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(DUAL-DVI VERSION ALSO
AVAILABLE)
At first glance, the Tyan
Tachyon G9600 Pro looks similar to a reference ATi Radeon
9600 Pro with an oversized cooler, but there are some
subtle, yet significant differences. First, the G9600
Pro's PCB is about 1/4" longer than ATi's reference design.
The extra real estate is necessary to accommodate the
hardware monitoring circuitry and piezo speaker mounted at
the upper right corner of the board. The next, obvious
difference is the large cooling solution. The heatsink
/ fan combo used on the G9600 Pro is similar to the one
found on Tyan's G9700 Pro. This cooler covers the GPU and
spreads over all of the RAM modules mounted on the front of
the board, and wraps around to the back. When we
removed the cooler to take a look at the RAM modules used on
the Tachyon G9600 Pro, we found the some very interesting
things.
There were small rubber-like,
sponges saturated with a thermally conductive substance used
as the thermal interface material between the RAM and
heatsink. One of these pads was also mounted to the
back of the GPU. The RAM used on this board was the
biggest surprise, however. Tyan chose Hynix
HY5DU283222 F-36 (310a) BGA modules for the Tachyon G9600
Pro, as opposed to the
Samsung K4D26323RA-GC2A chips we've seen on all of the
other 9600 Pro's we have reviewed. By default, the
memory on the G9600 Pro is clocked at 300MHz, but according
to Hynix's specifications, 275MHz is the recommended clock
speed for these modules. Even though the memory used
on the G9600 Pro is technically overclocked out of the box,
it should be completely stable in most circumstances (our
card never crashed), but there may be little room for
overclocking. More on this later...
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Screenshots with Antialiasing & Aniso Enabled |
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Make
It So! |
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1024x768 - 4X AA - 16X ANISO
We spent some quality time
gaming with the Tyan Tachyon G9600 Pro before running our
suite of benchmarks. The screen shots posted above are
from the latest game based in the Star Trek Universe, Elite
Force II. We set our resolution to 1024x768 and
enabled 4X Anti-Aliasing with 16X Anisotropic filtering and
enjoyed some single and multi-player action. For the
most part, frame rates in Elite Force II remained fluid and
playable throughout our entire gaming session. There
were, however, some occasional hiccups when the action got
heavy during a busy multi-player match. We also played
some Hulk and Enter the Matrix with Tachyon G9600 Pro using
the same settings. These games were also perfectly
playable, but just aren't quite as fun as Elite Force II!
It should keep me satiated until Half Life 2 and Max Payne 2
ship!
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Screenshots: Antialiasing Comparison |
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Jaggies! Be Gone! |
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1024x768
NO AA |
1024x768
4X AA |
1024x768
6X AA |
As video cards
have gotten faster and faster, image quality has become much
more of a deciding factor when contemplating a purchase.
Two cards may produce similar benchmark results, but if one
renders superior, more accurate images, it is clearly the
better choice. We've done a number of side-by-side
image quality comparisons in the past, so we won't be going
in-depth again here, but we do want to give you an
assortment of images to look over. Above, we have some
screen shots from the exact same frame of 3DMark03's "Wings
of Fury" demo that clearly demonstrate the benefits of the
Radeon 9600 Pro's Anti-Aliasing technique. Pay special
attention to the edges of the wings and the windows in the
cockpit. The difference is obvious...
It's time for Some
Benchmarks!
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