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ATI RADEON 9600 XT Performance Preview October 15, 2003 Brandon Bell |
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Summary: In addition to the RADEON 9800 XT, ATI has one more product to round out its Fall/Winter lineup: the RADEON 9600 XT. Based on a derivative of the RADEON 9600 PRO core, the RADEON 9600 XT delivers better performance, built-in overclocking with OVERDRIVE, and of course, a free copy of Half-Life 2! See how this card stacks up to its predecessors, as well as DX8 cards like the GeForce3/4 and RADEON 8500 in this article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
Developing a successful GeForce4 Ti 4200 killer has been a tough task for both ATI and NVIDIA. The GeForce4 Ti 4200’s DirectX 8 compliance, 8.2GB/sec memory bandwidth, and 2.0Gigatexels/sec fill rate has made it a worthy performer in the mainstream market, with a feature set that was second to none in its class exactly one year ago. In DX8 titles such as Splinter Cell, it was a good performer with frame rates that were more than adequate for its segment.
Because of this, when ATI launched its RADEON 9500 PRO, many GeForce4 owners were impressed with the 9500 PRO’s performance, but opted instead to keep their money in their pockets -- even though the RADEON 9500 PRO was capable of dusting NVIDIA’s more powerful GeForce4 Ti 4600 in some situations! The upgrade just wasn’t enough for a lot of consumers to take the plunge.
ATI’s follow-up to the RADEON 9500 PRO, the RADEON 9600 PRO, wasn’t really created to address performance, its predecessor certainly wasn’t lacking in that area; instead it was concocted to address ATI’s production costs. Weighing in with 110 million transistors and a complicated board design, the RADEON 9500 PRO was expensive for ATI to produce for the mainstream segment. Essentially, $300+ graphics products were being sold for $150-$200. The RADEON 9600 PRO was built from the ground up to offer DX9 compliance with good performance, but just as important, to address ATI’s need for a mainstream offering that wasn’t too costly to manufacture.
In this regard, the RADEON 9600 PRO was a definite success, but enthusiasts were disappointed because it was outperformed by the 9500 PRO in many cases. In order to lower production costs, ATI reduced the number of pixel pipelines in 9600 PRO to four, half the number contained within 9500 PRO. This change had a negative impact on fill rate. ATI attempted to offset this by boosting the core and memory clock frequencies, but it still wasn’t enough.
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While all this was occuring, NVIDIA was actually in a worse situation than ATI. We all know the delays they suffered throughout 2002, preventing DX9 hardware from shipping to retail until 2003. But their competitor to the RADEON 9500 PRO, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, suffered through its own share of setbacks. The public response to initial 5600 Ultras samples was poor, requiring a follow-up, the 5600 Ultra flip-chip, which boasted higher clock speeds.
Unfortunately for NVIDIA, retail cards based on the updated 5600 Ultra core didn’t arrive in significant quantities until August, leaving the 5600 to service this market, a task for which it was woefully under-prepared. ATI had won the hearts and minds of the mainstream segment, although there was still that nagging problem of convincing gamers to upgrade.
With DirectX 9 games like Tomb Raider and Halo now available, and Half-Life 2 right around the corner, gamers finally have a compelling reason to trade up from their RADEON 8500/8500LE’s and GeForce3/4’s to a DX9 graphics card like the RADEON 9600 PRO. But to tempt consumers to upgrade even more, ATI has released another DX9 graphics card onto the market with even more performance than the RADEON 9600 PRO – the RADEON 9600 XT!
SIDEBAR: ATI RADEON 9600 XT Product Webpage
| Core specs | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
Manufacturing enhancements
Besides reducing the number of pixel pipelines in RADEON 9600/RADEON 9600 PRO, one other cost-saving measure ATI implemented in the design of the RADEON 9600 core was to shrink its manufacturing process from 0.15-micron to 0.13-micron. The smaller process allows ATI to get more chips per silicon wafer (assuming good yields at 0.13-micron), thus increasing production without higher manufacturing costs. When coupled with the RADEON 9600 PRO’s 60-million transistor die (nearly half that of the 9500 PRO), ATI is able to produce significantly more cores with each production run. The end result is that ATI’s manufacturing cost per chip is dramatically reduced, while at the same time more chips can conceivably be produced.
For RADEON 9600 XT, ATI has added one new ingredient to the manufacturing recipe: low-k dielectric. Low-k dielectric is a material used to insulate the copper circuits within the RADEON 9600 PRO core. This is important, because the new 0.13-micron process packs the circuits within the chip more tightly together. As clock speeds increase, these circuits can begin to interfere with one another in the same way crosstalk can occur on telephone lines. This form of electrical crosstalk can hamper performance and waste power.
Low-k dielectric material is used to encapsulate the copper wires from each other, ensuring better performance (and thus, higher clock speeds) and lower power requirements. The RADEON 9600 XT is the first graphics core to utilize low-k material. When coupled with the lower power requirements of the RADEON 9600 XT’s 0.13-micron core, ATI is able to hit high clock speeds without the need of an external power source or a large cooling unit.
New clock speeds
Other than this addition, the RADEON 9600 XT core is largely the same as the RADEON 9600. Both cores feature four pixel pipelines with one texture unit per pixel pipeline, and dual vertex engines. For added performance, ATI has cranked up the core clock frequency of RADEON 9600 XT to 500MHz, an increase of 100MHz from the RADEON 9600 PRO. This change nets the RADEON 9600 XT an additional 400Mtexels/sec in fill rate, an increase of 20% over its predecessor. Despite this, the RADEON 9500 PRO still boasts the highest fill rate thanks to its eight-pixel pipeline architecture.
Meanwhile, memory clock frequency remains unchanged at 600MHz, as does the XT’s memory interface, which is 128 bits wide. (ATI will also be producing a RADEON 9600 SE card. This board features a 64-bit memory interface, so buyer beware.) This provides the RADEON 9600 XT core with up to 9.6GB/sec of memory bandwidth, which is just over 3GB/sec shy of the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra’s 12.8GB/sec peak. Our card shipped with 128MB of memory, but the chip supports configurations up to 256MB, so it’s possible that a board manufacturer may implement a 256MB RADEON 9600 XT board of their own.
SIDEBAR: ATI’s codename for the RADEON 9600 XT core is RV360.
| The 9600 XT board | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
Board analysis
As the RADEON 9600 XT is based on a derivative of the RADEON 9600 PRO core, it isn’t surprising to see that a lot of the RADEON 9600 PRO’s board design has been carried over to the RADEON 9600 XT. In fact, lots of the same components are still used, although there are a few subtle changes to the power circuitry.
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The most striking change to the laymen is the red printed circuit board, allowing the RADEON 9600 XT to sport ATI’s company’s color. RADEON 9600 PRO boards were built on green PCBs, which was surprising because we were under the impression that all of ATI’s “PRO” boards would utilize red PCBs.
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ATI has also replaced the RADEON 9600 PRO cooling unit (which was actually borrowed from the RADEON 8500/8500 LE) with a much more robust unit for the RADEON 9600 XT. Unlike the RADEON 9800 XT, which features a copper heatsink, aluminum is the material of choice for the RADEON 9600 XT heatsink. The heatsink unit itself is much larger than 9600 PRO’s, with a considerably larger base for effectively grabbing heat off the graphics core. This heat is then spread through dozens of fins, further increasing the surface area of the heatsink.
If all that weren’t enough, ATI then mates this beefier heatsink to the cooling fan that was used on the RADEON 9800/RADEON 9800 PRO. Considering that the RADEON 9600 PRO core operates relatively cool in the first place, this enhanced cooling unit will likely be regarded as a welcome bonus among enthusiasts.
Our RADEON 9600 XT sample shipped with 3.3ns memory modules manufactured by Samsung. These chips are rated for operation at 300MHz, matching the specs of the RADEON 9600 XT exactly. This was a bit of a disappointment to us, as we were crossing our fingers that ATI may use 350MHz modules, but with these chips now going into ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 PRO boards, we’re guessing that they want a little more distinction in their 9600 products.
OVERDRIVE
Like the RADEON 9800 XT, the RADEON 9600 XT has a thermal diode onboard. This feature gives ATI the ability to take accurate temperature readings, which can be monitored by the display driver. ATI then uses this information to dynamically adjust the clock frequency of the graphics processor, this feature is known as OVERDRIVE.
When enabled, OVERDRIVE will automatically overclock the graphics processor to a predetermined setting based on the graphics core’s temperature. If the core begins to exceed a certain temperature, OVERDRIVE will reduce the clock frequency of the 9600 XT core, but never below the default clock speed of 500MHz. Two OVERDRIVE settings are available for the 9600 XT: 513MHz, and 527MHz. However, unlike the RADEON 9800 XT, the 9600 XT’s fan rotates at the same speed regardless of temperature. The RADEON 9800 XT’s fan has two speed settings.
The current CATALYST 3.8 drivers don’t offer OVERDRIVE support for the 9600 XT, but ATI’s next release, CATALYST 3.9 will. Based on ATI’s current track record, you should probably expect this driver sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.
SIDEBAR: You can read up on the RADEON 9600 XT’s memory modules here
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
512MB OCZ EL PC3200 (DDR400) SDRAM
ATI RADEON 9800 – 128MB
ATI RADEON 9600 XT
ATI RADEON 9600 PRO
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO
ATI RADEON 8500
Driver version CATALYST 3.8
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
MSI GeForce FX5600-VTDR128
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
NVIDIA GeForce3
Driver version Detonator 45.23
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 9.0
Benchmarks
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (Bristol custom demo)
Quake III: Arena version 1.32 (fscrusher demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003 (T2 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (paris demo)
SIDEBAR: The P4C800 Deluxe was running in Turbo mode for all tests.
| NASCAR Racing 2003 Season | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
Nascar 2003
SIDEBAR: Need for Speed Underground launches next month, it should be an interesting racing title to test with.
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB
SIDEBAR: Another upcoming game that has loads of potential is Lock On: Modern Air Combat.
| Quake III 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
Quake III - OpenGL
SIDEBAR: Quake 3 is about to celebrate its fourth birthday, yet games are still coming out based on derivatives of this engine. Pretty amazing huh?
| Unreal Tournament 2003 4xAA | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: ATI is already accepting RADEON 9600 XT preorders on its website.
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: Wait until you see the overclocking results!
| Tomb Raider | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: Depth of field is disabled in all Tomb Raider tests.
| IL2:FB 4xAA | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB
SIDEBAR: We use the perfect quality settings for testing with IL-2.
| UT 2003 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: ATI has video coverage of their RADEON XT launch event available on their website.
| Tomb Raider 4xAA | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
SIDEBAR: Anti-aliasing doesn’t work in Tomb Raider with the NVIDIA cards, so the GeForce FX cards were omitted from testing.
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: We used the latest version of Powerstrip to overclock the RADEON 9600 XT
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
Like the RADEON 9800 XT, the RADEON 9600 XT isn’t a dramatic departure from its predecessor. ATI has merely refined the formula a bit and cranked up the clocks for higher performance. In DX8 and older titles, performance is enhanced by roughly 6-10%, depending on the application and the screen resolution tested. Of course, flight simmers probably won’t notice much of a difference between the PRO variants of any of the three mainstream DX9 cards ATI offers.
Performance with the RADEON 9600 XT in Tomb Raider was remarkably better than the RADEON 9600 PRO, more closely matching the fill rate difference between the 9600 XT and the 9600 PRO. This supports the assertion that DX9 titles will be more reliant on the VPU’s functional units that encompass shading rather than traditional performance metrics like memory bandwidth. The 9600 XT performs well here thanks to its 500MHz core clock, but the 8-pixel pipeline architecture of the 9500 PRO proved superior under maximum visual quality settings.
Because of this, we’d say that those of you with 9500 PRO boards made a good gaming investment. While the 9600 XT does outperform the 9500 PRO in a number of tests, the 9500 PRO is still holding its own in a wide variety of benchmarks. Most would probably agree that the RADEON 9600 XT isn’t a 9500 PRO killer in terms of performance. Of course, once supplies of 9600 XT hit retail from a number of board manufacturers, prices will quickly drop; consumers may forget the 9500 PRO ever existed.
ATI plans to begin shipping the RADEON 9600 XT later this month at an MSRP of $199. When this occurs, prices on the other RADEON 9600 cards will fall, although we don’t have final pricing data for these cards yet. Already 9600 PRO cards can be found for under $140 online, so it will be interesting to see what immediate effect, if any, the arrival of the 9600 XT will bring.
ATI will ship all 9600 XT cards with a free voucher for Half-Life 2. End users will have the option of downloading the game via Valve’s Steam client, or having the CD mailed directly, although a shipping and handling fee will apply in this case. When you factor in the 9600 XT’s solid performance, excellent feature set, and attractive pricing, it’s a package that’s pretty hard for any gamer to pass up. In fact, with the addition of Half-Life 2, the RADEON 9600 XT becomes one of, if not the best values currently available on the market.
If Valve is able to finish Half-Life 2 in time for the holiday shopping season, this may be just the nudge millions of gamers with older DX8 and especially DX7 hardware need to take the plunge and upgrade. This is the market ATI is going after with the RADEON 9600 XT, and based on what we’ve seen today, it looks like they’ve delivered a very compelling product.
SIDEBAR: Are you drooling for a RADEON 9600 XT or is the 9800 XT more your style? Perhaps you’re going to hold out with your GeForce4 or RADEON 8500 a little longer? Chat with others in the news comments!