GeCube Radeon 9550 Platinum Edition
Tests
Proceeding from the declared price at $100 and frequency data for the card in question made by GeCube (whose operating frequencies are by the way set too high relative to the canonical solution - ATI Radeon 9550), we chose video cards on the following chips:
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700;
- ATI Radeon 9600 Pro;
The former is positioned by GeCube itself versus own solution on the manufacturer's web-site. At prices, these two solutions are very similar either. GeCube promises to sell its cards at about $100, which is on par with the price of today's solutions on the base of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chip. And of course we were curious to look at the performance of the board on the base of the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro chip, because the solution by GeCube offers frequencies close to that, whereas the price for boards built on ATI Radeon 9600 Pro chip are much higher than the $100 declared by GeCube 100. There was no sense taking a board on the base of the ATI Radeon 9600 chip for tests - it will be interesting to look at once we get boards on the base of the canonically true ATI Radeon 9550 - the roadmap by GeCube is kicky. If you see a GeCube box with the "Extreme" caption, you can surely expect something out of the ordinary inside.
That happened to the GeCube Radeon 9550 Platinum Edition. However, let's look at the results of tests to figure out what range the performance of GeCube offspring falls within for the low-end sector of the market.
Test configuration:
- Motherboard: MicroStar K7N2 Delta (nForce 2 Ultra 400)
- Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton (200x11 = 2200 MHz)
- Memory: 2x512MB DDR PC 3200 Kingston (Dual-channel mode, latency timings 5-3-3-2)
- HDD: Maxtor Diamond 9 Plus 120 Gb (8 Mb Cache)
- Video cards:
- MSI GeForce FX 5700
- GeCube Radeon 9550 Extreme
- Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro
Operating system, test software, drivers and settings
Operating system:
- Microsoft Windows XP SP1 ENG
- DirectX 9.0b
- For NVIDIA video cards - ForceWare 56.72 WHQL;
- For ATI video cards - Catalyst 4.4 WHQL.
We removed all the decorative "niceties" out of the Windows GUI and set the operating system to maximum performance.
Disabled 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);
- iXBT.com/Digit-Life D3D RightMark (a comprehensive DirectX 9.0 synthetic benchmark);
- CodeCult Codecreatures v1.0.0 (DirectX 8.1 application, shaders, Hardware T&L);
- Digital Extreme/Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Yeti studious Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (DirectX 9.0 benchmark , Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- Egosoft X2: The Threat (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Microsoft HALO: Combat Evolved 1.3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, maximum possible quality);
- Massive Development AquaMark 3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0,
- Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality, our own recorded demo benchmarks "3Dnews001" and "3Dnews005");
- Legend Ent./Epic Games Unreal II: The Awakening v1403 (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, the quality set to that suggested by BenchemAll).
- Activision Call of Duty 1.1 (OpenGL, multitexturing. 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));
- GSC GameWorld / Russobit Ì FireStarter (DirectX 8.1/DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders, particle system, dynamic lights, projected textures);
- Core Design / Eidos Interactive Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness v49 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality, "Paris5_4 Demo", "Paris1c Demo" and "Paris2g Demo" were used as the demos);
- Crytek / UbiSoft FarCry (DirectX 9.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, quality settings set to the maximum, our own "3Dnews004" demo was used);
- People Can Fly / DreamCatcher Interactive Painkiller v 1.15 (DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders (the version not specified), projected textures, dynamic pixel-wise shading, DOT3 bump mapping etc.);
- Ubisoft Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (DirectX 8.1, version 1.1 pixel shaders, multitexturing);
- CDV Software Entertainment / Brat Designs Breed (DirectX 8.1, version 1.1 pixel and vertex shaders, stencil shades, Bump mapping).
2D Quality
Prior to giving the estimate of image quality achieved by GeCube Radeon 9550 Platinum Edition video card, we again and again remind it that to date it is impossible to give more or less impartial estimate of this parameter for a series of video cards, since the 2D quality strongly depends on a particular specimen, and it is impossible to check all the cards for known reasons. The 2D quality also depends on the monitor and connection cable which in turn results in a lack of impartial estimation into the methodology of assessing that parameter.
The 2D quality shown by the board at 1024x768x85Hz and 1280õ1024õ60Hz resolution can be characterized as superb. No noticeable deviations in the image quality were found.
Overclocking
The video card was overclocked with the RivaTuner utility. The operation stability during overclocking was verified with Future Mark 3DMark2003 v330 and MadOnion 3DMark2001SE benchmarks. In the first of them, the third scene from Trolls' Lair in the "cycled" mode was played to reveal the overclocking potentials of the boards. On finding the critical frequencies we ran 3DMark2001SE benchmark three times. Once distortions appeared on the screen ("broken" pixels, stripes, lines etc.), then we pushed the memory frequency down by a few megahertz. If the computer hanged, we reduced the clock speed of the graphic chip. If the tests ran successfully, the overclocking was regarded as successful. We did not apply additional cooling.
In the end, we were able to overclock the GeCube Radeon 9550 Platinum Edition video card to the following frequencies:
- Core - 460 MHz
- Memory, Max - 560 MHz
That's not too bad really for the rated 400 MHz / 500 MHz. In the end, we get not only an extremely tempting solution at the promised $100, now with the option of overclocking. Frankly, it is simply incredible that such video cards will be sold in Russia at such a price.
Well, it's good to analyze the overclocking of boards, but we are reminding it for the hundredth time that overclocking is not a compulsory feature of a video card, it may vary from sample to sample, and we can't be responsible for the equipment that went unusable after overclocking.
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