6 mixed video cards - Radeon 9600 XT

Graphics - Published on Wednesday, 12 November 2003 18:20 Written by tokig

Better late than never, here comes our first view on Radeon 9600 XT

Radeon 9600 XT
Chip:	R360
Manufacturing process:	0.13-micron LowK
Transistors:	~60 mil.
GPU-speed:	500 MHz
Memory speed:	600 MHz / 9.4 GB/s
Pixel Shader:	2.0
Vertex Shader:	2.0
Pixel Pipelines/Pixel Fillrate:	4 / 2000 MP/s
TMU's/Texel Fillrate:	1 / 2000 MT/s
RAMDAC:	(2) 400 MHz
Memory size:	128 MB
Memory type and interface:	128-bit, DDR-SDRAM
I/O connections:	VGA, DVI-I, S-Video
Accessories:	-
Software:	-
Fullversion software:	- (Half-Life 2)
Estimated price:	€150

Because this is only a reference card and that we already did a review on what’s new in 9600XT we won’t dwell things. Still there are a few things we like to mention before we go on. As you can see it is longer than GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and still we didn’t pick the cheapest card we found (1650 SEK). The cheapest 5700 Ultra we found cost exactly 2000 SEK. Fact is that it’s even cheaper than the cheapest 5600 Ultra we can find and as you can recall the 5600 Ultra got beaten by Radeon 9600 pro so 9600 XP beats it even more. When we include Half Life 2 in our calculation everything gets more impressing. Sadly enough Valve/ATi/Vivendi messed it up so Half Life 2 is delayed and there is no estimated date on when it will be finished. A coupon which will give you Half Life 2 will be included in all Radeon 9600 XP-packages. Until that the coupon applies for a package with a lot of other games from Valve so you won’t be deceived after all.

A rather united press congratulated Radeon XT when it was released last month. Personally I’m a little doubtful to congratulating the card and have a hard time to understanding what’s so amazing when I compare it to 9600 Pro. If they only had raised the memory-clock frequency a little (500-100 MHz would have been enough) I surely would have been more positive to the card. I personally think that ATi in public is a little conservative with memory speeds. Now over to All In Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro

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