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It's game 7 of the World
Series, bottom of the 9th and the winning run is standing
just 90 feet away. Who do you want in the batters
box? You want the best hitter in the league standing
in the batters box ready to rip the cover off the ball.
In video cards these days, that equates to "Built by ATI"
or "Powered by ATI" Radeon 9700 Pro boards. No other
consumer video card on the market right now can move
pixels like a Radeon 9700 Pro. Of course his
little brother isn't too shabby either. We wouldn't
mind him standing in at the plate as well. Why you
ask? Well because the 9500 Pro can deliver almost as
much pixel crunching power as it's bigger brother the 9700
Pro, but at a much lower price point. As PC
enthusiasts. its always nice to have the biggest, best
hardware in the land sitting cozy inside your case.
However, for most of us, money doesn't grow on trees.
The two "Powered by ATI" R9500 Pro cards we have for you
today, are targeted to lure the budget-minded buyer into
their respective corners. Can the R9500 Pro take
over a spot that is held tightly by its main competitor,
the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200? Today we have two
boards vying for that honor, the Gigabyte Maya II R9500
Pro and the Sapphire R9500 Atlantis Pro. Let's take
a look at how they performed on the test bench...
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Specifications & Features of the Radeon 9500 Pro
VPU |
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Mainstream DX9 Part... |
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The Gigabyte
Maya II R9500 Pro
The Sapphire Radeon 9500 Atlantis Pro
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
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GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY
R300 Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
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128MB or 64MB of double data rate SDRAM
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
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Eight/four parallel rendering pipelines process up
to 2.6 billion pixels per second
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Four parallel geometry engines process up to 325
million transformed and lit polygons per second
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High precision 10-bit per channel framebuffer
support
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256-bit/128-bit DDR memory interface
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AGP 8X support
-SMARTSHADER? 2.0
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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 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
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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
-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
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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
Bundles:
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GIGABYTE
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SAPPHIRE
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The Gigabyte
Maya II R9500 Pro shipped with an impressive bundle to say
the least. In addition to the driver CD, the card
shipped with full versions of Serious Sam, Cyberlink
PowerDVD XP, and Rune. It also shipped with "lite"
versions of Oni and 4X4 Evo. Although these aren't
the most popular games available right now, it's always
good to get a few extra goodies, besides the card and some
drivers. Additionally, Gigabyte threw in a DVI-to-15
pin adapter, a composite video cable, an S-Video cable and
a Molex power cable splitter.
The Sapphire's
bundle was a little more spartan. The Sapphire did
not ship with any games, but did come with the full
version of Cyberlink PowerDVD XP, which is arguably the
best DVD playback software on the market today. Also
included was the driver CD. Unlike Gigabyte,
Sapphire failed to throw in the DVI-to-15 pin adapter, but
did have the composite video cable, the S-Video cable and
a Molex power cable splitter. Although we can't
complain about Sapphire's bundle it would have been nice
to get a game thrown into the mix. Since both cards
come in around the same price point it's hard not to side
with Gigabyte because of its generous bundle and the fact
that most people buying this card will be doing so with
gaming in mind.
The
Cards...
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