Radeon9600/9600Pro Review @B3D

[BenSkywalker]

Link. Slower then the R9500/R9500Pro pretty much across the board it seems.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Also a review at THG.

 

[Wag]

Other than the cheaper manufacturing costs, what was the point of this card again? Seems more like ATI's experiment with .13 than a viable product.
Now if someone stuck DDR2 on this thing, would it make a difference?

nVidia's 5600Ultra has faster ram. Let's see how that one does.

 

[selfbuilt]

According to review at Tom's, the 9600 Pro seems to beat the FX 5600 Ultra in most tests (while still underperforming the 9500 Pro most of the time).

Here's a few more review links:

Hard OCP

HotHardware

The Tech Report

The HardOCP review seems to have taken greater pains to even out the AA/AF settings, and they show a clear benefit of the 9500/9600 Pro cards over the FX 5600 Ultras. Note also that the 9600 Pro seems to hold its own against the 9500 Pro better at HardOCP than Tom's.

Unfortunately, most of the other reviews only compare the 9600 to the GeF4 line (which still stacks up very well, by the way).

 

[Wag]

Ah well, bummer.

I was hoping the 5600 would be halfway decent so I could go away from ATI's hardware problems (flickering, etc).

Now I'm in a quandry. I might just try my luck with Newegg's refurbed 9500s, untill I get a good one.

 

[selfbuilt]

Actually, I see the review here at Anandtech tends to put the FX5600 Ultra almost on par with the 9600 Pro on most tests, although it does drop off on a few (plus there's also the AF IQ issues that favour the ATI products).

Still remarkable to see how much better the 9500 Pro can perform in many cases (not to mention how well the GeF4 series hangs in!).

 

[Shade4ever]

Originally posted by: selfbuilt
Actually, I see the review here at Anandtech tends to put the FX5600 Ultra almost on par with the 9600 Pro on most tests, although it does drop off on a few (plus there's also the AF IQ issues that favour the ATI products).

Still remarkable to see how much better the 9500 Pro can perform in many cases (not to mention how well the GeF4 series hangs in!).

Were there AF problems too? I knew about the AA issues, such as it not working well, but FX AF issues are news to me.

 

[selfbuilt]

Originally posted by: Shade4ever
Were there AF problems too? I knew about the AA issues, such as it not working well, but FX AF issues are news to me.

Apparently the AA quality issues have been largely resolved with the newer Nvidia drivers ... the issue with the AF is that it's supposedly inferior on the FX cards compared to the ATI (although I personally find AF much harder to objectively judge). Most reviews still seemsto favour ATI for quality on both the AA and AF fronts (and of course speed can be more objectively measured).

 

[Wag]

Been looking at the prices already, dropping fast. I might pick up a 5600 Ultra anyways. The 128mb 5200s are under $90 already.

It appears the 5600s have a higher RAMDAC, 400 compared to the 5200's 350. Since my use is primarily HTPC, with dual monitors (second HDTV), the higher the better. I've been really dissapointed with the 8500 I have. The DVI/VGA port over the past year has become unusable, and I had to shift my HDTV to the VGA port. On the DVI port I have flickering lines, which is driving me nuts even as we speak.

 

[DaveBaumann]

FYI - Our test sample, and so far one other reviewers that I've talked to, has proven to be a beast of an overclocker. So far it appears to be stable at no less than 540/340MHz!

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5397

 

[rbV5]

FYI - Our test sample, and so far one other reviewers that I've talked to, has proven to be a beast of an overclocker. So far it appears to be stable at no less than 540/340MHz

I read that in the forum..nice job Dave!

 

[Wag]

Holy cow! Hey Dave, make sure you check videoquality on ATI's boards. People are seriously pissed that the rolling bar/dancing line problem has existed in their products for 3yrs now. That's a real dealbreaker for me.

If this is any indication of .13 chips, the 5600 should o/c fairly well too.

 

[ASIMOS]

Once again Beyond3d has the best review on the web, it just understand video technology better in relation with other popular sights (including Anandtech).
It is so right, telling that probably the Radeon 9600PRO is not pixel or vertex fillrate limited but instead the luck of a hierarchical Z buffer hurts the performance.
I certainly can?t understand why ATI choose to clock the 9600PRO at 400Mhz since it can be overclocked up to 560-540Mhz.ATI could easily clock it at 450Mhz and still claim great overclocking ability (especially in relation to Nvidia products).
I hope to see a revised product in October with a hierarchical Z buffer, F buffer optimizations and higher clock speed.(I guess 500Mhz for the PRO model and 400Mhz for the standard model).
Despite the high overclocking ability I would like to see Radeon 9600PRO and Radeon 9600 in the following prices:
Radeon 9600PRO 128MB (400Mhz/600Mhz) 169$ VS Geforce FX5600Ultra (350Mhz/700Mhz) 199$
Radeon 9600 128MB (325Mhz/400Mhz) 139$ VS Geforce FX5200Ultra (325Mhz/650Mhz) 149$
Certainly ATI is capable of doing this since Radeon 9600PRO is in the same transistor count (60 million) with Radeon 8500LE and Geforce 4Ti 4200.

 

[lifeguard1999]

FYI - Our test sample, and so far one other reviewers that I've talked to, has proven to be a beast of an overclocker. So far it appears to be stable at no less than 540/340MHz

HardOCP says that they cannot o/c their 9600, yet you can?