Shade it, baby
Let's first examine how the PowerColor Radeon 9600XT Bravo stacks up against NVIDIA's FX 5700 Ultras.| PowerColor Radeon 9600XT Bravo | NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra | Gainward FX 5700 Ultra Golden Sample | |
| GPU | RV360 | NV36 | NV36 |
| Transistor count | ~75m | ~80m | ~80m |
| 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 | 500MHz | 475MHz | 500MHz |
| Memory clock | 675MHz | 906MHz | 1000MHz |
| Pixel fillrate | ~2000 Mpixels /sec. | ~1600 Mpixels / sec. | ~2000 Mpixels / sec. |
| Texture fillrate | 2000 Mtexels /sec. | 1600 Mtexels / sec. | 1800 Mtexels / sec. |
| Memory bandwidth | ~10.8GB/s | ~14.4GB/s | ~16GB/s |
| RAMDACs | 2 x 400MHz | 2 x 400MHz | 2 x 400MHz |
| Expected cost | £125 | £130 | £150 |
| Other features | VIVO | - | Dual-DVI support, VIVO |
The Bravo is running onboard memory at 75MHz above specification. It still gives up an awful lot of bandwidth to the twin NV36 cards. Theoretically, and without taking antialiasing and anisotropic filtering into account, it should not be as fast as the rival cards. That assertion doesn't take the quality of ATI's DX9 codepath into account, however.
3DMark03's synthetic tests were run to see how well each card realised its potential.
Single-texturing fillrate, according to 3DMark03's test, is around half of the card's potential. ATI-based cards traditionally do better in the multi-texturing test. Let's take a peek.
Isn't that the truth. Excellent multi-texturing performance exhibited by the PowerColor Bravo 9600XT.
Super PS2.0 performance should see the PowerColor card do well in modern engines that use shading to the fullest. Comprehensively better than the NVIDIA cards here.
Vertex shading, on the other hand, isn't quite so impressive. Nonetheless, an impressive set of numbers for a £125 card. Optimised 128-bit engineering, a GPU that has proven itself to often hit 600MHz with stock cooling, and uprated memory bandwidth will all combine with ATI's excellent DX9 implementation for fluid gameplay at 1024x768 with image enhancement - that's the plan. Now we'll see if it bears any fruition.
