It has been
about 5 months since the first round of "Built by ATi"
RADEON 9700 Pro boards found their way onto store
shelves. Immediately after the first set of
benchmarks and image quality comparisons hit the web, it
was clear that ATi had a winner on their hands.
Performance was second to none, and image quality with
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering enabled was top
notch. OEMs were itching to ship products "Powered
by ATi's" latest flagship VPU. A few companies
released cards that were virtually identical to the ATi
built products. However, two companies,
Gigabyte and
Tyan,
have since brought cards to the market that differ
slightly from the reference design (at least in
appearance). Tonight on HotHardware, we're going to
take a look at Gigabyte's Maya II R9700 Pro and Tyan's
Tachyon G9700 Pro. These two cards have generated
quite a buzz in the hardware community...read on and find
out why...
|
Specifications & Features of the Radeon 9700 Pro
VPU |
107
Million Transistors of Pixel Pushing Power! |
|
The Gigabyte
Maya II R9700 Pro
The Tyan Tachyon G9700 Pro
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY
MEMORY
CONFIGURATION
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
-
Eight parallel rendering pipelines process up to 2.6
billion pixels per second
-
Four parallel geometry engines process up to 325
million transformed and lit polygons per second
-
High precision 10-bit per channel framebuffer
support
-
256-bit DDR memory interface
-
AGP
8X support
SMARTSHADER? 2.0
-
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
-
Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
-
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
-
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL via
extensions
SMOOTHVISION? 2.0
-
State-of-the-art full-scene anti-aliasing
-
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
-
Advanced anisotropic filtering
-
Supports up to 16 bilinear samples (in performance
mode) or trilinear samples (in quality mode) per
pixel
-
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
-
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
-
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
-
Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and
trilinear (quality) options
-
Bandwidth-saving algorithm enables this feature with
minimal performance cost
HYPERZ? III
TRUFORM? 2.0
-
2nd
generation N-patch higher order surface support
-
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per
polygon for dynamic LOD
-
DirectX 9.0 displacement mapping
VIDEO
FEATURES
VIDEOSHADER?
-
Seamless integration of programmable pixel shaders
with video data
-
High quality, hardware accelerated de-blocking of
internet streaming video
-
Noise removal filter for captured video
-
Integrated MPEG-2 decode
-
Hardware accelerated iDCT, motion compensation, and
color space conversion
-
Top
quality DVD and all-format DTV/HDTV decode with low
CPU overhead
-
Back-end scaler delivers top quality playback
-
Upscaling and downscaling with 4-tap horizontal and
vertical filtering
-
Filtered display of images up to 1920 pixels wide
-
Unique per-pixel adaptive de-interlacing feature
combines the best elements of the ?bob? and
?add-field? (weave) techniques
FULLSTREAM? video de-blocking technology
-
Noise removal filtering for captured video
-
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and
color space conversion
-
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
-
YPrPb component output
-
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
-
Dual integrated display controllers
-
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
-
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI and HDCP
compliant)
-
Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768
resolution
-
Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow!
-
PC
2002 compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
-
Dual integrated display controllers
-
Drive two displays simultaneously with independent
resolutions and refresh rates
-
HYDRAVISION? software provides complete control over
multi-display configurations with a user-friendly
interface
-
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel palette DACs
operating at up to 400MHz
-
Integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter supports
resolutions up to QXGA (2048x1536) and complies with
DVI and HDCP specifications
-
Integrated TV-Out support up to 1024x768 resolution
-
YPrPb output for direct drive of HDTV monitors
DISPLAY SUPPORT
-
15-pin VGA connector for analog CRT
-
S-video or composite connector for TV/VCR
-
DVI-I
connector for digital CRT or flat panel
-
Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any
two connected displays
GENERAL FEATURES
-
Comprehensive 2x, 4x, and 8x AGP support
-
High performance quad-channel DDR memory interface
supports 64/128/256MB configurations
-
Fully compliant with PC 2002 requirements
-
Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow!
processor instructions
-
Supports optional THEATER? 200 companion chip for
NTSC/PAL/SECAM video capture
-
Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support for
new Windows® XP GDI extensions
| |
The
Bundles:
GIGABYTE
| |
TYAN
| The Gigabyte
Maya II R9700 Pro shipped with a very complete assortment
of bundled accessories and software. In addition to
the obligatory driver CD, Gigabyte included a full version
of Cyberlink PowerDVD 4 XP, probably the best DVD playback
software on the market today. There were also four
full version games included, Serious Sam, Rune, Motocross
Mania and Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. This hodgepodge may
not be the most cutting edge group of games you've ever
seen, but they were welcome additions nonetheless.
There were also "lite" versions of two more games, 4x4 Evo
and Oni, bundled with the Maya II. Lastly, Gigabyte
included a DVI-to-15 Pin adapter, a composite video cable,
an S-Video cable and a Molex power cable splitter as well.
When directly
compared to Gigabyte's bundle, Tyan's was a bit more
austere, however. Included with the Tachyon G9700
Pro was a CD that contained drivers and Tyan's custom
hardware monitoring software, as well as a copy of
Intervideo's very capable WinDVD playback software.
A composite video cable, an S-Video cable, an
S-Video-to-RCA adapter, a DVI-to-15 Pin adapter and a
Molex power cable splitter were also included.
Overall, Tyan's bundle was good, but it lacked any game
software. Considering the price the Tachyon G9700
Pro commands, and the fact that the vast majority of
people buying R300 powered video cards are gamers, we
think including a game or two to showcase the hardware
would be a good idea.
The
Cards...
|