System setup
Hardware
- ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD, 128MB, AGP8X, RV360 499/594
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, 128MB, AGP8X, 400/800
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700, 128MB, AGP8X, 450/550
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 2000MHz
- Biostar K8NHA Pro NVIDIA nForce3 150 motherboard
- Corsair XMS3500C2, 2 x 256MB, 2-2-2-6
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- Zalman 7000Cu S754/478 cooler
- IBM 120GXP 40GB Hard Drive
- Dell P991 19" flat-faced CRT monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP1
- ATI CATALYST 3.9
- Detonator FX 52.16
- NVIDIA 3.13 driver set
- DirectX 9.0a Runtime
- 3DMark 2001SE v330
- 3DMark03 v340
- AquaMark3
- Serious Sam 2 (SDC demo, quality)
- Unreal Tournament 2003 Retail (patched up to 2225) (HEXUS custom demo)
- X2: The Threat Rolling Demo
- Tiger Woods 2004 (HEXUS custom best shot)
Notes
The ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD will be compared to NVIDIA's midrange stalwarts in the form of the outgoing FX 5600 Ultra and the new FX 5700.
2D quality
There were no problems to report during installation. 2D quality is highly subjective. The ASUS produced subjectively excellent 2D via either a HD15 or DVI connection. We'd have no qualms of using it on a day-to-day basis.
Noise
SmartDoctor 2 is godsend in cases like this. The card is pretty damn quiet straight out of the box, but SD 2's ability to control GPU fan speed gives it the edge over other competition solutions. The card was installed in a PC with a penchant for quiet running. We were hard pushed to hear the card's fan over and above the general, quiet drone of the PC. We appreciate the fact that cards can have small, quiet coolers with 500MHz+ GPU speeds.
3D image quality
If a picture can speak a thousand words, coloured mipmapped pictures showing how well ATI and NVIDIA cards tackle Trilinear filtering can give rise to a million, often heated words. We'll have a specific look at how the Catalyst 3.9 and Detonator 52.16s tackle the question of 3D image quality in the FX 5700 review, live shortly. For the moment, it's suffice to say that it's extremely difficult to discern between the two in a fast-moving game.
Drivers
Speaking of which, here's how the 3.9 driver set shows itself on the ASUS card.
The purpose here is to show the lack of OVERDRIVE support for the test card. OVERDRIVE technology, as you may know, automatically boosts the core (not memory) speed to predefined levels. It takes into account the current environment and GPU temperature to decide if it's safe to do so. 523MHz was a figure that was widely quoted for the 9600XT. I guess we'll just have to raise the clocks manually. We note that the card, according to Rage3D Tweak, ran at 499.5MHz GPU and 594MHz memory, slightly shy of spec.
Let's take a look at the comparative specs.
| ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD | NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600U | NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 | |
| GPU | RV360 | NV31 | NV36 |
| Transistor count | ~75m | ~80m | ~82m |
| Manufacturing process (micron) | 0.13 | 0.13 | 0.13 |
| Pixel pipelines | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Memory bus width | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR |
| Texturing units per pipe | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Core clock | 499MHz | 400MHz | 450MHz |
| Memory clock | 594MHz | 800MHz | 552MHz |
| Pixel fillrate | ~2000 Mpixels /sec. | 1600 Mpixels / sec. | 1800 Mpixels / sec. |
| Texture fillrate | 2000 Mtexels /sec. | 1600 Mtexels / sec. | 1800 Mtexels / sec. |
| Memory bandwidth | ~9.6GB/s | 12.8GB/s | ~8.8GB/s |
| RAMDACs | 2 x 400MHz | 2 x 400MHz | 2 x 400MHz |
| Expected cost | £145 | £135 | £125 |
