ATI Increases Its Lead: The New Radeon 9700, 9500 PRO and 9500 – THG.RU

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Introduction

Earlier this year, it seemed as if we could expect things to heat up in the graphics market this fall. After the launch of its new flagship product in the summer, the Radeon 9700 PRO, ATI clearly took on the role of a technology leader in the area of 3D graphics chips for the first time (see ATi Takes Over 3D Technology Leadership With Radeon 9700). Now the Canadian company takes its lead even further. With the Radeon 9000 series, which is based on the R200 technology (alias Radeon 8500), ATI had armed itself well for the lower priced segment. Now, they’re ready to attack the mainstream market of the mid-range price class.

ATI now introduces three new chips and graphics card variations. The Radeon 9700 (without the “PRO”), as well as the 9500, both of which are based on the R300 chip of the 9700 series. While the 9700 differs from the PRO variation only in its lower clock speed, the differences with the 9500 are much more significant. Instead of a 256-bit memory interface, the 9500 series has to make do with 128-bit. Other aspects were cut back with the smaller variant of the 9500 series – the addition 4 pixel pipelines are stripped away, and the memory is only 64 MB. The 9500 PRO, however, gets the full 8 pixel pipelines and 128 MB.

The chip of the 9500 PRO test card. The die surface corresponds exactly to the 9700 PRO.

This might all sound a bit confusing, so here’s an overview of the differences:

• Radeon 9700 PRO: The fastest and most expensive card among the ATI models. 8 pixel pipelines, 4 vertex shaders, 128 MB with 256-bit memory bus, DirectX 9 support. Clock speed (chip/memory): 325/310. Official price: $399.
• Radeon 9700: The smaller of the 9700 series differs in its lower clock speeds: 275/270. Official price: $299.
• Radeon 9500 PRO: The memory interface was reduced from 256-bit to 128-bit, but it can still accept up to 128 MB of memory. Otherwise, it has the same features as the 9700 cards, meaning that it offers full support for DirectX 9. Clock speeds: 275/270. Official price: $199.
• Radeon 9500: Again, the memory bus is only 128-bit. The maximum memory is reduced from 128 MB to 64 MB. In addition, 4 pixel pipelines are left out. However, it still offers full DirectX 9 support. Clock speeds: 275/270. Official price: $179.
• Radeon 9000/9000 PRO: Based on the technology of the Radeon 8500 (R200). Supports DirectX 8.1.

Under its own label, ATI will only bring PRO versions to the market. The non-PRO models will be left to its graphics card partners, who will bring both PRO and non-PRO versions to the market.

Introduction, Continued

What does this mean in practical terms? The 9700 is certainly the most attractive, since it is a good $100 cheaper than the PRO but doesn’t lose much on performance. Through the lower clock speed, the memory bandwidth is reduced from 19.2 GB/s to 17.6 GB/s. The fill rate sinks from 2.6 to 2.4 GPixel/s. With the 9500 PRO, the memory bandwidth decreases to 8.8 GB/s, due to the memory bus, which has been reduced to 128-bit. The fill rate (2.2 GPixel), however, is identical to that of the 9700. Compared to the “bigger” versions, this card is much slower, especially with bandwidth-gobbling anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

With the 9500 (non-PRO version), the fillrate is reduced to 1.1 GPixel, due to the 4 pixel pipelines that have been left out. Here, you can expect dramatic slumps in performance. Because the pixel pipelines of the R300 can process only one pixel per pipe and clock cycle, the fill rate decreases by nearly half during multi-texturing, which is practically the standard nowadays in all of the new games. This will cause the 9500 to lag behind in games when compared to its main rival, NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4200. NVIDIA’s GeForce 4 Ti chip (NV25/28) also has only 4 pixel pipelines, but they are capable of calculating two pixels per pipe and cycle.

The new cards in detail:

In terms of features, there are few differences to the 9700 PRO. According to the data sheets up to know, all cards will have dual-display support and have TV-out. And because the new video capture chip “Theater 200” is supported by all of the chip variants, it is to be expected that the board partners will also offer versions with TV-in.

Test Setup

Theory is a gray area, and what ultimately counts is the performance in practice. ATI sent us a 9500 PRO, which is still at a prototype stage. The final board design is not yet ready, so the chip of the test card runs on a 9700 board, which in turn accesses the memory through a 256-bit bus. Because the 9500 chip can only access memory via 128-bit, the prototype card is equipped with only 64 MB instead of 128 MB memory. The performance of the chip and memory correspond to the card when it reaches the production stage. It’s difficult to tell how dramatically the loss in memory will affect the benchmarks, but from experience, the loss to performance will be about 5-10% maximum.

The 9500 PRO prototyp. The board design is not final yet, so ATI put the chip on an R9700 PRO board for now.

Therefore, the benchmarks shown here should be taken with a grain of salt, and should not be viewed as final. No conclusions can be made yet about the 9500 (non-PRO), because we estimate that the loss of 4 pixel pipelines will have very negative consequences on the performance. Unfortunately, a test sample of te 9500 is not available at the moment.

Benchmarks

Aquanox

In Aquanox, the 9700 clearly loses to the PRO. However, it is still noticeably ahead of the GF4 Ti 4600. The 9500 PRO brings itself up to about the level of a Ti 4400.

Max Payne

In Max Payne, the 9500 PRO only manages to catch up to the Ti 4400 in the high resolution settings. 9700 and 9700 PRO are the clear winners.

Jedi Knight II

Jedi Knight II is very CPU-dependent, therefore the differences in performance among the cards only become apparent in the higher resolutions – at least when tested without FSAA and/or anisotropic filtering, as we did here.

Unreal Tournament 2003

In Unreal Tournament 2003, it’s a different picture. Both of the 9700’s are far in the lead, and the 9500 PRO is at the level of the Ti 4400. Astonishing, however, is the slump in the minimum frame rate – this shows the extent to which a card can slow down when being run through its paces. While all ATI boards deliver respectable results in 1024 x 768, they slow down massively when in the higher resolutions. Could it be a driver bug? In this context, it is also interesting to note that the 64 MB Ti 4200 also lags behind, compared to the 128 MB version. This might suggest memory problems with the ATI cards, whatever the cause.

3D Mark 2001 SE

Generally speaking, 3D Mark 2001 confirms the results up to now, even if the Ti 4200 doesn’t fall behind as much as it does in most of the gaming benchmarks.

Anisotropic Filtering

ATI plays its trump card in anisotropic filtering. As opposed to NVIDIA, ATI does not filter all textures with the set filter levels, and instead, decides on how thoroughly each texture is filtered depending on the user’s viewing angle to the texture. NVIDIA claims that ATI gains in performance at the cost of quality. In practice, however, hardly any difference can be noticed. Interestingly enough, ATI has recently begun calling its filtering technique “adaptive,” or “adaptive anisotropic filtering.”

AntiAliasing

In anti-aliasing, the ATI cards are noticeably ahead of the NVIDIA boards. Even the 9500 PRO, with its limited in bandwidth, beats the Ti 4600. Because the prototype card can only be run with 64 MB, it lacks the memory for higher resolution in 4xFSAA.

Anisotropic Filtering + Antialiasing

8x anisotropic filtering with additional edge-smoothing makes it possible to attain maximum image quality in games. Due to the advantages mentioned before, the ATI cards are way ahead, while even the Ti 4600 borders the unplayable with 25 fps. Note that these values are the average frame rate, however.

Fillrate

In the single-texturing tests, the ATI 9700 boards are able to use their 8 pixel pipelines to their full advantage. It’s a somewhat different picture with multi-texturing, because only one texture per pipe and cycle can be calculated, while each of the four pipes of the GeForce 4 Ti can process two textures per cycle. What’s bewildering is that the 9500 PRO falls behind in this test, because, like its bigger siblings, it also has 8 pixel pipes. So the results are in stark contrast to the official specs, which claim that it has double the fill rate of the GF4 Ti 4600! Here, it seems that the memory bus, reduced to 128-bit, makes itself felt, and this leads one to make some interesting assumptions about the architecture of the R300 memory interface. On the other hand, this could be due to the drivers not having been optimized for the 9500 yet.

Conclusion

With the launch of the 9700 and the 9500 PRO, ATI is going to make life a bit more difficult for the market leader NVIDIA, whose GeForce 4 Ti series is clearly behind, technologically. Because DirectX 9 still has no meaning as of yet, this lag in technology doesn’t make any difference in practice for the moment. Thanks to its higher bandwidth and the four vertex shaders, the 9700 is clearly better than the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 in all areas. The biggest weakness of the GeForce 4 Ti chip is the big loss in performance when using anisotropic filtering and FSAA. Here, the 9500 PRO clearly beats the GeForce 4 Ti 4600. For example: a GF4 Ti 4600 achieves 53.6 fps in Unreal Tournament 2003 at 1024×768 with 4xFSAA; at the same time the Radeon 9700, at 4xFSAA, reaches an impressive 99.5 fps without anisotropic filtering, and still manages 69.2 fps with anisotropic filtering.

If you observe the standard performance, the 9500 PRO makes the swing up to the level of a GeForce 4 Ti 4400. However, it remains a question whether the 9500 (non-PRO) will be able to beat its direct competitor, the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 series, because the latter has a much better fill rate in the multitexturing context. With regard to price, both of these will be sure to put up a hard fight.

And that’s the decisive aspect for the consumer in the end – the price. If you look at the market, GeForce 4 Ti 4400 cards are to be had for a street price of around $190-$230. Ti 4600 cards cost around $220-$300. ATI’s official price for the 9500 PRO is $199, and the 9700 should cost $299. However, expect the street prices to be significantly less. A Radeon 9700 PRO, for example, which is sold in the ATI shop for $399 is offered elsewhere for $315-$350.

The air is getting thinner for NVIDIA. Compared to R300, NV25 has begun to show its age. In standard performance, as well as with the use of FSAA and anisotropic filtering, ATI has made a significant lead for itself, and the gap will only widen when DirectX 9 is launched. Now, all hopes are placed on the much-awaited successor NV30, which should be launched in November. So the times remain exciting, and NVIDIA is sure to have a few surprises in store for us.