by Alexey Stepin
05/16/2003 | 03:44 PM
It’s been some time since ATI Technologies got rid of its dark past and emerged as one of the world’s leading PC graphics chips makers. A real breakthrough happened on the 14th of July 2002, when the company announced the world’s first “VPU” (Video Processing Unit), code-named R300, featuring Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support. This 0.15micron chip also supported AGP 3.0, contained about 110 million transistors and had a 256bit memory bus. Eight pipelines with one texture unit in each made up the computational power of the beast. At first, ATI rolled out high-end RADEON 9700 PRO, which was followed by three other models intended for different market sectors: RADEON 9700, RADEON 9500 PRO and RADEON 9500.
Thus, R300 found its way into graphics cards for enthusiastic as well as ordinary users.
Today ATI also offers two other R3xx chips: R350 and RV350, which will very soon replace the good old buddy R300 in the High-End and mainstream market. As the company is now offering both: old and new chips we witness a situation when there is a number of different over-$100 DirectX 9-compatible graphics cards in the market.
Majors, RADEON 9800 and 9800 PRO are based on R350 that supports infinite-length shaders and has higher working frequencies. This 0.15micron graphics chip provides the highest performance among consumer products from ATI. These solutions work at 380/680MHz and 325/620MHz (chip/ DDR memory), respectively.
Mainstream RADEON 9600 and 9600 PRO are based on another new chip from ATI: RV350. Unlike R300, it has only four graphics pipelines, but the 0.13micron technological process it is made with allows reaching higher frequencies. In its regular mode, RADEON 9600 PRO usually falls behind the eight-pipelined RADEON 9500 PRO. The frequencies of RADEON 9600 PRO and 9600 are 400/600MHz and 325/400MHz, respectively.
Two more cards, RADEON 9500 and RADEON 9500 PRO, deserve a closer examination and we are going to take a look at them in our review. These two graphics adapters are intended for the mass market: RADEON 9500 positioned closer to the lower price range while RADEON 9500 Pro belongs to the more expensive solutions. The memory bus of both cards is cut down to 128bit width, but there exist RADEON 9500 based cards with 128MB of graphics memory that are made on the PCB borrowed from RADEON 9700 and use a 256bit bus. RADEON 9500 is R300 with half of the graphics pipelines disabled. The PRO variant is a fully-fledged R300 with eight pipelines, just like RADEON 9700 / 9700 PRO. The frequencies of RADEON 9500 PRO are 275/540MHz for chip and memory against 325/620MHz of RADEON 9700 PRO.
This time we once again encounter a graphics card from Tyan. This company is known for its server mainboards, particularly Tiger and Thunder series, but it is also a partner of ATI Technologies and produces graphics cards of the Tachyon series. The series includes Tyan Tachyon G9000 PRO, Tyan Tachyon G9700 PRO and now – Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO, which is to be the hero of this review.
Tachyon G9500 PRO comes into retail with the standard accessories set: S-Video and RCA cables, S-Video-to-RCA and DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapters, a software CD, and a user’s manual.
As you see, the PCB is azure-colored; the graphics chip and 128MB of graphics memory carry an impressive cooling system. Although based on ATI’s reference-design, the PCB differs from it in some ways. Thus, this PCB is longer, the power supply connector is shifted to the back of the card, and there is no wiring for a multi-pin connector we saw in the original PCB of RADEON 9500 PRO.
The placement of memory chips is quite ordinary for RADEON 9500 Pro and indicates that you can’t restore the 256-bit memory bus by any modifications. Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO looks very neat, nothing is missing on the PCB. The heatsinks of the graphics chip and memory chips are fastened with special spring latches, granting both simple and effective contact. Between the heatsinks and the chips there is a layer of thermal glue. Memory chips from Hynix are marked as HY5DU283222F and have 3.6ns access time. It’s rather slow to hope for good overclocking. Under the graphics chip cooler we found a layer of some yellowish thermal interface. The copper brace around the chip is still there and if you are not going to use the original thermal interface, you will have to remove it to provide a tight contact between the die surface and the cooler foot. As practice showed, the thermal pad works perfectly well and there is no reason to put it off unless you are into extreme overclocking.
As you can see in the snapshot, the fan is connected to the card by three wires, one of which serves to transfer tachometer data. Besides, the PCB carries a petal-shaped thermal diode, pressed against the memory heatsinks, appropriate logics (Winbond W83782D) and a small buzzer of the PC-Speaker type. That’s why the PCB is longer than that of the reference-card. All these are components of the new diagnostics system called TGM 2.0 (Tyan Graphics Monitor). The CD with software bundle included into the package of Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO contains an utility to perform this diagnostics, but we chose to download a newer version from the developer’s site. We installed TGM 2.0, re-booted the computer and saw the following picture:
We found that this utility can track fan rotation speed, display graphics chip temperature, control chip and memory working frequencies, show the available graphics memory size, current AGP mode and driver version. Moreover, Tyan Graphics Monitor allows adjusting the fan rotation speed! If this option is enabled, you can click the Detail button and choose the Fan Speed parameter: you will see a slider below the rotation speed graph that allows adjusting fan rotation speed ranging from 3300 to 5500rpm. The monitoring system won’t overheat the graphics chip, though, and when the temperature reaches 60oC, the rotation speed is automatically raised to the maximum.
Besides, if you set a value outside this range, that “PC-Speaker”-like thing emits a loud beep. In the page for this utility you can also read the voltage of the I/O circuits as well as voltage and temperature of the memory chips. Overall, Tyan did very well and equipped its Tachyon G9500 PRO with a well-thought monitoring and protection system. We saw mainboards with fewer capabilities. And we are glad to see such a tender loving care about the user!
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.
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:
And the following software:
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.
Among OpenGL applications, there are the ones that use Quake 3 engine: Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Quake 3: Arena itself. Besides, we used Serious Sam: The Second Encounter that supports both API – OpenGL and Direct3D.
The OpenGL driver from NVIDIA is traditionally strong and helps GeForce4 Ti4200-8x gain the lead in the mode without FSAA and anisotropic filtering, but overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO is better, especially in higher resolutions. When FSAA and anisotropic filtering are enabled, the workload on the graphics card increases and RADEON 9500 PRO is ahead in resolutions higher than 1024x768. Overclocking makes the gap even larger.
This game is also powered by the Quake 3 engine, but it has more complex graphics and demands more from the graphics card. Let’s see what we have here.
The same picture: GeForce4 Ti4200-8x outperforms RADEON 9500 PRO in the first mode, but loses dramatically when FSAA and anisotropic filtering are on. The overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO is, naturally, beyond competition.
The same engine, but the graphics is simpler than in RTCW, to our taste. The light sabers flash quite nicely, though.
We see a curious situation in case no FSAA and no anisotropic filtering are involved: the fps rate doesn’t depend on the resolution and lies within the measurement error. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200-8x is still ahead. Moreover, this time even overclocking doesn’t help RADEON 9500 Pro to win, although it manages to catch up with the leader in 1600x1200. When FSAA 4x and anisotropic filtering are enabled, GeForce4 Ti4200-8x immediately yields to TYAN, due to higher working frequency and 8 pipelines of the latter.
NVIDIA is on top here. Even the overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO can only catch up with the competitor in 1600x1200. The same goes for the 2x FSAA mode. But as soon as we turned on 4xFSAA and anisotropic filtering, GeForce4 fell behind. The higher frequencies of Tyan’s product and the power of the eight pipelines do the trick.
Nothing extraordinary happened: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200-8x is ahead in the first, “light”, mode, but goes down on enabling FSAA and anisotropic filtering, especially in higher resolutions. The overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO is on top: the extra 77MHz core and 50MHz memory frequency do their job.
Among DirectX-using games we picked up Unreal Tournament 2003 and Splinter Cell. So, what does RADEON 9500 PRO have to show us in Direct3D?
The new game engine from Epic is more complex than the Quake 3 one. It uses a lot of modern technologies and requires much more from the graphics card. The R300 architecture shows itself up: RADEON 9500 PRO beats the competitor black and blue, especially with enabled FSAA and anisotropic filtering. Overclocking helps to widen the gap even more.
This game uses a modified version of the UT2003 engine and requires even more from the graphics chip computing power. Here are the results:
Well, only the 1024x768 resolution seems to be suitable for playing and only without FSAA. Drivers from ATI Technologies showed their capricious character here: anti-aliasing wouldn’t turn on together with anisotropic filtering in 1600x1200. NVIDIA was no better: 2x FSAA didn’t work at all and we have the same results in the first and second work modes. It’s not quite clear whether the drivers or the game itself are to blame, however. We should only mention that only RADEON 9500 PRO shows acceptable performance in this test.
Of course, we couldn’t leave out the traditional tests from FutureMark. That’s what the results looked like in 3DMark2001 SE:
As we see, RADEON 9500 PRO has a clear advantage in modes with FSAA and anisotropic filtering as well as in higher resolutions. When overclocked, it performs even better. The powerful shader units of this graphics chip showed their best in the Nature test.
This benchmarking set from FutureMark can practically ruin even the most powerful last generation graphics solution. Let’s see what the oldies (RADEON 8500 and GeForce4 Ti4200-8x) can show here.
Well, ATI RADEON 9500 PRO is an indisputable winner. Games 2 and 3 suggest that GeForce4 Ti will have a tough time soon. Well, NVIDIA has already rolled out a replacement: GeForce FX 5600.
This test requires Microsoft DirectX 9 support, so only Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO could pass it.
Overclocking ensures a little performance increase. Still, the fps rate is rather low, no more than 30.
This test is a hard nut to crack. It resembles Mother Nature from 3DMark03, although doesn’t use DirectX 9 features.
Once again, there is the same problem we had in Splinter Cell. The highest quality mode wouldn’t turn on in 1600x1200 resolution. Otherwise, Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO is beyond competition.
We have tested a mainstream graphics card, Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO. We would like to point out first of all that we liked the thing. Tyan seems to have taken care of everything: high quality mounting, well-thought cooling and diagnostics systems, the option to adjust fan rotation speed (by the way, the noise level was really low). We just don’t quite understand why there is such a slow memory: with only 3.6ns cycle time. Otherwise, the card seems to be a treat for an enthusiast; it is not locked against overclocking. The only disappointing thing was a pretty poor software bundle, which doesn’t include any game, only a DVD-player (WinDVD 4) and demos from ATI.
According to TYAN, the card costs around $200, which is a bit higher than the price of similar solutions from other graphics card vendors. However, it is less than TYAN Tachyon G9700 Pro costs with its super high speed and quality. This way, we can state with all certainty that TYAN Tachyon G9500 Pro does cost the money they ask for it, however, if you are not planning to take advantage of all its features, maybe you should look for something not so pricy.
As for performance comparison with older cards, there can be only one conclusion: GeForce4 Ti and RADEON 8500 based cards and the like can maintain a nice fps rate in older games, but prove too slow for modern games like UT2003 or Splinter Cell. We are not even mentioning 2x FSAA or higher modes: such modes are impossible to play in on these cards. RADEON 9500 PRO, on the contrary, does quite well even with enabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. So, the resume is: if you only play older games, GeForce4 Ti or RADEON 8500/9100/9000/9200 will serve you well, but if you are a hardcore gamer (and a little pressed for money) the high-quality and high-performing Tyan Tachyon G9500 Pro is exactly what you need.
Highs:
Lows: