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A
complete unknown to the retail market,
Sapphire Technology debuts here today, with their high
end, ATi based entry
into the 3D Graphics space. We've seen many ATi
built cards here in the HotHardware Labs and the design
and quality has never fallen short of expectations.
Granted, we have not always been impressed with performance
or driver stability but that is a thing of the past it
seems, for the current 3D Graphics leader from the great white
north. Their flagship VPU (Video Processing Unit, as
ATi has aptly named it), is currently king of the 3D
Graphics hill, at least until NVIDIA releases the NV30.
Regardless, even in the day of the ATi Xpert designs, we
would never have argued that ATi's quality, from a
hardware perspective, was anything but top notch.
ATi has historically held captive the manufacturing of the
board level product and marketed it under the ATi name
exclusively. However, with failing economic
conditions and increasingly competitive landscapes, ATi
has gone to outsourcing for board level products, as well
as marketing channels with various OEMs building and
branding their own Radeon line of products.
Now that
ATi has relinquished control of their manufacturing
process and also turned over some of the marketing
responsibilities, what level of quality can we expect from
the various OEMs who have jumped on the ATi bandwagon?
Well it's safe to say that
Sapphire's Radeon 9700 at
least, is made of the same good stuff we've come to expect
from ATi themselves. After all, they've been
building ATi based cards for years, little did we know.
Now with a focus on making a name for themselves in the
retail sector, Sapphire Technology delivered to us one of
their fledgling Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pros, in an effort to
show us what they're made of. Well then, let's have
a look.
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Specifications and Features of the Sapphire
Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro |
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Same board design,
snazzy cooler |
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GRAPHICS
TECHNOLOGY
RADEON? 9700 Visual
Processing Unit (VPU)
325MHz Core Clock
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
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Eight 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 frame buffer support
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256-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
-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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Ahh, the
fine print. If you were diligent enough to read
through all that technical jargon above, then you deserve
an "A" for today's lesson in geeked out PC gear.
Reading through the feature list of the average 3D
Graphics Card, certainly can go rather deep.
However, we feel compelled to bring this level of detail
to those of you that are serious about your 3D
Accelerators. For those of you just interested in
new toys, suffice it to say that this card is built on the
fastest, most feature packed and future proof Graphics
Processor you can buy today, the Radeon 9700 Pro.
Physically, the Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro is built from the
same cookie cutter reference design of the original
ATi Radeon
9700 we debuted here months ago. One interesting
area of note, is the metal heat spreader that is now
attached on the back of virtually all Radeon 9700 cards
that are in the retail channel. The pre-release
board that was sent to us back in August, did not have
this. Interesting to say the least and we're
still unclear just what exactly this little fella is there for.
It seems to be a cross between and EMI shield and
heatsink...
Where Sapphire did step out of
the ordinary, was the cooler they chose for this unit.
We've seen Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pros featured in other
publications, with the stock ATi coolers on them.
However, this Orb-like, sort of serpentine, cooler is
representative of what Sapphire is shipping now with their
product. It also does a nice job of cooling the VPU,
as we'll show you shortly. Finally, you also get
standard issue Radeon 9700 Pro TV I/O, DVI and VGA
connectors, as well as the four pin power connector that
must be plugged in, to supply an additional power source to
the card. All told, this is a well built card with a
somewhat unique cooling solution to help it stand out
from the crowd. Let's fire it up.
Drivers and Overclocking
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