by Alexey Stepin
06/30/2003 | 01:54 AM
Not so long ago we tested Gigabyte GV-R9200 graphics card and arrived at the conclusion that AGP 8x doesn’t provide any significant advantages for RADEON 9200 (see our article called Gigabyte Maya II R9200 Graphics Card Review: AGP 8x Conquers the Value Market). However, besides AGP 8x, many RADEON 9200 based graphics cards also feature 128MB of onboard graphics memory. Maybe so much memory onboard could help in certain games, but you will still never reach acceptable gaming performance because RADEON 9200 chip is not powerful enough.
<%BANNER[article]%>This time, we managed to get hold of a RADEON 9200 based graphics card from First International Computer (FIC). This solution features 64MB of graphics memory, so we decided to check how large amounts of onboard graphics memory could affect the accelerator performance in most popular applications. Like all RV280 based graphics solutions, FIC A92 boasts full support of API DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.4, and FullStream technology.
FIC Company, just like Gigabyte, is mostly famous for its mainboards. However, this company is also partnering with ATI Technologies in the graphics cards field. FIC A92 solution arrived in the full retail package. We really liked the stylish black-and-blue-and-silver.
This is what we found in the box together with the card:
DVI-I-to-D-Sub converter is a little different from the one that goes together with the majority of graphics cards on ATI chips. It is not semi-transparent, but black. The DVI-I connector is hidden under a protective cap.
The user’s manual and the installation CD-disk were very thoroughly packed. They lay on a thick piece of carton and were wrapped into plastic film. After you cut the film you could get the CD-disk and the booklet safe and sound. Besides that there were no other CD-disks with any software or games.
The bright-red PCB featured very simple design. The left part of the card looks a little empty, because RV250/RV280 chips require neither separate TV-Out controllers, nor additional RAMDACs for multi-display support implementation.
The graphics card cooling is designed in the same way as that of Gigabyte GV-R9200 (see our review here): it is the same passive heatsink, but colored shining gold. We would like to point out that FIC used thermal interface with much better heat conductivity than that used by Gigabyte Technology, because the bottom of the FIC A92 graphics card was always less warm that the bottom of the Gigabyte MAYA II GV-R9200 (see our Gigabyte MAYA II GV-R9200 Review). When we removed the original thermal interface from Gigabyte’s graphics card and applied regular thermal paste, the card heated up much less. The advantages of FIC’s passive cooling solution were indisputable.
We would like to remind you that in all RADEON 9200 based graphics cards the core works at 250MHz, and DDR SDRAM at 400MHz. The PSB carries 64MB of memory by Mosel Vitelic, marked as V58C365164SBT4, although in the Web we saw some pictures of FIC A92 graphics card with Hynix memory chips featuring 5ns access time (400MHz DDR). The reverse side of the PCB has nothing special about it.
As for overclocking, it is blocked on FIC A92 like on many other RADEON 9200 based graphics solutions without “PRO” in the name. So, you can be sure that your graphics card will not die from overheating.
We decided to test FIC A92 together with the ATI RADEON 9000 PRO and Gigabyte GV-R9200. This time, we will not include the results for NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440, because it doesn’t comply with the today’s standards and doesn’t support pixel shaders. Also, we replaced the Athlon XP/VIA KT333 based platform with Intel Pentium 4 platform. Here is the testbed configuration:
The list of applications used for performance analysis remained the same. Here it is for your reference:
Every gaming benchmark was run with the highest graphics quality settings. We set 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions in the “raw speed” mode and 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions in the 2x FSAA + 16x Anisotropic Filtering. We raised the anisotropy level because enabling this mode on R200/RV250/RV280 solutions doesn’t tell too much on their performance, while the image quality gets noticeably better. Moreover, we tried to select more or less optimal settings, so that we could see the advantages of 128MB onboard graphics memory.
We immediately notice a very exciting picture: FIC A92 is a little faster than Gigabyte GV-R9200 in all tests. This is not a very big advantage, but it doesn’t depend on the resolution and other settings at all. We suspect that the memory subsystem of the graphics card from FIC supports lower latency, or the graphics chips are actually faster than those from Hynix, installed on Gigabyte’s solution. Let’s see how the things will go in other benchmarks.
As you see, the situation repeats: FIC A92 is always faster than Gigabyte GV-R9200. The rest of the situation also remains the same: RADEON 9000 PRO is ahead due to faster core and memory frequencies.
Again the same picture. FIC A92 is a little faster than Gigabyte GV-R9200 and both cards are pretty far behind RADEON 9000 PRO.
This game is based on a different engine that is why we can expect different results this time. Let’s have a look:
In fact we see no drastic changes, although FIC A92 for the first time got a little slower than Gigabyte’s solution, though only in 800x600 under heavy workload. This is somewhat strange, because we expected the card with 64MB graphics memory to lose to a competitor with twice as much memory in higher resolutions rather than in lower ones.
As we see from the OpenGL benchmarks results, a small advantage of FIC A92 over Gigabyte MAYA II GV-R9200 is not a measuring error, but a real tendency.
As usual, this type of gaming applications includes Unreal Tournament 2003 and Splinter Cell.
This is the first time when smaller amount of memory by FIC A92 starts influencing the performance. However, the performance difference between the two cards is so tiny that it can be considered a measuring error and hence – disregarded.
The rivals from FIC and Gigabyte run neck and neck, but they are stably behind RADEON 9000 PRO. Both cards didn’t show any acceptable gaming performance.
Now, let’s run the popular benchmark from FutureMark.
We see absolutely the same situation as in gaming benchmarks: FIC A92 is slightly faster than Gigabyte GV-R9200. However, as soon as we enable anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, 128MB of graphics memory do their job: in 1024x768 and 1280x1024 the graphics card from Gigabyte dashes forward, though it still can’t catch up with RADEON 9000 PRO.
The second test shows nearly the same results.
As you see, everything remained unchanged: the advantage of 128MB graphics memory matters in high resolutions under tangible workload.
The cards perform equally fast, except the same high resolutions with enabled FSAA and anisotropic filtering. In 1280x1024 resolution Gigabyte GV-R9200 (128MB) manages to outperform even the invincible RADEON 9000 PRO.
All in all, the results were pretty predictable: the simple truth stating that budget graphics accelerators do not need too much onboard graphics memory again proved absolutely correct. The memory working frequency is certainly of much more importance. Also memory latency and the type of used graphics chips may affect the graphics card performance.
We have just tested FIC A92 graphics accelerator, and our conclusions will sound very similarly to those for Gigabyte GV-R9200.
FIC A92 graphics card is a very well designed, quality product. It demonstrated excellent image quality on Hitachi CM772 monitor (1280x1024@100Hz). Since the graphics card is locked against overclocking, FIC A92 hardly needs any active cooling, especially since they use a very efficient thermal interface.
Other than that, FIC A92 is a pretty traditional product, with no exceptional features (you will hardly surprise anyone with the red PCB today) making it stand out among other alternative solutions. 64MB of onboard graphics memory are more than enough for this type of graphics cards: the performance is good, and so is the price. We wish FIC bundled its graphics card with some additional software, since Gigabyte included a CD-disk with Serious Sam game with its GV-R9200 graphics card.
Highs:
Lows: