X-bit labs

Gigabyte RADEON 9600 PRO Review: FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering Performance of the RV350 VPU

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 10/24/2003 | 09:00 PM ]

Our today’s tests will at investigating the effect of full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on mainstream graphics cards. Namely we will take a look at a great mainstream solution from Gigabyte - GV-R96P128D graphics card based on ATI RADEON 9600 Pro chip.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• Overclocking, Noise and 2D Image Quality
  
• Contemporary Mass Graphics Cards Handling Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering
  
• Performance
  
• Quake 3 Arena
  
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  
• Star Trek: Elite Force 2
  
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  
• Unreal Tournament 2003
  
• Splinter Cell
  
• Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark 2001SE
  
• Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark03
  
• Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
  
• Aquamark 3
  
• Conclusion
  

Some time ago, our test lab received another specimen of a mass graphics card, Gigabyte RADEON 9600 PRO. The company’s specifications list it as GV-R96P128D. As we promised in our FIC R96P Review, this time we are going to investigate the influence of full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) and anisotropic filtering (AF) on the performance of mass-market graphics cards. But first, let us take a closer look at Gigabyte’s product.

The Gigabyte GV-R96P128D came to us in full dress, in its retail package. To my taste, however, the creative potential of the designers was asleep when they made the thing. Well, it follows the company’s “ancient civilizations” theme, but is too insipid. In fact, it resembles the package of Gigabyte Maya II R9200 cards a lot, save for minor details.

I guess they could have presented the ancient Maya theme more esthetically. Anyway, the package enumerates all the main features of the product, including the memory amount – 128MB. Having opened the box, I found the following:

• Gigabyte GV-R96P128D graphics card;
• User’s guide;
• DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapter;
• S-Video-RCA universal cable;
• CD-disk with the drivers;
• CD with PowerDVD XP;
• CD with Serious Sam: The First Encounter;
• CD with demo-versions of Oni and 4x4 EVO games.

Unlike ordinary “no-name” adapters and cables, the DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapter and the universal TV-out cable from Gigabyte have the company’s name on them:

Besides, the DVI plug is covered with a protective lid. It is a trifle, of course, but nonetheless a pleasing one. The cable is rather unusual, too. Many graphics cards come with an S-Video-to-RCA adapter and two respective cables. Gigabyte accompanies its GV-R96P128D with a cable, which has an S-Video connector on one end and then splits into two tails with S-Video and RCA connectors. This is handy, since you don’t have to worry about adapters. The drawback is that one of the tails is always unused and is just hanging aimlessly. The software bundle is not too huge, but includes a few games. That’s better than nothing.

The drivers CD turned to be a recorded CD-R disk, because we have got a pre-sale version of the product. This is not critical, though. The GV-R96P128D will be coming into retail with a printed CD, while we are going to use the latest official Catalyst driver from ATI.