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by Sapphire
Specifications Ever since ATI first began supplying its graphics processors to OEM producers, Sapphire has been a major partner at supply ATI based graphics boards. Sapphire continues to produce the latest ATI graphics boards with the release of its mainstream board, the Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro board. The board is based upon the ATI RV350 graphics processor with the following specifications:
For additional technical specifications about the ATI RV350 graphics processor, visit the ATI Radeon 9600 series technical specifications page. Unlike the ATI version of the Radeon 9600 Pro, Sapphire has elected to include a large number of accessories and software in the package. Included with the board are the following:
This is a very complete set of accessories that allows one to connect pretty much any monitor solution to the video card. The inclusion of an overclocking utility is useful for those people who might be interested in pushing their card a bit further than specification. Test Configuration Testing of the Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro was done based on the following hardware and software configurations:
Overclocking The architecture of the RV350 processor used for the Radeon 9600 series of chips is ATI's first graphics processor to be built using the .13 micron chip technology. The smaller traces used in the chip allowed for a very small and low heat chip. ATI appears to have also aimed fairly low in terms of the overall speed of the processor in order to ensure high yields and stability of the chip. For example, the standard memory used with the Radeon 9600 Pro boards is 2.8 ns DDR chips that have a maximum rated speed of 350 MHz, yet the memory is only clocked at 300 MHz. All of this adds up to some very high potential for overclocking. Sapphire has included its Redline overclocking utility with the Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro. This utility allows for a wide range of settings for standard usage with all applications or the configuration of specific settings for given 3D games and applications. The wide variety of options can be a bit daunting if one is not familiar with what the settings do. The clock options are also using the fixed incremental settings by ATI of 6.75 MHz for both the core and memory clocks. This makes for a fairly imprecise adjustment of the clock speeds for best results.
For my overclocking test, I chose instead to use a utility called RadClocker. This application installs and integrates into the video properties screens for more seamless overclocking process. One of the biggest benefits of the application is the BIOS default setting. By selecting this, the program will set the video card to restore back to its original BIOS speeds when the system reboots. This is very useful for testing the abilities of the card and the system happens to lock up. The advanced options also allow the clock increments to be adjusted to a lower level. In the case of my testing, I reduced the increments to 3 MHz to allow for fine adjustments.
For the course of my benchmarking, I was able to produce stable 3D video performance under stressed conditions with a final core and memory clock speeds of 528 MHz and 351 MHz. This is a very amazing 32% clock increase on the core processor speed and a 17% increase for the memory. The memory was a bit more of a disappointment as the memory has a maximum speed rating of 350 MHz, so I was hoping it would go further. The results at this speed have been included in the benchmarking results. Benchmarking For testing of the video card, four benchmarks were used to generate results. For testing of just the technology behind the card, I've chosen to use the FutureMark 3DMark2001SE and 3DMark03 (build 330) applications. Because of the recent controversies over the 3Dmark03 program, I've opted to include the overall score, but have broken out the individual test results for a more detailed look at how specific technologies perform. Game tested included benchmark results from UT2K3 for DirectX gaming and Return to Castle Wolfenstein for OpenGL. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is an older game based on the Quake 3 game engine, but was chosen because it was included with the video card. All video settings were run at 60Hz for the monitor at all resolutions. Next page > Benchmark Results and Conclusions > Page 1, 2 |
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