unchanged. The description
of the card on the rear of the box, however, is the real
attention getter. In an obvious effort to get the
attention of the younger PC gaming crowd, VisionTek opted
to describe the card with a little of today's more
colorful lingo. With such statements as "ILLEST BRO
ON DA BLOCK" and "FREAKen' SICKest Visual Effects", we
found it hard to keep a straight face. One would
think the target market would be the more seasoned crowd,
since they would be the most likely candidates to have
"$400 smackers" to shell out for this "mutha."
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
OK, all kidding aside, we did
find that the package was virtually the same as it arrives
from ATi direct. We would have expected a little
variation in package contents, instead the box contained
only the standard components with no bonus games or other
colorful extras. The box included S-Video and RCA
cables as well as coupler for connecting to the video
card's TV out features. A VGA to DVI adapter is
included to connect a standard VGA monitor to the DVI
connector on the card itself. A Y-Molex power cable
was provided for powering the video card without coming up
short a power connect. Lastly, a setup CD and quick
setup guide (not pictured) was also provided to
successfully install the card and get it up and running.
Next Up - The Card & Image Quality...
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