Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI is also announcing the Radeon 9600 XT; a much more exciting derivative of the Radeon 9600 Pro based on a low-k dielectric 0.13-micron process. The benefits of a low-k dielectric are mainly related to shielding from crosstalk in high transistor density chips; the benefit of a low-k process is mainly the ability to scale up clock speeds, which is why you will see that ATI is able to clock the 9600 XT at 500MHz. According to ATI, the Radeon 9600 XT should be the first mainstream part to outperform the Radeon 9700 Pro in all situations – not bad for a $199 card.
The Radeon 9600 XT will hit the streets sometime in November and we’ll be sure to bring you coverage of that card as soon as we get our hands on one.
Finally we have the NV38, NVIDIA’s Fall refresh part; we won’t see NV40 and R4x0 until next Spring so both companies are bringing out higher clocked versions of their current cards in order to compete during the holidays.
Just like the Radeon 9800 XT, the NV38 is basically a higher clocked version of the NV35 (GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) with a new cooling system. Now running at 475/475 (950MHz DDR), the NV38 boasts a 5% increase in core clock and an 11% increase in memory frequency.
The card will officially be launched next month but we’re going to be able to bring you a preview of the NV38’s performance today.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Bigsot here again as I remembered what i forgot to say...The 2xAA of the ATI is even beter than nvidias best!
ATI cards are the bestest!
Nvidia card owners must be crying!
Not me! Cause I got me an ATI!!!
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
how can they test aquamark3 without a image quality some sites says that nvidia quality in aquamark 3 sucks i dont know why they dont put that resultsAnonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Maybe there should be another video card manufacturer like ATI since NVidia is sinking, so the competition would be higher and new monster video cards would be developed for the good of the gamers. =) just like meAnonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I heard that the new ATI 9600XT will blow away even the NV5900-ultra cards!ATI ROCKS! Nvidia sucks!
Bigshot over and out of here! yeah!
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Fantastic Suite....finally someone (other than SimHQis using FS2004!
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
These score are worthless, clearly even the FS2004 test where not set up as fs willmake adjustments according to hardware it sees that have to be manualy changed. You can also add that the NV cards are AAing the whole scene as compared to the ATI cards that do not AA the clouds, Trees and other Alpha textures.Why no AA was used is also beyond logic, what are we back in 1994? ROTFLOL!!!
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
irrelevance is the quantity of ignoranceAnonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
#164, I'm not so sure about that. From what I've read about it, and seeing the screenshots, the 64-bit mode of Far Cry is probably real. The only question is if it's all it's hyped up to be, but considering the screenshots and movies I've seen, it would be interesting even if the 64-bit mode turned out to be nothing special (not that I'd expect that, though)Pete - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Derek/Anand,Evan suggested I repost this here. I didn't do so originally b/c I doubted you'd slog through 180 other comments, but on the off chance you do... ;)
I'm curious why 9600P results were left out of the Homeworld 2 benches. I also thought ATi's framerate problems with NWN were known, because the devs coded the engine around nVidia cards (though I also know ATi seems to be working to fix this).
I'd appreciate a reply if either of you could spare the time.
Thanks,
Pete
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I would like to see some image quality comparisons like they do on HardOCP. I've heard that the new beta dets really screw up the image in favour of speed.