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Physically
speaking, the Gigabyte Maya II R9700 Pro is quite a sight,
with its gold cooling hardware and brightly colored circuit
board. The card itself adheres strictly to ATi's
RADEON 9700 Pro reference design, right down to the red PCB.
Should one remove the heat sinks and compare this "Powered
by ATi" card to a "Built by ATi" card, it would be nearly
impossible to tell them apart. This is definitely not
a bad thing, however, as ATi's RADEON 9700 Pro has proven to
be one hell of a product! The external plate houses
single analog and DVI monitor connectors, as well as a TV /
Video output. This combination of connectors, along
with the R300's inherent capabilities, allow this card to
power two displays independently, either two monitors or a
monitor and a television for example. Gigabyte
did make some notable changes to ATi's reference design in
regards to cooling though. Nestled over the R300 VPU
is a large, gold, aluminum cooler held in place with two
heavy plastic spring clips. The 2.8ns Samsung BGA RAM
chips adorning the front of the board are cooled by two heat
sinks mounted with strong thermal tape. ATi built
cards do not have any memory cooling and use a basic, black
VPU cooler. We removed the Maya II's VPU cooler and
found a thick thermal pad used as the TIM (Thermal Interface
Material), similar to what is used on ATi's own cards, but
we did not remove the memory coolers for fear of ripping one
of the BGAs right off the board. Unfortunately,
Gigabyte neglected to mount any heat sinks to the memory
modules found on the rear of the card. This isn't a
huge problem, as the memory is "under-clocked" at 310MHz
(620MHz DDR) by default anyway, but it seemed rather strange
to us that a company would mount heat sinks to the front of
the board, but not the back...
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The
Tyan Tachyon G9700 Pro |
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A
Blue Monster... |
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The Boston Red
Sox have the "Green Monster", but Tyan's got a "Blue
Monster" in the Tachyon G9700 Pro! The oversized,
custom cooling solution used on this card is very impressive
to say the least, and although physically the board layout
and component placement seemed identical to us, Tyan claims
there were some changes made to ATi's reference board
design. Tyan also asserts that these "tweaks" made to
the reference design, make the Tachyon G9700 Pro compatible
with "all" AGP8X capable motherboard chipsets and that their
9700 Pro would be able to hit core clock speeds as high as
400MHz, a full 75MHz over stock. We asked Tyan
specifically what was changed that allow them to make these
statements, but regrettably we did not get a clear answer.
We tested the Tachyon and Maya II in an NFORCE 2 based
motherboard and a VIA P4X400 based motherboard and had no
trouble at all, running with AGP8X enabled with either card.
So, we can't say with any real conviction that the Tachyon
is "more compatible" than any other RADEON 9700 Pro at this
time. Regardless, just by looking at the Tachyon, it's
obvious this is not your average, if there is such a thing,
RADEON 9700 Pro. First off, this is the only RADEON
9700 Pro to grace our lab that does not sport a red PCB, but
keep in mind the color of the circuit board has no bearing
at all on performance. The cooling solution is well
thought out, and seemed to do its job very well. The
heat sink is comprised of two aluminum heat plates that link
together and squeeze the VPU core and memory. We
removed the cooler and found thermal pads used between the
heat sink, R300 VPU and 2.8ns Samsung BGA memory modules.
Another notable
feature that helps the Tachyon G9700 Pro stand-out from the
crowd, is the incorporated hardware monitoring. Tyan
includes a utility that gives users the ability to monitor
fan speed, voltage and core temperatures. Our board
was a pre-production sample that did not have this feature
incorporated just yet, but all shipping retail products will
have hardware monitoring capabilities built-in. That's
about all that differentiates these two cards from one
another. The external plate on the Tachyon is
identical to that of the Maya II. They both are
clocked at the same default speeds, 325MHz Core / 310MHz
(620MHz DDR) memory. In addition, the extra power
connector placement is the same, located at the upper corner
of the PCB.
(Update: January 6, 2003)
Our contact at Tyan was kind enough to send two hi-res
images our way that show what the retail version of the
Tachyon G9700 Pro with integrated hardware monitor looks
like. On the surface, these shots appear very similar,
but pay close attention to the fan's power cable...
The version of
the card we reviewed is on the left, the card to the right
has the integrated hardware monitor. Notice that the
card on the right is a bit longer than a standard RADEON
9700 Pro, and that there is also a buzzer located in the
upper corner. Performance should be exactly the same
as the version we tested, but there are noticeable changes
made to the reference board design in the final retail
version of the Tachyon G9700 Pro.
Screenshots and The Drivers
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