ASUS Radeon 9800 XT: Turning-point

ASUS RADEON 9800 XT
VPU chip	ATI R360
Memory	DDR 256 Mb; 2.5 ns
Frequencies:	412/750 (DDR) MHz
Specific features:	VIVO Dynamic overclocking
Price:	500$

A little of history

As far back as ten years ago, the market of graphic cards of consumer-class was as simple as a penny - S3 and Trident were producing their mainstream chips and distributed them among all who wanted. ATI and Matrox were positioning as more serious companies and didn't give out their developments on the side. But in those times the only factor of video tests that had any measurable sense was the "speed of enveloping the graphic interface", and of course the "crystal clarity of the image" measured to the eye, what Matrox was notable for.

The emergence of 3dfx on the graphics market provoked four events at a time, which had a key impact on the whole computer industry:

First - the emergence of first video card running in both the 2D and 3D modes. To be more precise, "something conventional" installed on the then regular PCI slot was responsible for the 2D, whereas close to it there was a specialized video card for gamers which radically changed the look and feel of mean-looking games of those times into something impressive, that had no analogs.
Consequence: explosive growth of interest to technologies from the mass market.

Second - the Glide of 3dfx as a first serious graphic API aimed at exclusively games.
Consequence N1: Hundreds of 3D games were then re-created for Glide as a release of patches for already produced games. Those who remember our news of those years can confirm that every day several patches a day were published and that lasted for a year.
Consequence N2: DirectX, a standard for multimedia applications developed on the Windows platform was first announced in 1995, but did not gain support from developers. The embedded into DirectX standard for interaction with 3D accelerators (Direct3D) appeared only in the third version and was no more than a hasty response to the Glide standard from 3dfx. That is, for its further victorious progress it fully owes to the Glide.

Third - all the traditional players, S3, ATI, Matrox, Trident did not realize how serious the "key moment" was and kept modernizing their chip architectures without haste, whereas they had to be radically changed.
Consequence: the emergence of nVidia on the market who staked just on the competition with 3dfx in the 3D sphere. Their original task was integration between 2D and 3D all in one, for which 3dfx had not had the determination a long time. And complete ignorance of the Glide from the side of nVidia - the stake was put on DirectX, for which nVidia got necessary support from MS.

Fourth - the battle of graphic accelerators between 3dfx and nVidia pegged the news headlines in computer editions for many years ahead and became a "number one" topic .
Consequence: Such a course of events finally made some clumsy and sluggish draw attention to things which are evident to the consumer. For most old ones, the miss of the "key moments" was the last, and finally became aware of what was going on, but ATI decided to join the fight to the full.

Well, all that is the matter of ancient history and happened in the last century. Having run through numerous acquisitions and bankruptcies, the video industry entered the new century fully renewed. At the end of year 2000, nVidia acquired the ruins of 3dfx; S3 purchased Diamond Multimedia which had previously been bought at miserable $50 mln by VIA, and Micron Technology laid hands on Rendition etc...

Today: ATI or nVidia?

Today we have two real leaders - ATI and nVidia, and it's not easy to answer who if the "first". What is the "leadership"?

• A victory at performance in the most demanding and cool video cards offered by the companies? Let it be so, but the sales of hi-end solutions are so small that they don't have the leading role in the incomes. The purpose of their release is to demonstrate the technological advancements.
• A share on the market of sold chips? Well, but the number of chips and lines is so great - the entry-level 5200,9200, the mainstream 5600 and 9600, Hi-end of all suits, integrated chipsets, plus solutions for notebooks, game-sets, mobile phones and all the embedded stuff for airports, banks and shops. Nobody is able to count their shares.
• A package of developments for future and the technology margin? Sure..
• The net income after the activities for a year and prospects for the future? Yes! Because, it's just this that makes some sense of the previous activity...

So, we have arrived at the understanding of such an evident fact that only a thorough consideration of the whole union of these factors will allow to pronounce a verdict regarding their leadership on the market.

All in all, we are not investors and don't buy multi-billion companies with all the interiors, but their produce for a particular point in history. We can safely bring in some theses regarding their condition without fear of ostracism from PR-departments of these companies, since these theses are in fact quite well-known.

Facts for the end of year 2003:

1. At the performance of high-end solutions in modern graphic applications, both the leaders are approximately on par.
2. The "graphic technology of the future" - pixel shaders - that allows handling the object on the pixel level (smoke, fire, grass, clouds, hair) is better implemented in ATI solutions, and that is a generally known fact that has been proved a hundred times. The leadership started with the release of RADEON 9700 Pro last year - that was the first video card with support for DX9.
3. The "process technology" is not that straightforward. NVidia started the migration to the 0.13 mk process with the release of NV30, i.e. a chip that by plan was to oppose 9700Pro. But that expensive migration process raised the chip cost incommensurably, which made the competition impossible. ATI started its move towards the 0.13 mk later and with a simpler to manufacture chipset - Radeon9600 thus making the transition less painful. There is a definite blunder made by nVidia, the consequences of which are still there.
4. "Success in emerging onto new markets?" - also right and important.. both the companies have achieved great success in that. But the success for nVidia is in the past (the nForce2 chipset for the closed Athlon project and lost tender for XBox2 - supplies of chips for the first XBox gave nVidia 25% of the whole total income), whereas ATI faces success in future (the RADEON 9100 IGP for P4 and won a tender for XBox2).
5. "The average cost of produce" video chips from ATI are traditionally cheaper than similar produce from nVidia. That applies to video cards either.
6. "The share of the total market of sold chips" - definitely the most important factor. At that, the share of nVidia in the total volumes of sold video cars is incommensurably higher than ATI's. Except for the mobile solutions.
7. "Cost of shares"? - it's interesting to keep track of their progress, but their cost does not characterize the real state of affairs. This is a game for other players...

Asus as a catalyst of the turning point

So, why despite that ATI cards are the cheaper and more powerful, the user still prefers nVidia's produce? The consumer's inertia is a dreadful thing, and you can't overcome it in one day. Several successful cycles of changes in product lines are necessary before we get used to a new leader who used to be was taken disdainfully a few years ago. The second factor is the banal shortage of chips. Placing orders with factories having sufficient equipment is a bothersome thing and is planned years in advance. As ATI admits, the company was unable to forecast the success of RADEON9700/RADEON9800 and thus order enough chips in quantities sufficient for the market. The third factor is partners. Traditionally, nVidia had an absolute majority of all the more or less prominent companies as partners who had been bound with contracts for purchasing chips and manufacturing cards for many years ahead (such things are also planned years in advance).

Today, we can assert these days are counted. Asus as one of the oldest and most reliable partners of NVidia is now producing ATI video cards and preserves the nVidia line, thus having overcome the many year tradition of "single-supplier" partnership. GIGABYTE a bit earlier also announced the manufacture of cards from both leading manufacturers of graphic chips. But in fact Asus has already produced its first video card on the ATI chip, Asus RADEON 9800 XT, which is lying on our test bed today.

Specifications, package bundle, description

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The first what catches your eye is the continuity of Asus cooling system. ASUS GeForce V9950 Ultra, on the right, also took part in our tests:

ASUS RADEON 9800 XT (R360)	ASUS V9950 Ultra (NV35)

Like in previous level cooling systems by Asus, on the front and rear sides of the RADEON 9800 XT there are massive copper plates. But the plate on the rear side is more plain than that on V9950 Ultra - there are merely 4 memory chips on each side, and these are not heating elements dubbed DDR2, but simply a regular DDR.

The remaining 4 memory chips and the graphic processor is cooled with two front coolers using heat pipes. The solution is disputable enough, but it will appeal to overclockers. The thing is that the core and memory chips are positioned in a compact way, and on the ATI reference card they are covered with a huge cooler. The tradeoff of the redundant cooler is the increased noise level.

ASUS RADEON 9800 XT	ATI RADEON 9800 XT

Retail box

There haven't been such huge boxed in the world. We had to find out precisely if that was just a promo box. It turned out to be a standard retail box:

Exterior	Internal decoration

Inside, we found the card itself, a software-box, a VIVO connector (Video Input/Video Output), a DVI-adapter and three instruction manuals:

VIVO connector, DVI-adapter	ASUS CD Suite

Bundled software:

• A drivers & utilities disk (ASUS WHQL driver, WDM Capture driver, AGP Gart driver, DirectX9, ASUS SmartDoctor2, VideoSecurity, DigitalVCR, GameFace)
• Game "Battle Engine Aquila" - full version
• Game "Gun Metal" - full version
• Game Power disk with demos:
  • Tom Clancy Splinter Cell
  • Warcraft: Reign of Chaos
  • Big Mutha Truckers
  • BREED
  • Colin McRae Rally3
  • TOCA Race Driver
• PowerDirector 2.55 ME - allows creating almost professional video content :)
• Ulead Cool 3D SE 3.0
• Ulead Photo Express SE 4.0
• ASUS DVD XP - a DVD player
• Medi@Show SE 2.0 - a software for creating slide shows

The package bundle deserves better than 10/10. What was missing is an LCD monitor which would easily fit inside the box.

R360 chip

In fact, RADEON 9800 XT cards on the base of the R360 chip are modernized RADEON 9800 Pro (R350). We summed up all the differences in the following table:

All the difference from R350 is in the core operation frequency increased to 412 MHz. Remember that RADEON 9800 PRO offers 380 MHz. On the face of it, the 8% gain is not the result worth of the mess or inventing new names - any user will easily overclock 9800PRO to much higher values. But video cards based on the R360 chip are able increasing the core operation frequency dynamically to 432 MHz in case "overkill" applications are used, which already gives 13% plus a new functionality. How dramatical the difference between the "overclocked 9800Pro" and the 9800XT you will see from our benchmarking section.

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The R360 chip is manufactured following the same 0.18 mk process technology. For now, ATI introduced the 0.13 process technology only for the mainstream chips as more amenable to manufacture.

Memory

The DDR memory of BGA form-factor made by Hynix is marked as HY5DU573222 and, as per the information from the manufacturer's web-site, its access time is 2.5 ns, which is equivalent to 400(800) MHz, i.e. there is a margin. The modules are produced in Korea. The 256 MB is made up of 8 chips, which substantially reduces the wiring and layout complexity, signal timing, latency time and other issues... A substantial advantage.

Dynamic overclocking (Overdrive)

It's been the first time ATI became aware of the the class of users called "overclockers". As I remember, they used to be strongly against any overclocking. And not only became aware, but even suggested a comprehensive solution of the problem - the Overdrive tab appeared in the settings window of Catalyst 3.8.

The idea behind the function is the automatic control of the frequency of the graphics processor R360 depending on the chip temperature in 3D applications.

• below 52 C - 432 MHz;
• below 65 C -418 MHz;
• above 65 C - 412 MHz;
• at 75 C, the critical temperature, the "alarm" snaps on.

The function works fine on ATI's reference card, and on the Asus card it turns out to be completely blocked. Instead of the "Overdrive" tab, Asus suggests its own solution - the "SmartDoctor" utility.

ASUS SmartDoctor2

Upon the installation of the video card, the core frequency is set a bit understated - 405 MHz. At first, we were surprised and thought Asus had decided to get reinsured. On the box and in the instruction manual, the frequency values were also missing. The first tests showed a regular (although minimal) lag behind the standard 9800XT of ATI. In the end, it turned out that complete control of settings and monitoring of the card condition is performed solely through the proprietary utility SmartDoctor2. Also there standard working settings of the card are defined or overclocking is performed. That is, in any case we have to install SmartDoctor.

After numerous revisions, the development turned into a really unique program - never before has the user acquired such a complete kit of settings of every kind and tools for blocking, warning and undo operations. It seems like this card is practically impossible to burn down (and even avoid system re-restart) with the installed SmartDoctor and new Catalyst 3.8 driver (in it, there appeared a kit for the protection against overheating and bringing it out of the stupor with VPU Recover).

Upon installation of the card, the core frequency is 405 MHz, that of memory - 728 MHz

Core frequency - 411 MHz, that for memory - 728 MHz.

To set the normal frequency mode, just press the "Default" button, and then "Set/Test".

The cooler is also able regulating the rotational speed.

The function for regulating the cooler's rotational speed is dubbed as "Smart Fan". Oh, those marketing people again ... The cooler's maximum rotation speed is 10000 rpm, that standard in the 2D mode is 5000 rpm, with the lowest critical speed 3000 rpm.

SmartDoctor also works fine with the old Catalyst 3.7 driver - we verified that fact. It communicates directly with the card and takes the readings from integrated sensors for temperature and rotation. But this time the VPU Recorder won't work - it simply is not there in the old driver.

VIVO

The TV-Out support is natively implemented in the VPU itself, so no additional chips are required for that in the card. But to implement the TV-In, you anyway have got to use external chips. In this case, the video input is implemented with the "ATI Rage Theater" chip on the reverse side of the video card:

This is the only difference in the wiring between the reference card and our versions of ASUS RADEON 9800 XT/TVD. The chip has been known for quite a while, so there is not need to dwell on it. The only what is worth noting is this: even if you are not planning to use the ATI Rage Theater, you will anyway have to install the WDM driver - otherwise it will be hard to get rid of the continuous reminder "New hardware found..".

Benchmarking

Benchmarking software used:

1. 3DMark2003
2. 3DMark2001SE
3. Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
4. Village Mark
5. RightMark Video Analyzer v0.4
6. Comanche 4 Bench
7. Unreal Tournament 2003
8. GunMetal Benchmark 1.2S
9. X2-The Threat Rolling Demo
10. Aquamark 3

Notes: The quality settings in the drivers of the video cards are set to "controlled by applications" by default. In these tests, we defined the maximum quality settings. 10 benchmarking programs (5 synthetic benchmarks and 5 gaming tests) were used altogether. Our standard set of test applications was complemented with new DX9 tests - a benchmark based on the demo version of future game "X2-The Threat", "Aquamark 3" and "GunMetal Benchmark". Along with the ASUS RADEON 9800 XT itself, there was also used a board on the base of GeForce FX 5900Ultra 256MB, also made by ASUS - the fastest of all we got of FX, as well as the GeForce FX 5900 128MB made by ABIT, then RADEON 9800Pro 256Mb by GIGABYTE, and RADEON 9700Pro by ATI.

In the Aquamark 3 benchmark, as many as 15 video cards were used. The test is new, quite specific, and it was really curious to look at the general comparison of performance of various video cards from the viewpoint of this test.

We tried to emulate operation of the RADEON 9800 XT through overclocking a 9800Pro to the clock speeds of 9800XT. On the graphs, this card is referred to as "ATI 9800Pro 256Mb Overclock". The difference in results will allow assessing the gain from using the dynamic overclocking system implemented for the first time in the ATI's produce and the improved memory subsystem.

To make the graphs more amenable for perception, all the ATI lines are shown in bold lines, with NVIDIA's with thin lines.

Synthetic benchmarks:

3DMark 2003

3DMark 2001SE

I am not going to comment on the results for 3DMark2003 and 3DMark2001SE any longer. Simply enjoy in silence.

Codecreatures Benchmark Pro

Remember that the benchmark makes intensive use of shaders of version 1.1 of DirectX 8.1 kit. In the default mode with the antialiasing disabled, we see an approximate parity for all the three cards: Radeon 9800XT and FX5900Ultra, and Radeon9800Pro overclocked to XT clock speeds.

But once we enable the antialiasing, everything changes. A pure victory of NV35 in the person of ASUS FX5900Ultra. As far as I can remember, this test has always been the reign of top-end NVIDIA cards. Now we see that ATI has caught up with the necessary level in the test without AA.

RightMark Video Analyzer

Curiously, it's almost the only test where the results for overclocked 9800Pro fully coincide with those for 9800TX.

Village Mark

A very old and funny test. It can't produce FPS higher than 200 and are regarded as invalid. If we bring in the results for solely today's probationers, then graphics won't work - all straight lines of two points.

The green thin line above the thick yellow stands for the results of FX5900Ultra versus ATI Radeon9800Pro. They virtually coincide. The bright violet line represents the results for the overclocked Radeon9800Pro, and overshadows those for Radeon9800XT. In a month or two, the test results might look like a single point in the 1600x1200 resolution.

Gaming benchmarks

Away with the synthetics. Real gaming tests are much more exciting. We used two games of the DX8 pack - (Comanche 4, UT2003), and three benchmarks on DX9 engines (GunMetall, X2-The Threat, Aquamark 3).

Comanche 4

With the AA disabled, all the lines merge into one :). The benchmarks definitely rests on the lack of the CPU performance. Now, bringing in the results produced with the AA enabled. Even with these, at low resolutions which we simply cut off, all the lines come almost out of the same point. But ATI's leadership is undisputable.

UT2K3 Benchmark Utility

The tests were run only in the High Quality mode - it makes no sense running hi-end cards at poor settings, because even without that the results exceed all limits. You can look through the settings in "Unreal Tournament 2003 as a benchmark". The test utility is available for download from here.

The results are pretty standard, and the emergence of 9800XT hasn't brought any changes to the ranking - NVIDIA takes is up to the mark only at highest resolutions of the Antalus demo.

GunMetall Benchmark

This DX9 benchmark is a separate utility made as an add-on to the game. By default, the image display quality is set to the maximum ever possible. It uses version 2.0 vertex programs and 1.1 version shader programs (isn't it a shortcoming?) We covered this benchmark in detail upon its first use in the review "FX5600Ultra vs Radeon9600Pro". The benchmark includes two demos:

Sure, nothing to comment on. Top-end Radeons rule!

X2-The Threat Rolling Demo

This is a new benchmark made on the new engine of the "X2-The Threat" game by Egosoft. The engine does not use pixel technologies, and that is easily seen to the naked eye. On the other hand, there is actively used the Dot3 Bump Mapping, which leaves indelible impression. In any case, this demo is a DX9 test.

The first test is about the default quality settings. FX5900Ultra is somewhere on par with Radeon 9700Pro.

With shadows and antialiasing enabled, the picture is not that dramatic and even FX5900Ultra leads at 1600x1200. But you are unlikely to call this resolution gameable.
Verdict: Radeon 9800XT takes a lead.

Aquamark 3

You can find out more about this new benchmark in our review "AquaMark3 Benchmark". Briefly: the benchmark was released one and a half month ago, on 12 September on the base of the "Krass Engine" engine that serves as the graphics base for all "AquaNox" series games with gradual complication. The same engine will be in the new RPG "Spellforce" (to be released these days) by Phenomic Game Development (the trial version is available from here).

AquaMark3 is unique in its own way. At least, it's only this version that allows assessing the performance of video cards with all the versions of vertex and pixel shaders that were included in DX8 and implemented in DX9.

Unfortunately, we got only a freeware version of this benchmark that does not allows running a test in all the resolutions - only at 1024x768, but at maximum detail.

So, at "high quality" we again see a complete victory of ATI. The Non Ultra version of FX5900 even lost to 9700Pro,which was somehow unexpected, and the ranking of FX5600Ultra took us by surprise completely! We intentionally included into the the benchmark the results of all the "key cards" released for 2002-2003 and even some older, just for fun. The benchmark is new, quite peculiar and it would be interesting to look at the general performance growth for video cards.

The results are displayed in some conditional score points called Triscore, but if divided by 1000, they just give the average FPS rate for a given video card. That is, 9800XT gave 43 fps on the average, with 4.5 fps for GF2MX.

Findings

Findings is the responsible part. Let's start with the most essential - ATI has become a first-line manufacturer of hardware. While cooperation with GIGABYTE was no more than a forced decision for both companies. a contract with Asus is already serious.

This radical move by Asus, such as engaging it marketing and production capacities to ATI, is caused be several factors. First, you can't ignore ATI any longer. Otherwise, somebody else will skim the creams. Secondly, Asus is ambitious to become "number one" on the VGA market as well, which will be easier through producing video cards of leading manufacturers. Thirdly, NVIDIA has lost grip and is no longer able controlling everything and all, which will be used by some other companies. At least, if MSI tomorrow announces a cooperation with all who want it, nobody will be surprised by that any more. This "blurring" in priorities is only to the benefit.

Well, away with high politics and now get round to the ASUS Radeon 9800XT itself and R360 chip.

The chips in fact hasn't undergone essential changes - it is simply an overclocked version of R350, which is confirmed by ATI itself, - only the suffix has been changed in the name, but the numbering preserved. The maximum what can be changed is to eliminate a hundred or two errors in the chip topography :)

But as our all tests showed, a video card based on the "generic R350" overclocked to R360 always loses to "generic R360". What's up? If it is one and the same chip, the results should coincide. The gain is about using the dynamic overclocking and new architecture of the DDR memory. These factors just "grant" the chip those 7-8% of added performance, which give ATI the opportunity to stay in leaders before the emergence onto a new coil of arms race.

Now regarding the card itself. It is seen that Asus made a responsible approach to the release of its firstling on the base of ATI. Even if the design is reference, it is too complicated to explore and introduce amendments, but Asus dug thoroughly enough in the BIOS and created a unique utility SmartDoctor that gives the user unprecedented possibilities of fine tuning and monitoring the video card. Even though most buyers are in fact not excited about that, anyway cards of such level are not meant for "most buyers". But those who really are into such cards have been long looking forward to at least elementary functions of monitoring, control and security! Overclocking utilities of every kind have long been part of the software package bundle of any video card, but I wonder why nobody uses them :) and prefers a much more powerful RivaTuner. In this case, SmartDoctor is one of the first tools which we recommend to install as a must-have.

Asus wouldn't have been Asus if it hadn't installed its own cooling system. 99% of manufacturers of previous-level video cards based on Radeon 9800Pro have ordered supplies of the standard cooling system (except Sapphire with its Ultimate series video card), which has turned all the video cards into a uniform mass in which it is hard to tell a card apart. Actually, does in make any difference? .. all Radeon9800Pro cards are manufactured on the same conveyor .. to be more precise, on two. One conveyor produced 9800Pro 128Mb DDR, with the other producing 9800Pro 256Mb DDR2. Then, the produce was marked by "various" manufacturers and distributed among the customers.

You can't take ASUS Radeon 9800XT for anything else ... but for ASUS FX5900Ultra :-)
The light beige PCB with a copper two-fanned cooling system looks fantastic and takes up only one slot, although this fact can't be noticed at once.

One more thing - an ATI Rage Theater chip installed. Normally, low-end video cards are equipped with it. It's not much of a gameable stuff, but lets you handle home digital video. This practice was unnerving for the nervous, but the trend seems to have been overcome.

How close can the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (NV38) announced two weeks ago catch up with today's leader? Read about it in our next review..