MDK
Power Member
quote:
ATI RADEON 9600 XT. With disabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering it outperforms its competitors on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra in the majority of benchmarks due to faster DirectX9 pixel shaders performance and higher VPU frequency. But in heavy modes, with enabled FSAA and AF NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra manages to take revenge very often due to higher memory bus bandwidth and aggressive anisotropic filtering optimizations.
The overclocking potential of RADEON 9600 XT based graphics cards may be pretty high, but unfortunately, it is impossible to guarantee that. For instance, a RADEON 9600 XT based graphics cards, which we tested in our previous session worked fine at 625MHz core and 740MHz memory frequency, while our today’s piece managed to show the maximum of 560MHz chip and 680MHz memory.
The most dangerous competitors to RADEON 9600 XT are the cards on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 XT chips. They are based on fully-fledged NV35 GPUs, use 256bit memory bus and often turn out faster than RADEON 9600 XT even without overclocking. Note that RADEON 9600 XT and GeForce FX 5900 XT cost about the same.
ATI RADEON 9600 PRO. This solution works at a lower chip and memory frequency yielding about 15% of their performance to RADEON 9600 XT. At the same time, they cost about 20%-25% less. If you overclock your RADEON 9600 PRO, you may not be able to reach the working frequencies of the RADEON 9600 XT solution, but it will still remain an attractive purchase in its price range.
ATI RADEON 9600. This solution works at even lower frequencies and falls about 20-25% behind RADEON 9600 PRO. Due to lower clock frequency of the VPU, the RADEON 9600 based graphics cards usually boast very attractive overclocking potential. We managed to overclock our today’s RADEON 9600 sample so that its core frequency exceeded that of RADEON 9600 PRO, though the memory frequency failed to reach that of the PRO version. All in all the overclocked card pe4rformed really close to what the RADEON 9600 PRO is capable of.
So, it might make sense to buy a RADEON 9600, but only if you intend to overclock it right away. When it works at its nominal frequencies, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 appears faster in most cases, while the price difference between the two is not that big at all.
ATI RADEON 9600 SE. This is a cut-down version of the RADEON 9600, featuring 64bit memory bus. It is about 30-40% slower than RADEON 9600, but also about 30-4-% cheaper. It defeats its direct competitors, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 XT and GeForce FX 5200, in no time, but manages to outperform RADEON 9200 only in case FSAA and AF are enabled. Nevertheless, RADEON 9600 SE seems to be the most optimal solution of all low-cost DirectX9 compatible solutions.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. This is a flagman of the NVIDIA series targeted for the mainstream market. The use of GDDR3 memory doesn’t provide any advantages to the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra solution compared with the regular DDR-II, but can theoretically affect the price point. GeForce FX 5700 Ultra based graphics cards cost about the same as RADEON 9600 XT based ones. Although they lose to the latter in advanced games, they can compete with the RADEON 9600 XT pretty successfully in all other applications and games, especially with enabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. The most dangerous competitors for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra are GeForce FX 5900 XT based graphics cards, which are just a little bit more expensive but considerably faster at the same time.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700. It differs from the Ultra version by lower working frequencies of the GPU and graphics memory. You will not be able to reach the working frequency of the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra memory even if you overclock your card, because the 5700 is equipped with a much slower and cheaper memory chip. But you will anyway be able to get the GPU close to 475MHz clock. The overclocked GeForce FX 5700 was just a tiny bit slower than GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, and it could be a great argument in favor of these graphics cards, actually, if it were not for such powerful competitors as RADEON 9600 PRO and GeForce FX 5700 LE.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 LE. This is an even slower solution differing from GeForce FX 5700 by much lower GPU frequency and slightly lower graphics memory frequency. Due to low nominal frequencies, GeForce FX 5700 LE demonstrates outstanding overclocking potential: the GPU frequency almost doubled as a result of overclocking. Unfortunately, I do not have any statistics at hand about the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 LE overclocking, but everything indicates that these cards will have excellent overclockability. For instance, the card, which took part in our today’s review after overclocking appeared just a little bit slower than NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra.
Keeping in mind low cost of GeForce FX 5700 LE based graphics cards and their theoretically (unfortunately, there is no statistics yet) high overclocking potential, we would recommend these cards as an excellent choice in the appropriate price category.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600. This previous generation graphics chip yields a lot in performance to NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700/RADEON 9600 and runs as fast or slightly faster than NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 LE. Since there are competitors like faster RADEON 9600 solutions or potentially highly overclockable GeForce FX 5700 LE, there is hardly anything positive we could say about FX 5600 today.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 XT. This is a modification of the just mentioned GeForce FX 5600 with a lower GPU frequency and 64bit memory bus. The performance of this solution is very often even slower than that of GeForce FX 5200, not to mention RADEON 9600 SE. This solution is priced as high or even higher than RADEON 9600 SE and GeForce FX 5200, that is why I wouldn’t consider GeForce FX 5600 XT a good choice today.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. This graphics processor is intended for the value DirectX9 compatible graphics cards. It almost always outpaces GeForce FX 5600 XT, which makes it even more attractive, bearing in mind the price, especially when we are talking about products from the “much less than $100” price range. The No.1 competitor of this solution is RADEON 9600 SE: the cards based on this chip are a little bit more expensive, but usually run much faster than the 5200.
Well, I have just expressed my opinion about the mainstream graphics solutions available in the today’s market. But it doesn’t at all mean that it is the only acceptable point of view. You have the benchmarks results in front of you. Evaluate, compare, draw your own conclusions.
I would only like to say that I didn’t express my opinion about ATI RADEON 9200 and NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti4200-8x on purpose. You see everything in the diagrams and no comment is actually necessary. You are lucky if you have a GeForce 4 Ti4200-8x and it managed to last you until spring 2004. It means you will be able to wait until fall 2004 when NV40 and R420 based solutions for the mainstream market appear.
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fonte http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/mainstream-roundup.html
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