Conclusion and thoughts
Some commentators have remarked that the Radeon 9600 Pro isn't quite as fast as the outgoing 9500 Pro. However, the 9600 Pro's 400MHz core helps to offset some of the performance losses associated with rendering using only half of the 9500 Pro's 8 pipelines. As it is, the card fits in well with ATi's current DX9 range.
We've reviewed a number of ATi-based cards and found that manufacturers have tended to do very little in way of distinguishing their cards from one another; a common complaint. Tyan, though, bring a couple of appreciated touches to its 9600. The Tachyon G9600 Pro doesn't look like a reference card at all, thanks to its blue PCB and oversized, dual-sided cooling. Aesthetics are beginning to play a larger part in the purchasing decision, evidenced by the number of good-looking motherboards, cases, monitors and graphics cards that have recently swamped the marketplace. Tyan's card will certainly score marks for originality.
Another seemingly original feature, for modern ATi cards at least, is the ability to control the card's fan speed through bundled software. The core had no problem in running past 500MHz during overclocking testing, so we expect it to function perfectly, at stock speeds, with a reduced noise output. We applaud Tyan for this simple but effective feature. One small area of concern, highlighted by the same overclocking tests, was the mediocre performance of the 3.6ns Hynix RAM. It barely ran above stated speeds.
As a card that's aimed at the midrange sector, the Tyan G9600 Pro does well at 1024x768x32 with and without antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. That's exactly its target performance market, we feel. A robust, semi-powerful card, Tyan should be on to a winner here. Tentative pricing puts it at around the £125 mark. Recommended.
Highs
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Individual design, with the ability to run dual DVI (on a different model)
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Thought has been put into cooling
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Adjustable VPU fan speed
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Decent core overclock
Lows
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RAM seems to be a little dubious, topping out at 612MHz.
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NVIDIA, finally, have provided decent competition in the form of the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra rev. 2
Buy a Tyan card over here
