Supplied by ATi

ATI continues to leave gamers drooling at the doorsteps of retail and online
stores everywhere. ATI has held onto the performance crown for a long time in
video card years thanks to the 9700 PRO which was first announced in
August of 2002. Seven months later the world was introduced to the Radeon 9800
PRO and half a year after that the words “XT” are beginning to
find a place on consumer’s lips.

We all know one reason for upgrading a video card; more power. More power to
play games. Applications such as word processing and surfing the Internet don’t
tax a video card in the least. The home PC user’s number one reason for upgrading
is games. Video cards continue to turn up the frame rates and pack on the onboard
memory but how is this “bigger, better, faster” benefiting you and
how much? Is 128 MB of onboard memory enough or is it the new monsters with
256 MB? ATI’s 9800 PRO 256 MB edition will be stacked up against it’s little
brother, the 9700 PRO 128 MB edition, to reveal a few answers.

ATI has been busy since we first had the opportunity to work with them late
September, 2001.

• RADEON 8500 64MB
• RADEON 8500LE 128MB
• RADEON 8500 128MB
• RADEON 8500LE 64MB
• ALL IN WONDER RADEON 8500
• ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV
• RADEON 9500 PRO
• ALL-IN-WONDER 9000 PRO
• RADEON 9700
• ALL-IN-WONDER 9700
• ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO
• RADEON 9200 PRO
• RADEON 9200
• RADEON 9200 SE
• RADEON 9600
• RADEON 9600 PRO
• ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 PRO
• RADEON 9600 XT
• RADEON 9800
• RADEON 9800 PRO
• ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO
• RADEON 9800 XT

There have been 22 new ATI video card products in the gamer/multimedia arena.
That’s one video card product released every month on average. The ATI elves
have been most industrious in the workshop but why? The engineers at ATI weren’t
likely having epiphanies every month. The truth of the matter is that the video
card market is fiercely competitive and ATI has been locked by the horns with
its arch nemesis, nVidia, for quite some time. This “one upmanship”
of one another has forced each to launch newer and better products in order
to capture consumer favor.

The consumer is also fickle when it comes to price. Consumers either buy a
complete PC or want to upgrade an existing PC. Now the word “budget”
comes into play. All buyers have a certain dollar figure for spending and it’s
important to have a product to fit every budget. It’s also strategic to put
the “next level” just within a few dollars reach. As an example, the
9600 may retail at $169 but the 9600 PRO is only $30 more. This strategy of
only a few dollars often entices consumers to step up to the next level of product…which
is better for business. For a complete PC the variety of products and price
points means that an ATI product can fit one of their pieces into the buyer’s
financial puzzle. A consumer may have a $1500 budget and have already spent
$1300. Their last item on the list may be the video card and, surprise, ATI
has several options from $99 models that will leave change in the pocket of
the value conscious shopper to $169 and $199 models that will fit snugly within
the last of the budget. There’s also the next level beyond for…only a few
dollars more. This is marketing and ATI wants the consumer dollar. ATI also
wants to best the competition in performance and quality. ATI wants everyone
to know their product delivers the most gaming performance at the highest level
of detail.

Most of the hoopla surrounding video cards used to come from pure frames per
second performance. Manufacturers wound up the clock speeds of both the GPU
(Graphics Processing Unit) and video card memory in order to beef up frame rates
within games. The number of frames per second (FPS) that a video card can display
determines how smooth the motion in the the game appears. There comes a point
where the FPS exceeds what the human eye can perceive as a series of still pictures
or continuous, fluid motion. High frame rates used to be achieved by turning
off parts of the game and/or lessening the detail on screen but now gamers demand
the best of both worlds. Gamers want to see every bit of detail in a game and
still enjoy responsive action. It’s no fun playing a game with a gorgeous picture
at 10 frames a second.

The frame rate race has begun to mushroom. Now it’s a question of how many
frames per second at what level of detail. This is the point where all the techno
babble talk about vertex shaders, pixels shaders, Anisotropic filtering, polygons
and what not would be discussed…but it’s not going to be. To say that I totally
understood it would be false. I, like the gaming enthusiast, care that the video
card can frag every opponent fast and in every bit of gory detail desired.

The clever bunch of engineers at ATI dream up new ways to improve visual and
playable game quality. That’s their job. They’ve designed products that allow
gamers to turn up the detail and, in turn, game makers have designed games with
more detail. Where will it end? Perhaps when the virtual game worlds are photo
realistic where it’s impossible to tell CG from real life. Until then there
lies the choice that every consumer faces when staring at store shelves; what
to buy?

The ATI
9800 PRO essentially is a second generation 9700 PRO with a few enhancements
and a major revision to the GPU. On paper the two appear very similar.

Side by side the two video cards appear very much the same and indeed they
are. The major differences are core revisions and speed, memory speed, pixel
fill rate, memory amount and a few aesthetic changes. A higher core speed and
memory speed will provide more horsepower just like more horsepower in an engine
may provide more towing power or speed to the car.

Inside the box is the same equipment that comes with the 9700 PRO which is
an installation CD…

A manual…

An RCA cable…

An SVHS cable…

An SVIDEO to to RCA adapter…

And the SVGA to DVI adapter.

Up close and personal the ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB video card a few cosmetic changes
with the addition of a revamped GPU heatsink and RAM heatsinks; 16 to be exact
top and bottom.

The RAM heatsinks sit atop the Quad Band Memory otherwise known as DDRII memory.
The Quad Band Memory
website states:

QBM is a module or board based technology that uses existing, standard
DDR I devices (DDR266/333/400) and future DDR II devices (DDRII-400 and DDRII-533)
to deliver the memory performance not expected to be available at the DRAM device
level for several years to come. This innovative module technology provides
the memory bandwidth needed today (QBM533 & QBM667) by the fastest CPUs
with significant cost savings and with the added feature of being backward compatible
with today’s standard DDR I modules.

Too hot in the kitchen?

It’s also apparent that DDRII memory runs a bit more toasty due to the presence
of the RAM heatsinks. In a 25.9 degrees Celsius room the RAM heatsinks were
measured at a peak of 68.6 degrees Celsius during full benchmarking modes. Heat
is the evil destroyer of all PCs but our impromptu temperature measurements
on the backside of the GPU during IDLE and Benchmarking showed only a 1 or 2
degree Celsius difference between the 9700 PRO and the 9800 PRO. In a 25.1 degree
Celsius room the IDLE temperature was recorded at 39 degrees Celsius and the
load at 45 degrees Celsius. The temperature difference was most likely due to
a change in ambient temperature. This was consistent after several hours of
benchmarking both cards.

Benchmarks…

The test system.

• AMD 3200+ 400 FSB
  Processor
• Gigabyte
  7NNXP motherboard
• ATI 9700 PRO 128 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 3.8 drivers (Default settings w/VSYNC disabled BIOS AGP aperture
  set to 128)
• ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB Video
  Card Catalyst 3.8 drivers (Default settings w/VSYNC disabled BIOS AGP aperture
  set to 256)
• 2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3200 DDR RAM in DIMM 1 and 3
• Sony 52x CD
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
• Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Logitech USB wireless Optical Mouse
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
• AMK SX1000
  modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1

Programs used

• 
  Sisoft Sandra 2002
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2001 SE
• MadOnion
  3DMark 2003
• Quake
  III Arena
• Commanche
  4
• GL
  Excess
• SpecviewPerf 7.1
• Serious Sam SE
• Unreal Tournament 2003 flyby benchmark
• Aquamark3
• KirbiBench

All tests were run at default video card settings with VSYNC disabled. Anti-Aliasing
was set at 2X and Anisotropic Filtering was set to 2X with the exception of
the 6x AA and 16x Anisotropic tests of Aquamark3 where AA and Anisotropic settings
of the Catalyst 3.8 drivers were set to Application Preference. Individual performance
will vary with any particular or specific timings or tweaks enabled by you.
A 768 MB page file was moved to D: partition. Temporary Internet files moved
to J: partition at end of drive. OS installed to C: and programs installed
to E:. All programs were benchmarked with initial monitor settings at 1024×768@75Hz.

These may result in lesser or greater scores dependent on variations in system
components and settings. Avoid smoking and excessive amounts of alcohol. Wait
at least 12 hours after scuba diving before flying or driving over 1000 feet
above sea level. Void where prohibited by law. No animals, especially my cat,
were harmed in the making of these benchmarks.

3DMark 2001 SE

3D Mark 2001 SE and it’s replacement, 3D Mark 2003, answer the simple question
of how fast the hardware is; all of the hardware that powers the game.

Codecreatures

Code Creatures measures 3D gaming performance and is designed more for DirectX
8.1. This benchmark may soon be shelved. It’s interesting to note the 9700 pro
failed miserably at the 1600×1200 tests.

The 1600×1200 9700 PRO test also showed a few other problems which
have never been seen before during our benchmarking. It could be specific to
this hardware configuration and driver set as this hasn’t ever been seen in
previous tests with this card.

Commanche 4

GL Excess

GL Excess is an OPENGL benchmark that is optimized for DX8.1 as can be seen
by the differences between DirectX software.

Quake III high quality

Quake III continues to hang around. This benchmark is one that
most can’t just let go of and it retains grandfather rights in the community.
Many of today’s games are based upon the Quake engine. But look at those scores
at 1600×1200! Over 160 FPS! It wasn’t too long ago that we thought topping 100
FSP was fast. Now we sit at 160 FPS with the screen set to a high resolution
and high detail.

Serious Sam

UT2003 Flyby

Specviewperf 7.1

SpecviewPerf measures the 3D rendering performance of systems
running under OPENGL. The improved 9800 with its massive amounts of memory only
make the 9700 look silly.

The following two tests are targeted mainly towards CPU performance and will
show if any “flaws” are in board design affecting the ability of the
CPU to crunch through the data. While in render mode the two test programs virtually
bypass ram and GPU.

KribiBench

The Kribi engine is 100% software rendering (a pure CPU benchmark) and makes
heavy use of SSE instructions and SMP. More is better.

3DMark 2003

3D Mark 2003 was originally designed to measure performance specifically in
shader-heavy titles.

Aquamark3

Aquamark3 is a newer benchmark from Massive Development. For the most part
it is a DirectX 8.1 benchmark though it is run with DirectX 90b installed. Four
measurement sets were used. The first has high and low detail with Anti Aliasing
and Anisotropic filtering turned off. The second has high and low detail with
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering set at max.

The benchmark results are very conclusive. The ATI Radeon 9800 core provides
improved performance over it predecessor but don’t let the differences between
DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.0b fool you. Older benchmarking programs can provide
misleading results on DirectX 9 platforms as well as hardware that isn’t optimized
for DirectX 9. The extra 128 MB of memory provides the added “oomph”
to significantly increase the gap in performance between the two ATI cards.

Overclocking

Want a few free frames? The ATI 9800 PRO 256 was pushed to the point where
games just began to deteriorate using Powerstrip 3.46. This, to our surprise,
did not increase the temperature level on the RAM heatsinks from stock settings.
Peak engine clock was 435 MHz and the memory clock hit 370 MHz (740 MHz DDR).
At this point some parts of 3DMARK 2003 started to show artifacts and rendering
problems. The water in the Mother Nature segment looked like a pixelated checkboard.
Remember that stock settings are an engine clock of 380 MHz and memory clock
of 350 MHz.

3DMARK 2003 1024×768 @ 75 kHz stock setting: 5778

3DMARK 2003 1024×768 @ 75 kHz overclocked setting:
6336

This translates to approximately a 9% increase for 3DMark 2003

Conclusion

Moving up to the next level brings advantages. The first is the benefit of
newer technology. This will make available or optimize the graphic features
available in games depending on how far a jump the upgrade is. Moving to a video
card with a higher core and memory speed means higher frame rates plain and
simple. The faster the card the faster the game. These concepts are most likely
“no-brainers” for anyone. Newer is better. But what of the jump from
128 MB of memory to 256 MB of memory? Why produce a product that isn’t leaps
and bounds faster than its predecessor and then equip it with twice the amount
of onboard memory?

Video game detail does not live by horsepower alone. In the professional 3D
graphics more onboard video memory theoretically means more of the model can
be handled by the video card freeing the CPU to assist or perform other tasks.
Does more memory mean a faster game? No. Is 256 MB of memory more of a marketing
gimmick rather than a performance boost? Life isn’t all fun and games and graphic
designers will appreciate the gobs of onboard memory. This will be especially
true for 3D designers who work with programs such as Softimage or 3D Studio
Max. ATI’s 9700 and 9800 series worked well with Softimage XSI 2.01. It’s true
that professional 3D workstation cards are more expensive due to the niche market
and high level of support of specific applications but professional and gaming
cards have the same roots.

The race for the crown has ATI in a strong position. It may no longer be a
question of who gets there first but who gets there first with the largest resolution
and greatest detail.

Bottom line: the ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB video card delivers performance especially
for newer game titles. If there is the desire to set every detail to the absolute
maximum..do it. The 9800 XT is already out and may overshadow the 9800 PRO but
that may help drive prices down. 9700 PRO owners will want to think twice before
instinctively wanting to upgrade and not be left behind. Thee just isn’t the
significant increase to warrant an upgrade but if you are stuck back in the
GEFORCE2 days then the 9800 PRO series will be moving to warp speed by comparison.

Overall the choice may be between the 9800 PRO 128 MB version and the 256 MB
version…it’s up to you and your pocketbook.

Our thanks to ATI for their
support of this site and so many others.