Overclocking

The slow memory with 3.6ns access time didn’t promise good overclocking. So, we managed to overclock the graphics memory only to 295MHz (590MHz). Further frequency increase caused image artifacts. The core proved to be much better at overclocking: we overclocked it from 275MHz to 352MHz. From this point on, extra 5MHz made the system hang up in 3DMark03: Mother Nature test.

Anyway, 77MHz frequency growth is a very good result, although not surprising: it’s been quite a while since the launch of R300, so ATI has had time to improve the manufacturing technology and increase the yield of chips capable of working at high frequencies. Just in case, we benchmarked the overclocked Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO using additional cooling: that was a standard 80mm chassis fan blowing the air at the memory and graphics chip heatsinks. We don’t advise you to repeat our overclocking experiment without proper cooling: the heatsinks of the memory chips heated up quite a lot. On the other hand, this indicates that there is tight contact between the heatsinks and chips and the heat is taken off the latter quite successfully.

Testbed and Methods

Today, we will compare Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO with its immediate rival – NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200-8x (250MHz/512MHz) as well as with RADEON 8500 (275MHz/550MHz). Thus, we will see whether it makes sense to throw away an older card and do an upgrade. And also what performance growth we can expect from such an upgrade.

We used the following testbed:

• AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU on Thoroughbred core (2.083GHz, 166MHz (333MHz) FSB);
• EPoX EP-8K3A+ mainboard;
• 512MB Corsair XMS3200 RAM (2-2-5 1T, 166MHz (333MHz DDR));
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X (2MB buffer) 40GB HDD;
• LiteOn 48125W CD-ROM;
• 2x3Com 3c905TX, 10/100Mbit network adapter;
• Creative SoundBlaster Live! 1024 audio card;
• Q-Tek 450W PSU;
• Microsoft Windows XP SP1;
• Drivers: VIA Hyperion 4-in-1 v.4.46, ATI Catalyst 3.2 (for ATI cards), NVIDIA Detonator 43.45 (for GeForce4 Titanium).

And the following software:

• FutureMark 3DMark 2001SE Build 330;
• FutureMark 3DMark 2003;
• Codecult CodeCreatures Benchmark Pro v1.0;
• Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225, Antalus Flyby;
• Quake 3: Arena v1.32, Demo four;
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.4, Demo checkpoint;
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter v1.05, The Grand Cathedral;
• Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast v1.04, Massasi Temple – Lightsaber Test;
• Splinter Cell v1.2b, 1_1_1Tbilisi Demo.

We set highest graphics quality in all the gaming benchmarks. Every graphics card was tested in three resolutions (1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200) and also in three work modes: without FSAA or anisotropic filtering, with 2x FSAA, and with 4x FSAA and 8x anisotropic filtering.