Hardware Analysis - Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Dante Armageddon — 2004-04-06T10:56:04-05:00

K if you wanna get an 9600XT, get a geXcube 9600XT Extreme.

i got 1528 3dmarks in 3dmark2001se:

my specs:
2500+@3200+ (11x200)
R9600XT 500/650@550/750
512 pc3200 hynix ram

im happy wiith that, and for only 240 dollars(au)

oh and i got it up to 620/800 once but i never got around to benchmarking it coz 3dmark f****d up and i have to re dl it!

but once i do ill benchmark it.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Sherwinator — 2004-01-22T12:29:03-05:00

Hoping that all the emotions have subsided.

I didn't read anything about how this card works in real time game play. The only numbers I'm
interested in is 30fps. Various articles written to date of this post have this 9600xt performing
slightly better than 9600pro and surpassing the GFX5600Ultra. Raw numbers don't really matter
unless you're talking about fps (IMO is what makes game play an experience instead of a slide
show).

As for the OC capabilities, I have read very few articles on this issue. The articles I skimmed
over point out the card's frequency/temp sensors which will automatically reset the OC setting
for a more stable operation.

Some of the issues will be resolved with the newer drivers as they are released. Some issues
will be resolved with game codes written specifically for the video cards. But inspite of the card
in the AGP slot, the MOBO and other system devices in the PC affect overall system performance.
Video cards are tested on the same platform to minimize the discrepancies encountered within
different platform builds/configurations.

Excellent thread. Thank you for writing this article.

IMHO

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Shadow_Ops_Airman1 — 2003-10-26T21:30:48-05:00

The Fan And Heatsink on the Card look like the One on the Radeon/All In Wonder 9700 Pro, just color is black on the 9700 pro.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Absolut Talent — 2003-10-21T21:45:46-05:00

Am I the only one who did not see the specs for the system that was used to run the tests?

If your gonna review a product, its only fair to the readers and the company who made the product that you include ANY and ALL information about how you tested it and what you tested it on to get the results that you posted.

As it stands right now, this review felt incomplete when I finished reading it, almost like the whole thing was benchmarked and written in a matter of 4 hours.

Please take this constructive criticizm with a grain of salt

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Matt Woller — 2003-10-20T06:37:28-05:00

"And now I've been reading news that ATI has miraculously figured out a way to speed up their 9600XTs. "

Sorry that ATI cards actually run HL2. That must really suck for you, let me guess, you run a DustBusterFX that can run HL2 at a whopping 20fps at 1024x768? Even if ATI did use some sort of enhancement to speed up the 9600XT, it has yet to be proven if any IQ is lost as a result, and last I check nVidia had royalling f**ked over the entire hardware enthusiast community with their benchmark cheats.

I fail to see how the 9600 Pro (or XT, for that matter) are wastes of money, as they're the same price as the 9500 Pro was when it were released, and the 9600s are faster (10%, and 20%, respectively). Also, many people are eagerly awaiting HL2, as repeated several times by several others, so that simply cuts $50 off the XT's price right there. I'm not saying that adding HL2 will please everybody, as certainly some would prefer to save $50 over getting a free game, but the vast majority have and will continue to support the HL2 bundling.

When Valve has to spend 5-fold extra man-power coding HL2 (using un-conventional methods) especially for the DX9 GeForceFXs, just for them to run at a competitive speed compared to the ATI DX9 cards, that's just plain pathetic. I can see no reason why anybody would endorse nVidia, with the sole exception being the 5900 Ultra, and even that isn't too good of a card, if you take out nVidia's even more numerous driver/filtering cheats used within it.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

russ init — 2003-10-17T18:44:00-05:00

This is a great thread and I can't help but posting. I know we can't change the past but what would have happened if the HL2 leak didn't occur and/or HL2 shipped in late Sept? What if everyone had a copy of HL2 right now and people reported their GF4 4200 were running it just fine at 1024x768 (not much eye candy mind you). What is more DX9 titles were in the hands of people and reports were coming back like, "Wow - Doom 3 rocks on my 9600 non-pro at 1024x768!" Look at Halo PC vs. Max Payne - a good card can perform badly if the coding sucks and an older card can rock if the coding is good.

I guess I feel like most that they want a new card but there are not many titles out there (HL2/Doom3) that can truely take advantage of them. I also feel like the graphic card wars are being fought by much dirtier tactics than in the past and that only the consumer is suffering now - HL2 included with an 9800XT - come on! If I had the cash to buy a $500 video card, do you think fifty bucks for a game is an incentive for me to buy a graphics card?

I think the best thing is just for everyone to wait, just invest in the tried and true 9700/9800 Pro, and skip all of this midrange graphic cards wars - in the end it is not ATI or nVidia that will loose - it is us.

russinit
"You buy quality, you only cry once."

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Robert Kropiewnicki — 2003-10-17T15:41:10-05:00

Sander,

Kudos on getting the 9700 Pro to more accurately reflect where the 9600 XT stands. However, I do share some of the reservations expressed here about how this review was approached.

First off, while I believe that you're correct in chastizing ATI a bit if the card isn't what they hyped it to be, and I do not claim to have any knowledge as to what you were told, I still think the card has to be judged on it's own merits. Just because it doesn't meet the hype doesn't make it a bad card or a bad buy.

That being said, now that you've added the 9700 Pro benchmarks, the main thing that is missing is the competition. For this review to be really meaningful, the three main cards it should be compared to are the ATI cards immediately above and below it (which you've now taken care of), and the Nvidia card located at the same price point.

You would have done well to further hammer down the dollar/performance differential against the 9600 Pro. Simply put, if someone was looking for a new video card in the budget card ranges, is the 9600 XT worth the extra 25 bux or so? You castigate the 9600 XT for only scoring in the mid 3000's in 3DMark2003 when people, like myself, who'd be looking to possibly buy the card are dealing with cards like the GeForce 3 Ti 200 which is pulling a whopping 800 or so in the same benchmark.

Also, please take into account in the future that not everyone is consumed by high framerate FPS shooter games. While I understand that there are significant number of enthusiasts who do eagerly await HL2/Doom3/whatever's next, the rest of us would prefer to hear more about the image quality and tradeoffs between driver settings.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Sander Sassen — 2003-10-17T07:54:06-05:00

Okay, I've bought a Radeon 9700 Pro yesterday just so I could include the benchmark scores for the 9700 Pro to this article. After about 8 hours of benchmarking the graphs are updated with these benchmarks and I have reworded the text where necessary to reflect this. As for the conclusion I have not changed that as the performance of the 9600 XT still is no match for the Radeon 9700 Pro.

Kind regards,

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Grease Monkey — 2003-10-17T02:58:43-05:00

"To Sanders' credit, ATi has claimed performance at about a 9700 Pro level with the 9600XT, but the funny thing is, in every review but Hardware-Analysis', those numbers are nearly achieved.

Oh yeah, and my guess is, Grease Monkey is just Sander, or one of his employees in disguise. Sorry bastard."

I can assure you I'm not Mr. Sassen. I'm actually from the Rage3d forums as the link was posted on the main page. I'm no fanboy of any company as I have had both ATI(Radeon 8500) and Nvidia(GF4TI4400) in the past and present respectively. ATI dropped the ball when they stopped producing a great mainstream card like the 9500pro and now they want to shove inferior products at a relatively higher price down everybody's throats. "But but...they give you HL2 for free!" Well guess what, Half Life wont be out until forever. And now I've been reading news that ATI has miraculously figured out a way to speed up their 9600XTs.
I hope some other graphics company emerges out of all this so that I won't have to read about ATIs crap they seem to be pulling out of their bum-holes as of late.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Matt Woller — 2003-10-16T23:36:20-05:00

To Sanders' credit, ATi has claimed performance at about a 9700 Pro level with the 9600XT, but the funny thing is, in every review but Hardware-Analysis', those numbers are nearly achieved.

Oh yeah, and my guess is, Grease Monkey is just Sander, or one of his employees in disguise. Sorry bastard.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Matt Woller — 2003-10-16T23:31:17-05:00

"And you'd think with all the hype and media attention ATi has been throwing at this you'd think it would fare a little better than this."

And you're not writing a bad review just for hits?

"As for the new OverDrive feature, our card clocked at 550MHz core and 340MHz memory, higher would result in crashes and artifacting, only managed to score 12% extra in 3Dmark2003, so that's a no go either."

Considering the fact that you only acheived a 10% OC, I wouldn't be bitching about "a mere 12% performance increase". Sorry pal, but ATi only guarantees an OC of up to 27Mhz on the core. My guess is that you're either altering your benchs, underclocking the card (to make ATi look bad), or just plain being so goddamn stupid as to only use SYNTHETIC benchmarks.

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

kyle burnett — 2003-10-16T21:30:48-05:00

"I think Ed at Overclockers.com said it best, when he said:.."

you do eh? first you bag the card for not being as fast as the bs rumors made it out to be, then you quote ed when he calls the best product in its pricerage a cripple and spreads another bs rumor about the review cards not being the "real" 9600xts. do you just really like spreading fud or what is your angle here?

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

snipp n — 2003-10-16T19:31:57-05:00

Excuse the spelling

MADness

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

snipp n — 2003-10-16T19:18:04-05:00

Dear Sander;

With a 128 bits mem-bus instead of 256 and 4 pipelines instead of 8,
I dont see how a 9600XT it can be almost as fast as a 9700pro.
I can't imagine why you thought it would be. (unpublished "discussions" at ATI events or tradeshows ??)
I can't imagine ATI claiming the 9600xt would be almost as fast as a 9700pro.
I for one thouht the 9600XT was targetet to be a little faster then the 9600pro, just like the 9800pro and the 9800XT.
The basic architecture didn't change from the 9600pro, nor did the mem and it's speed.
Again : if you knew about the memory bus and the pipelines, how could you seriously expect performance of a 9700pro
(wich figures you don't even include)

In the end, I think this is a nice example of bad yournalism, with bad research, not enough benches (even given the amond of time with the card), and from the wrong eyepoint.(You just can't compare a 9800pro with a 9600pro or XT).

But offcourse you are in title of your oppinion, and you can write whatever you want.

with kind regards;
MADness

Re: Ah, forget your coffee this morning?

Sander Sassen — 2003-10-16T19:09:36-05:00

I'm not going to keep on repeating myself, nor will I disclose what people told me these prospective performance numbers. And no, I've not been at the Alcatraz event, but rather at the European version of it in Munich, Germany. If you had taken the trouble to read the daily column from time to time you'd have noticed we've been there.

Anyway, it looks as if some of you think that the Radeon 9600 XT is just right the way it is, and you're entitled to your own opinion. Fact remains that it is just a tad bit faster than the 9600 Pro which it replaces. And you'd think with all the hype and media attention ATi has been throwing at this you'd think it would fare a little better than this. You wouldn't hear me complaining if it blew the 9600 Pro away by 25%, I'd even be giving it two thumbs up.

As for the new OverDrive feature, our card clocked at 550MHz core and 340MHz memory, higher would result in crashes and artifacting, only managed to score 12% extra in 3Dmark2003, so that's a no go either. Even if the feature debuts with the Catalyst 3.9s we won't see much of an improvement. So basically this card will give you a nice speed bump over anything below a FX 5600 or 9500 Pro, but that's it. Once the DirectX 9.0 titles such as Halflife2 start hitting the shelf the 9600 XT will only be playable in the lowest resolutions with decent frame rates.

That is also the point I'm trying to make in the conclusion, it might sound like a bargain today, and it indeed is affordable, but it'll not give you the mileage you'll get out of 9700 or 9800 Pro and you'd probably want a faster videocard a few months from now. That, in essence, is my beef with the 9600 XT, it is just not what ATi had us believe it is, a true high performance budget 3D graphics card.

I think Ed at Overclockers.com said it best, when he said:

"Radeon 9600XT ATI tries a new spin on the 9700 not-killer, "Ignore the negative reviews. The cards we sent out for review aren't REAL 9600XT cards." Please. A cripple doesn't stop being a cripple by making him hop a little faster."

Kind regards,