Don't buy that 9600...

[TeaLeaf]

The 9600XT has been a little disappointing in the recent reviews as unlike the older , slower clockspeed, 0.15 micron process 9500 Pro which had the full 8 rendering pipelines, the newer, faster clockspeed, 0.13 micron process 9600XT has only 4 rendering pipelines.  This has meant that whilst at lower resolutions it outruns the 9500 Pro, when you start turning on the eye-candy (and AA & AF in particular) you find that the old 9500 Pro and its 8 pipelines chugs steadily into the lead.

Now ATI had a minor problem with this but were not too concerned as they made a cock up when thay issued the 9500 in the first place - they never meant the 9500 Pro to be that fast (it was too close to the 9700 in performance terms).  Due to a lack of manufacturing capacity and a full order book for a product they had not yet built, they nicked the PCB from the 8 pipeline 9700 for the 9500 and just soft-locked some of the 9700 features.  This gave the 9500 prodigous performance with AA & AF on and also made it fairly easy to 'unlock' those features via a BIOS hack.

But now the problem is that the new 9600 XT is just a bit too slow.  nVidia's FX 5700 is the competitor that it wants to beat and having already withdrawn review samples once to increase the clockspeeds, it has had to do it again!  You can read about it here.

Look out for some new, improved and whiter cleaning 9600XT cards to appear within the next 2 weeks - but don't go buying one just yet eh?

TL.

[Zok]

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=7951
Been watching this one for a while waiting for a price drop, was attracted by the faster memory speed, your thoughts would be more than appreciated.

[TeaLeaf]

That card is the Powercolor 9600 Pro.  Powercolor have been getting increasingly good reviews as they have started to put better quality RAM chips into their cards.  The 9600 Pro is neck and neck with (or just ahead of) the nVidia 5600 Ultra, but is a *long* way behind the 9700 Pro, 5900 Ultra, 9800 Pro etc.  

If the budget is fixed then it is a reasonable buy, but remember that you can get the Sapphire 9600 Pro for £125 (or the Hercules for another few pounds) so it is not cheap for a non-premium brand.  Personally I would probably go out and find an older 9500 Pro and then try to overclock it - the extra 4 pipelines in a 9500 Pro will *really* do the business.  There is a technical comparison here which shows the differences between the 9500 Pro and the 9600 Pro.

I think the 'webmaster' is stretching himself a little bit to say that the Powercolor 9600 Pro will run all those games fine - it will probably run them ok, just not with all the eye-candy turned on.

Personally I'd wait for the 0.13 micron process to come out on the 9800 series and then make a decision on going for an older 9700 Pro for overclocking (which should be *much* cheaper by then) or a 0.15 micron 9800 Pro.  There is a nice comparison of the 9600/9700/9800/5600/5900 gfx cards here and it sets out the comparative performance of each.  

Hope this helps.

TL.

[Zok]

Thanks very muchness
got to change my graphics card soon, the gf2 just does'nt hack it any more  

back to the thought process :unsure:

if anyone knows where i could get hold of a older type overclockable 9500pro i would be very grateful :thumbsup:

thanx

[TeaLeaf]

A footnote to this thread:

The 9600XT has just been released and guess what?  ATI has upped the default core clockspeed again and the first production samples hitting the shops from Sapphire are running at, wait for it, 525MHz instead of the already uprated test samples default 500MHz.  That means the 9600XT now sports the fastest GPU of *any* gfx card out there!  It also now keep itself just ahead of the nVidia 5700 Ultra in teh performance stakes.  You can read more here.

TL.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by TeaLeaf@Nov 15 2003, 12:06 AM
A footnote to this thread:

The 9600XT has just been released and guess what?  ATI has upped the default core clockspeed again and the first production samples hitting the shops from Sapphire are running at, wait for it, 525MHz instead of the already uprated test samples default 500MHz.  That means the 9600XT now sports the fastest GPU of *any* gfx card out there!  It also now keep itself just ahead of the nVidia 5700 Ultra in teh performance stakes.  You can read more here.

TL.

OK, the chip is running at high speed. Any real world test results. If it gives a good performance (and at those speeds I hope it would) then this could be a bit of a killer card

anyone wanna buy a 5900?

[TeaLeaf]

I understand that there will be some reviews out in about a week's time.

TL.