|
 It
seems like we've been covering new video card releases on
an almost weekly basis over the last few months.
Since the beginning of the year, we've seen NVIDIA
announce, and then release, multiple flavors of GeForce FX
cards, albeit on very limited basis. Announcements
have also been made recently by SiS and even by the
infamous S3. ATi has also announced a line of
products based on their R350 VPU, which is a revamped
version of the very successful R300 core.
Back in early March, we took a look at the flagship
Radeon 9800 Pro but on that day, ATi also formally
announced two new mainstream and entry-level products, the
Radeon 9600 and Radeon 9200. One interesting fact about
the 9600 is that this new product is powered by the first
ATi VPUs built using a more advanced .13 micron
manufacturing process. The product we'll be looking
at today is the Radeon 9600 Pro. This is ATi's
latest mainstream part that aims to bring full DirectX 9
compliance to an affordable price point. We were
very impressed after reviewing a few products based on the
Radeon 9500 Pro VPU, so we were eager to see what ATi had
in store for their "refresh" part. So, let's jump
right in and see what the Radeon 9600 Pro is made of...
THE ATI
RADEON 9600 PRO
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications & Features of the ATI Radeon 9600
Pro |
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A
Full Featured DX9 Part |
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GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY
RV350 Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
Core Clock Speed 400MHz (325MHz for Non-Pro)
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
-
Four parallel rendering pipelines process up to 1.6
billion pixels per second
-
High precision 10-bit per channel framebuffer
support
-
128-bit DDR memory interface
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AGP
8X support
SMARTSHADER 2.1
-
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
-
2.0
Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 1024
instructions with flow control
-
New
128-bit per pixel floating point color formats
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Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
-
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 15.6 billion anti-aliased
samples per second for unprecedented performance
-
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+
DISPLAY SUPPORT
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15-pin VGA connector for analog CRT
/
DVI-I connector for digital CRT or
flat panel
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S-video or composite connector for TV/VCR
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Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any
two connected displays
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
-
Top
quality DVD and all-format DTV/HDTV decode with low
CPU overhead
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Back-end scaler delivers top quality playback
-
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
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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
GENERAL FEATURES
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Comprehensive 2x, 4x, and 8x AGP support
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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
9600 Pro has essentially the same feature set as the
Radeon 9500 Pro, but with "tweaked" versions of ATi's
SMOOTHVISION (2.1) and HYPERZ (III+) technology.
These updated engines allow the Radeon 9600 Pro to perform
AA and Anisotropic filtering more efficiently, as well as
use memory bandwidth more efficiently. Besides these
enhancements, a more significant change was made to the
core as well. The Radeon 9600 Pro has only 4 pixel
pipelines, versus the 8 found in the Radeon 9500 Pro.
To compensate for having fewer pixel pipelines, ATi built
their new core using a .13 micron manufacturing process
that gave them the ability to crank the clock speed all
the way up to 400MHz. As you can see in the chart
above though, even with a 125MHz clock speed advantage,
the 9600 Pro has a lower pixel fill-rate. Another
thing differentiating the 9600 Pro from the 9500 is faster
memory, which should help compensate for some of the
fill-rate deficit.
Radeon 9600
Pros have 2.8ns DDR memory installed, that is clocked at a
default speed of 300MHz (600MHz DDR). Our particular
board was equipped with
Samsung K4D26323RA-GC2A chips. We did a little
research and found that these parts are rated for 350MHz
operation at 2.8v, so with a little luck, the memory on
the Radeon 9600 Pro should overclock quite nicely.
Overclocking the core is another story altogether,
however. More on this a later...
The layout of
the Radeon 9600 Pro board itself is reminiscent of the
128MB Radeon 8500 LE. The heatsink / fan combo
used to cool the GPU is relatively small when compared to
the high-end cards shipping today, and thankfully it is
virtually silent. Looking at the connector plate,
you'll see a D-Sub 15-Pin Analog connector, an S-Video
output and a DVI connector. The Radeon 9600 Pro has
support for ATi's multi-monitor "HYDRAVISION" technology,
which gives users the ability to run dual, independent
displays, at different resolutions and refresh rates,
courtesy of dual 400MHz integrated RAMDACs.
Next Up, Image
Quality...
|
It
seems like we've been covering new video card releases on
an almost weekly basis over the last few months.
Since the beginning of the year, we've seen NVIDIA
announce, and then release, multiple flavors of GeForce FX
cards, albeit on very limited basis. Announcements
have also been made recently by SiS and even by the
infamous S3. ATi has also announced a line of
products based on their R350 VPU, which is a revamped
version of the very successful R300 core.
