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Hmm... what's this?
We actually see the Radeon 9700 Pro based card holds a
significant lead, regardless of whether or not AA is
enabled. This points more toward the overall fill rate
of the Sapphire card versus the GeForce 4 Ti 4600.
And yet again, the proverbial
"smoke show" is performed on the aging GeForce 4 card.
It's hard to believe that the card was officially released
back in February and it's already showing its age. If
NVIDIA was able to hold up their relentless 6 month design
cycles, we would be comparing a Radeon 9700 Pro to the NV30.
However, that seems almost as unrealistic as was NVIDIA's
unbelievable run of flawless execution for release of next
generation product. It almost seems like something had
to give. ATi and OEMs like Sapphire Technology are now
capitalizing on the situation, as expected.
The folks
at Sapphire Tech have seemingly come from out of nowhere, to
deliver a top grade Graphics Card to the masses.
However, those in the know (and now you) will quickly
realize that the plant in which the Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro
was built, was one of ATi's many third party Contract
Manufacturers. Sort of a kin to the way Visiontek once
entered the market, only we expect Sapphire will be around a
bit longer. Based on the Radeon 9700 Pro reference
design we've come to know and love from ATi, the Sapphire
Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro delivers on all levels.
About the
only real differentiator, that most graphics cards built on
the same chipset can boast, would be cooling solutions and
the occasional variation in output feature connectors.
From a performance perspective, likewise, since most cards
built on the same chipset perform very similarly, headroom
for overclocking tends to be what scores higher marks in our
overall assessments as well. In this regard, the
Sapphire Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro performed admirably,
posting the highest stable core and memory clocks we've seen
to date from a 9700 Pro. One last area of note would be desktop image
quality, where the R9700 Atlantis Pro stood tall versus our
ATi reference card. Perhaps its desktop IQ was not
quite at the level of the Matrox Parhelia but that is near
perfection and the Parhelia couldn't dream of gaming this
well. Finally, with a current street price of around
$315 (various price search engines reporting), this Sapphire
board is one of the more affordable flavors of ATi's
flagship product.
We're
giving the Sapphire Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro a HotHardware
Heat Meter Rating of
8.5
Come
get some in the HotHardware PC Hardware Forum, now!
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