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ATI Radeon 9000 PRO


Date
: 08/29/02 – 09:41:30 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: ATI
Price: $75

Introduction

Recently ATI released two brand new video cards: a low-end card called the Radeon 9000 PRO and a high-end card, namely the Radeon 9700 PRO. Today I am taking the Radeon 9000 for a spin to find out if nVidia should get worried. Will the Radeon kick the GeForce4 MX series? And just how does it compare to some more high-end cards like the GeForce3? Overclockers Online digs through the dirt and finds out …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

The Radeon 9x family comes with a truckload of new features like Smartshader, Smoothvision, Fullstream and Hydravision. If you have no idea what these things do, just sit tight because everything will become clear as you work your way through the review.

Firstly, the specs for ATI's Radeon 9000 PRO:

System Requirements

- Intel® Pentium® 4/III/II/Celeron, AMD® K6/Duron/Athlon®/Athlon XP® or compatible with AGP 2X (3.3v), 4X (1.5V), 8X (0.8v) or Universal AGP 3.0 bus configuration (2X/4X/8X).
- 64MB of system memory
- Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
- DVD playback requires DVD drive

Graphics Technology

- RADEON 9000 PRO graphics technology operating at 275MHz

Memory Configuration

- 64MB of DDR memory operating at 550 MHz

Operating Systems Support

- Windows® XP
-Windows® 2000
- Windows® Me

Monitor Support

- CRT monitor: 15-pin VGA connector
- TV and VCR: s-video or composite connector
- DVI-I (flat panel display) connector

Display Support

- Register compatible with VGA
- Supports VESA PnP compatible displays
- BIOS compatible with VESA for super VGA
- DDC1/2b/2b+ monitor support
- VESA Display Power
- Management Support
- Separate horizontal and vertical synchronization at TTL levels

Features

CHARISMA ENGINE II

-Four parallel rendering pipelines process up to 1.1 billion pixels per second
-High performance 2nd generation hardware transform & lighting engine
-43 million triangles per second peak throughput
-Advanced vertex shader support for the latest programmable effects

SMARTSHADER technology

- Full support for DirectX ® 8.1 programmable pixel and vertex shaders in hardware
- 1.4 pixel shaders support up to 22 instructions and up to 6 textures per rendering pass
- 1.1 vertex shaders support vertex programs up to 128 instructions
- Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL ® via extensions
- Programmable shaders provide enhanced 3D effects in over 100 existing and upcoming game titles

SMOOTHVISION

-Image quality enhancement features for Direct3D and OpenGL ® applications
-Programmable full-scene anti-aliasing supports 2 to 6 samples with user selectable performance and quality modes
-Advanced anisotropic filtering supports 2 to 16 samples for high quality texture rendering with minimal performance impact

HYPERZ II

-Lossless Z-Buffer Compression and Fast Z-Buffer Clear reduce memory bandwidth by up to 50%

Video Features

- FULLSTREAM Hardware accelerated de-blocking of Internet video streams
- VIDEO IMMERSION II delivers industry-leading DVD playback
- Integrated MPEG-2 decode including iDCT and motion compensation for top quality DVD with lowest CPU usage
- Unique Adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing feature combines the best elements of the "bob" and "add-field" (weave) techniques
- YUV to RGB color space conversion
- Back-end scaler delivers top quality playback
- 4-tap horizontal and vertical filtering
- Upscaling and downscaling
- Filtered display of images up to 1920 pixels wide
- Hardware mirroring for flipping video images in video conferencing systems
- Supports 8-bit alpha blending and video keying for effective overlay of video and graphics

Display Features

- Dual integrated display controllers to drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions and refresh rates
- HYDRAVISION software provides complete control over multi-display configurations with a user-friendly interface
- 400MHz Dual integrated DACs with 10-bit per channel palette
- Integrated DVI-compliant 165MHz TMDS transmitter
- Integrated TV-Out support up to 1024×768 resolution

General Features

- Comprehensive 2X and 4X AGP support. Compatible with AGP 8X universal motherboards.
- Fully compliant with PC 2002 requirements
- Optimized for Pentium ® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon 3Dnow! processor instructions
- Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support for new Windows ® XP GDI extensions

Warranty

- 3-year limited warranty

First of all, I want to point out that the Radeon 9000 comes in two flavors: the Radeon 9000 and the Radeon 9000 PRO, which I am checking out in this review. The main difference is the clock and memory speed. The "PRO" comes with a core speed of 275MHz and a memory speed of 275MHz DDR (550MHz), whereas the plain version comes with a 250MHz core and 250MHz DDR memory (500MHz).

The card has a total of 64MB DDR memory onboard, spread over eight memory chips. The memory is provided by Hynix and is rated at 3.3ns, which theoretically means the memory can run up to 303MHz. I'll get into that when we get to the overclocking section.

Besides the obligated 15-pin VGA connector, ATI also installed a DVI connector (flatpanel displays) and an S-video output as well. A DVI-to-VGA converter is included in case you want to hook up two CRT monitors. Might come in handy when you are a dual monitor enthusiast like I am ;).

Speaking of dual monitor setups, ATI has a name for that: Hydravision. Thanks to Hydravision, you can easily control and configure your multi-monitor setup and apply the necessary changes to make it suite your needs. Each display can have its own resolution and refresh rate and thanks to the 400MHz dual integrated DAC's with 10-bit per channel palette, you can have killer refresh rates on each display! I remember back in the days when the dual monitor feature was still brand new: the secondary display was limited to 1024×768 with a 75Hz refresh rate … Not anymore folks :)!

The heart of the Radeon 9000 PRO is the Charisma Engine II. This baby comes with four parallel rendering pipelines and can process up to 1.1 billion pixels per second, generate up to 43 million triangles per second peak throughput and offer advanced vertex shader support for the latest programmable effects.

One of the most interesting features of the ATI cards, is the Smartshader technology. Because of this, the Radeon 9000 PRO supports programmable pixel and vertex shaders through the hardware. I don't need to explain that this speeds things up quite a bit when compared to cards that pull this of through software support.

Another great feature is Smoothvision, ATI's name for Full Scene Anti Aliasing or FSAA. What this does is remove all "sharp" edges on an image, making it look much smoother. Smoothvision supports 2 to 6 FSAA samples with user selectable performance and quality modes.

That pretty much covers our specs-talk for the Radeon 9000 PRO. Let's take a look at the overclocking power of this video card.

Page 3 : Overclocking

Overclocking

Although the card is performing very well in benchmarks, faster is always better! By overclocking the video card a tad, we can gain some extra points in benchmarks and more important gain some FPS in games. First of all, a video card overclocking tool is needed: Powerstrip, made by Entechtaiwan, is one way to do it. Feel free to download the trial version, which will last 30 days before you have to register. Powerstrip also handles some other video card related stuff, but I suggest you check out their website to find out about those.

As I mentioned in the specifications, the ATI Radeon 9000 PRO is clocked at a 275MHz core speed and a 275MHz DDR memory speed(550MHz). After some tweaking and testing, I was able to overclock my card to 300MHz core speed and 310MHz memory speed, which results in 620MHz memory speed thanks to the DDR memory.

In order to test for stability, I ran loops of Quake3 and 3D Mark 2001SE for hours. The card remained rockstable and no visual artifacts were encountered. Actually, this is quite a good overclock result, because the memory on the Radeon 9000 PRO is
not
being cooled, it even lacks passive cooled heatsinks! If one would install some heatsinks on there, you might get a few more MHz out of it …

All in all, I am very satisfied with the end result! On to the benchmarks …

Page 4 : Testing

Testing

Starting with this review, our video card benchmarks list have grown a little. Instead of sticking to Quake3 and 3D Mark 2001SE, we are now adding Aquamark and Comanche4 to the benchmark list, in order to provide you with even better comparison charts. Also note that we are now testing with resolutions up to 1600×1200 instead of the usual 1024×768. Hope you all like it!

Test setup:

- ABIT IT7 MAX motherboard
- Intel P4 1.6A @ 2.13GHz CPU
- 256MB Crucial DDR memory
- ATI Radeon 9000 PRO video card
- Western Digital 20GB 7200RPM hard drive
- Windows XP Pro + latest drivers

Quake3 Arena

Demo001

Torture Demo

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001SE

16-BIT

Note: the MX460 kept giving hardware error's in 16-BIT mode, even with different motherboards. That's why there are no 3D Mark 2001SE benchmarks in 16-BIT of the MX460.

32-BIT

Aquamark

Novalogic Comanche4

When looking at these benchmarks, the numbers are clearly proving that the Radeon 9000 PRO is here to stay! This video card whipes out all its competition and even toys around with a GeForce3 video card! Of course a Ti500 would still outperform it, but for a sub $100 video card, these numbers are just amazing huh?

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

ATI has done an outstanding job with the Radeon 9000 PRO, as they delivered a very powerful, low-budget video card. The Radeon 9000 PRO has a truckload of features, comes with dual monitor support, has a DVI output, S-video and has great overclocking potential. When you look at the pricetag of around $75, you can not go wrong with this card. If you are in the market for a new video card, please consider the Radeon 9000 PRO! Thanks to all the great features, the performance and the pricetag, this puppy takes the official
Overclockers Online POWER Award
home!

Good

- Performance
- Price
- Features

Bad

- Nothing I can think off …