Technical data

ket and what specifications they use.The low-cost
sector, especially, is flooded with a multitude of dif-
ferent configurations for the same basic chip. A
good starting place to get an overview is Gigabyte’s
product page
(http://tw.gigabyte.com/
VGA/Products/Products_Comparison
Sheet_List.htm).
Older Radeon Models
Radeon 9200
The RV 280 (Radeon 9200), l i ke its pre d e c e s s o r
the RV 250 (Radeon 9000), is based on the
D i rectX 8.1 design of the Radeon 8500 (R 200).
C o m p a red to the Radeon 8500 with its 4x2 pipe
d e s i g n , this chip only features half as many tex-
t u re units per pixel pipeline (4x1) and only one
ve r tex shader unit.The main differences betwe e n
the Radeon 9000 and the 9200 are the newe r
p a r t ’s higher clock speeds, and its support for the
AGP 8x interfa c e . It is produced on a 0.15µ
p rocess and contains roughly 32 million transis-
t o r s .
The greatest weaknesses of the Radeon 9200 are
its outdated and slow super sampling FSAA imple-
mentation, as well as it being limited to bilinear fil-
tering.
Versions:
Radeon 9200 SE - 64/128 MB - 64-/128-bit
DDR - 200/330 MHz
Radeon 9200 - 64/128 MB - 64-/128-bit DDR
- 250/400 MHz
Radeon 9200 PRO - 128 MB - 128 Bit DDR -
300/600 MHz
Radeon 9600
The Radeon 9600, which has the internal designa-
tion RV350, is the successor to the highly successful
DirectX 9 chip RV300 (Radeon 9500). The RV300
only differed from the “big” R300 (Radeon 9700)
in that it featured a memory bus that was pared
down from 256 bits to 128 bits. In the standard
version of the chip, ATI also disabled four of the
eight pixel pipelines. Nonetheless, it was the exact
same chip as the R300; its approximately 107 mil-
lion transistors made it expensive to produce as a
mainstream part. In the newer RV350, ATI didn’t
just disable some of the pixel pipes through the
card's BIOS, but physically reduced the number to
four in the chip design. Combined with a die-
shrink to a 0.13µ process, this made the 75-million
transistor chip much cheaper to produce.
The Radeon 9600’s advantage over its predeces-
sor lies in its much higher clock speeds, which usu-
ally outweighs the disadvantages incurred by the
reduction in the number of pixel pipelines. Despite
this, the Radeon 9600 Pro is sometimes outper-
formed by the Radeon 9500 Pro in fill-rate inten-
sive applications. Other than that, the 9600 offers
DirectX 9, modern multi-sampling and fast
anisotropic filtering – in short, everything that the
flagship products have.
The Radeon 9600XT (codename RV360) takes a
special place in this line-up, though, as it is based
on a more modern architecture than the earlier
9600 variants. For the first time, this makes driver
optimizations for trilinear filtering possible, which
results in much higher performance.
Versions:
Radeon 9600 XT - 128/256 MB - 128bit -
500/600 MHz
Radeon 9600 Pro - 128/256 MB - 128 Bit -
400/600 MHz
Radeon 9600 - 64/128/256 MB - 128 Bit -
325/400 MHz
Radeon 9600SE - 64/128 MB - 64/128-bit -
325/365 MHz
Articles:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graph-
ic/20030416/index.html
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graph-
ic/20031015/index.html
Radeon 9800
AT I ’s flagship model of the past few ye a rs carries the
i n t e r nal designation R350.The main change from its
p r e d e c e s s o r, the Radeon 9700 (code name R300), i s
the increased clock speed, resulting in improved per-
f o r mance (especially when FSAA and AF are
e n a b l e d ) . While other details we re changed and
i m p r oved as we l l , these are n ’t really noticeable in
p r a c t i c e .The chip is produced on an 0.15µ pro c e s s
and consists of 107 million transistors . Its adva n t a g e
over its smaller siblings lies in its 256-bit memory
i n t e r f a c e, giving it a higher memory bandwidth, a n d
a full complement of eight pixel pipelines. D u r i n g
the product ru n , ATI also introduced a 256MB ve r -
sion featuring DDR II video memory.
THG Graphics Card
Buyers Guide
11