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As you
probably are aware, High End / Enthusiast 3D Graphics cards,
make up a relatively small slice of the overall TAM (Total
Available Market) in the Graphics Card arena. What is
perhaps the largest portion of this market, is what some
would call "mainstream" graphics, or the value segment.
That is to say that graphics cards, that are priced below $200
or so, make up the largest percentage share of all retail
and OEM business in the marketplace. So, as you can
surmise, although it is important to have that all-powerful
King of the Hill 3D Gaming product, it is perhaps even more
important to have a highly competitive product that the
average consumer can acquire, without having to justify its
relative value to their spouse, parents, or significant
other.
ATi
Technologies certainly made a splash with the
introduction of their Radeon 9700 Pro back in August
of this year. However, what perhaps may be an even more
powerful blow to their arch rival
NVIDIA,
would be the follow on mainstream or value products, that
will spin out of ATi's core VPU, that drives their high end
card. This is exactly what we intend to show you
today, with the formal launch of ATi's Radeon 9500 Pro.
Will this new R300 powered mainstream graphics card be able
to take the price / performance lead over NVIDIA's hugely
compelling,
GeForce 4 Ti4200? We'll cover that and more in the
pages ahead.
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Features
of the RADEON 9500 Pro |
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Big Competition for the
GeForce4 Ti 4600, 4400, and 4200 |
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GRAPHICS
TECHNOLOGY
R300 Visual
Processing Unit (VPU)
Core Clock Speed 275MHz
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
-SMARTSHADER? 2.0
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Full support for
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable
pixel and vertex shaders in hardware
-
2.0 Pixel Shaders
support up to 16 textures per
rendering pass
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2.0 Vertex Shaders
support vertex programs up to 1024
instructions with flow control
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New 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?
2.0
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State-of-the-art
full-scene anti-aliasing
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New technology
processes up to 15.6 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
-HYPERZ? III
-TRUFORM? 2.0
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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
VIDEO
FEATURES
-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 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
RADEON 9500 Family |
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DX9 Capable with horsepower to
spare |
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We're not going to spend a lot of time on the
architecture or features of the Radeon 9500 Pro.
Frankly, we were a little time constrained with this article
and we wanted to focus more on the benchmarks, since those
are "the proof in the pudding", so to speak. However,
we will point out that the Radeon 9500 Pro is a slower clock
speed derivative of the R300 VPU that powers the Radeon 9700
Pro. Specifically, this new Radeon has a core VPU
clock speed of 275MHz and Memory clock speed of 540MHz DDR.
Additionally, the memory bus has been taken down to a
narrower 128 bit architecture, which does allow for
additional cost efficiencies, beyond the higher yield rates,
that can be achieved at the lower Core VPU speed.
Other than that, not much has changed
for the 9500 Pro version, as you can see in the above
diagram. ATi will also be introducing, via their 3rd
Party OEM partners, a Radeon 9500 variant (sans the "Pro").
This card has the same clock speeds for VPU and memory but
has 4 less pixel pipes on chip than the "Pro" version.
Again, we're covering the performance metrics of the Radeon
9500 Pro here, which as the numbers show, by all rights
should be a real head-ache for the GeForce 4 Ti 4200.
| | | | | | More
Close-Ups, Test Setup and Benchmarks
