ASUS Radeon 9600XT
Tests
| Test configuration: |
| MoBo: |
JetWay S446 (SiS 645) |
| CPU: |
P4 Northwood 1.6A@2.13A GHz (133x16) |
| Mem: |
256 MB Hynix PC2100 DDR SDRAM (CL=2) |
| HDD: |
Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 40 Gb |
| VGA: |
• ASUS Radeon 9600XT (ATI Radeon 9600XT);
• ASUS V9560 Ultra/TVD (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra new core);
• GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro (ATI Radeon 9600 Pro);
• Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro (ATI Radeon 9600 Pro);
• MSI FX 5950 Ultra (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra). |
| OS, drivers: |
• Microsoft Windows XP SP1 ENG
• DirectX 9.0b
• - ForceWare 53.03 WHQL (driver for NVIDIA video cards)
• Catalyst 3.9 (driver for ATI video cards) |
We remove all the decorative "niceties" and set the operating system to the maximum performance.
Disable the Vsync forcedly via the drivers both in OpenGL and in Direct3D applications. The S3TC texture compression was also disabled.
Test software:
- Future Mark 3DMark2003; v340;
- ToMMTi-Systems ShaderMark v2.0 (a synthetic DirectX 9 HLSL benchmark for pixel shaders);
- D3D RightMark 1.0.2.7. (Public Beta 1) (comprehensive DirectX 9.0 synthetic benchmark);
- Unreal Tournament 2003 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Codecreatures v1.0.0 (a DirectX 8.1 application, shaders on, Hardware T&L);
- Call of Duty 1.1 (OpenGL, multi-texturing. The image quality was set to the maximum. Used was one of our own recorded demo reels "3Dnews002" (flying on a rocket in the mp_rocket level)).
- Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (a DirectX 9.0 benchmark, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- X2: The Threat Demo (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, running in the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark for assessing the performance in the future game Final Fantasy XI. Unfortunately, the developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
- HALO: Combat Evolved 1.2 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, quality set to the maximum possible);
- AquaMark 3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, AquaMark3 Triscore mode);
- Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality);
- Unreal II: The Awakening (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, quality offered by the BenchemAll suite).
- FireStarter (DirectX 8.1/DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders, particles system, dynamic lights, projected textures - read more below).
Test boards
For running the tests we took 2 boards at a time built on the base of ATI Radeon 9600XT's predecessor - ATI Radeon 9600 Pro:
- GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro
- Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro
Why have we included 2 ATI Radeon 9600 Pro boards at a time? The thing is that GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro turns out to be an inferior Radeon 9600 Pro. It's memory clocking is downstated by 100 MHz, although no information regarding that can be found anywhere. Such "tricks" of video board manufacturers cannot by regarded good at all. We were interested to find out how the board in question would rank among other competitors, and we believe it's our duty to inform the users of emergence of such "hacks" bearing a label of full-featured cards.
We also included a board based on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra chip -
And of course the hero of today's review - ASUS Radeon 9600XT =).
You can assess the performance difference between NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and ATI Radeon 9600 XT in our review NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. Anyway, we found it more interesting to compare the performance difference between ATI Radeon 9600XT's predecessor - ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, as well as find out how the performance boost matches the "swollen" prices for the cards =). Besides, we also wanted to compare the results of tests for ATI boards with the tests for video cards based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra which are there on the market in greater quantities and appear to be more competitive solution than NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra.
Benchmarking Results: Synthetic benchmarks
Following the tradition, we start with the radically amended benchmarking package.
ShaderMark v2.0
As we see, this test shows the traditionally grievous trend for all video cards of NVIDIA family: ASUS V8560 Ultra/TVD on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra chip loses to its direct competitor - Sapphire's ATI Radeon 9600 Pro at handling all (!) the shaders suggested by the program. And if we look at the absolute fps values produced by the benchmark, you unwittingly think of the sense in buying an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra in particular, and buying a video card on the base of a chip of the FX family on the whole. We have used this benchmark several times, and the failure of NVIDIA chips at it is quite evident.
But it's still premature to make a conclusion. The benchmark is a pure HLSV application which, as we have repeatedly noted in our materials, produces a tragic effect on all cards built on NVIDIA chips. In real-world applications, things might get to the better (and, running ahead, we say that they really are getting better =)) due to the optimizations introduced into the game/benchmark from the part of the manufacturer/developer for the architecture of boards built on the base of NVIDIA GeForce FX chips.
As regards the alignment of forces in ATI, there is an evident ordinance in the frequencies of graphic chips and memory. Note that in most cases ASUS Radeon 9600XT leaves Sapphire on ATI Radeon 9600 Pro much further behind than the board Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 Pro by GeXcube does relative to Radeon 9600 Pro with reduced memory clocking. This points to the fact that ATI Radeon 9600 Pro definitely doesn't suffer from shortage of memory bandwidth, which is a sign of well-balanced performance of the chip (the memory bandwidth more or less matches the needs of the graphic processor), but the increased frequencies of graphic chip in ATI Radeon 9600XT naturally yield a higher performance boost in handling shader operations.
3DMark 2003 v340
In our today's tests, we used version 340 of the patch to 3DMark 2003 and new ForceWare 53.03 drivers for the NVIDIA card. As our "Tests of MSI GeForce FX 5950 Ultra" have shown in 3DMark 2003, the new driver ForceWare 53.03 does include NVIDIA's proprietary shader code compiler disabled by those spiteful FutureMark guys in version 340 patch =).
However, coming back to today's "probationers", we can see that the shader code compiler in ASUS V9560/TVD doesn't help much. The board anyway does lag behind its direct competitor - Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro. Because of the reduced memory clocking, the board by GeXcube shows a much lower performance level than it should for the Radeon 9600 Pro label on. We'll review the prices in what follows, but such behavior of the manufacturer is simply outrageous. On the other hand, ASUS Radeon 9600XT here is an absolute leader.
Codecreatures
While NVIDIA is not superior in the pure HLSV, in a real-world gaming application (in this case, it's a synthetic application based on a game that has still been in development for quite a long while) things might radically change. As we see, the alignment of forces is already in favor of Asus' video card on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra chip. The increased frequencies of graphic chip in ASUS Radeon 9600XT have produced a favorable effect on the board's operation speed in that particular application (for which there already were prerequisites from synthetic tests).
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