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The
Gigabyte GV-R96X128D 9600XT |
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Not
Just a Reference Design |
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Just like
Gigabyte's motherboards, the GV-R96X128D 9600XT sports a
blue PCB. The unit comes with a common configuration
powered by ATi's RV360 GPU. The RV360 is clocked at a
potent 500MHz, making the card the highest clocked GPU
currently in ATi's line-up. The GPU is complimented by
128MBs of DDR RAM clocked at 300MHz (600MHz effective).
Gigabyte chose high quality Samsung chips that are designed
specifically for higher clock speeds and history has shown
there should be a bit of headroom over their default rating.
We did think that the perfect match to the GV-R96X128D's
gold cooler would be some gold RAM sinks, but Gigabyte opted
to leave the RAM chips naked. Let us not forget to
mention that when the card is powered up, the cooler emits a
cool blue light thanks via an embedded LED.
The edge of the
card sports the common VGA, TV-Out, DVI configuration
commonly found on most video cards today. The unit
offers both a VGA and DVI connector, with the latter able to
be converted to VGA with the included DVI-to-VGA adapter.
It appears that
Gigabyte has put together a clean, sharp looking card with
an ample amount of horsepower to run the latest games
available. While we're speaking of horsepower, we've
opted to load EA Sports NASCAR Thunder 2004 for our eyecandy
segment, which we will follow up by running the card through
its paces to see how it compares to other cards in its
class.
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In-Game Screenshots With The Gigabyte GV-R96X128D
9600XT |
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NASCAR Thunder 2004 from EA Sports |
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Before we get started with
benchmarking a video card, we like to take a few in game
screenshots to show what it is capable of. This time
around we opted to use EA Sports NASCAR Thunder 2004. Much
like its previous version, this is one amazing looking game
that does a great job of delivering on the realism. To
get started we took a couple of screenshots with no
Antialiasing or Anisotropic filtering enabled, then we
worked our way up to full AA and Anisotropic settings.
With no AA
enabled the video quality was decent, although we could
see severe jagged edges on the rearview mirror as well as
the concrete wall on the right edge of the track and the
light poles. To clean things up a bit, we enabled 4X
AA and saw a nice improvement. The mirror edges were
significantly less jagged and the wall was more smooth,
improving the overall look quite a bit. Next we
aimed for the stars and increased the Antialiasing to a
maximum 6X and Anisotropic filtering to 16X. This is
where the game really popped on the screen, with the
in-game details really coming to life. There were no
rough edges to be found and the details of the
surroundings were far more realistic. The road
details looked almost real which is easily seen when you
compare the image in the mirror of the lower two images.
What was even more impressive is how fluid the game was
even with the driver qualities and game qualities set to
their maximum and the game resolution set for 1024x768.
The Test System & AquaMark3
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