Graphics Cards  2003

We are going to undertake an all-out benchmarking of contemporary graphics cards of the mainstream and top-end classes to help you find the king of 3D graphics and get decided about your shopping. It’s no secret modern graphics cards are mostly used for gaming, so we excluded theoretical (synthetic) tests in favor of modern games. We’ve got nine graphics cards in total. Make your stakes, here’s the list of the participators from the “Premier League”:

• ATI RADEON 9800 XT (GeXcube RADEON 9800 XT);
• ATI RADEON 9800 PRO (Build by ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (Leadtek A380 TDH Ultra);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 (ASUS V9950 128MB).

Unfortunately, we don’t have an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and an XGI Volari Duo V8 at our disposal. The “Middle-range League” comprises five cards:

• ATI RADEON 9600 XT (Reference Graphics Card);
• ATI RADEON 9600 PRO (FIC R96P);
• ATI RADEON 9500 PRO (Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (eVGA e-GeForce FX 5700 Ultra);
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (ABIT SILURO FX 5600 Ultra DT).

There’s no typo – we’ve really included a RADEON 9500 into the review. This “oldie” is hale enough to show its teeth (eight pipelines!) to the “youngsters”. As for the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, we of course used the new version of the card with 400MHz/400MHz (800MHz DDR) frequencies.

You may have encountered some of the cards as we reviewed them earlier. New to our site are the GeXcube RADEON XT and the Built by ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB. We’ll examine them shortly.

Built by ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB

We tested some RADEON 9800 PRO-based graphics cards previously, but this time we were lucky enough to lay our hands on the original RADEON 9800 PRO Built by ATI solution with 128MB of memory.

The graphics card came to our test lab in its retail package, designed in sober-looking red-black-silver colors. Its unusual size – the length nearly matches the height – distinguishes it from other cards’ packages that are usually oblong. We’ve got a card and an ordinary set of accessories inside:

• ATI RADEON 9800 PRO graphics card;
• DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapter;
• S-Video-to-RCA adapter;
• S-Video cable;
• User manual;
• Driver CD.

There’s no use searching for any games. Even the DVD Player came on the Driver CD. ATI Technologies must have decided to ship its legendary quality without any allurements.