ATI 9600 XT Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

Although the performance segment is exciting with cards such as the 9800XT and the GFFX 5950, for the average consumer it is the mainstream segment that is the most relevant as it is hard to justify spending 500$ on a videocard. In the past year, ATi has had a dominant showing in the mainstream segment with the 9500 Pro and its successor, the 9600 Pro. ATi continues the onslaught with their fall refresh part, the 9600 XT, which has finally starting to appear on store shelves roughly 6 weeks after it was announced. The differences between the XT and the 9600 Pro are not overly drastic; the GPU core gets a healthy 100 mhz bump up to 500 mhz while the memory speed stays the same at 600 Mhz. Another change in the hardware is the inclusion of a thermal diode. In the Catalyst 3.9 drivers, the Overdrive function is exposed, a fancy name for a fancy function; dynamic overclocking based on temperature. On the manufacturing side, the 9600 XT uses a low k dielectric process, which insulates the traces within the chip and helps eliminate crosstalk. As clock frequencies rise, and transistors become smaller, interference becomes a bigger issue. Low k dielectric is in part the reason for the speed boost. The chip itself is still a .13 micron part like the 9600 Pro before it.

The major differences between the 9500 Pro /9600 XT and the 9700/9800s is the memory bus being cut in half. The 9600 series also has the added disadvantage of only having half the pixel pipelines. Despite the big clock advantage that the 9600 Pro has over the 9500 Pro, it cannot match its speed because of the raw processing power. The 9600 Pro lags behind the 9500 Pro significantly in terms of fillrate and even the 9600 XT at default clockrates cannot match the fillrate of the 9500 Pro. It remains to be seen how well it performs in benchmarks considering the revised core and the improved memory bandwidth.

Layout

Like the 9600 Pro, the 9600 XT does not require an external power source. The layout is pretty much the same as the 9600 Pro. Looking at the reference sample we have compared to a Gigabyte 9600 Pro, the layout of the memory and caps are almost identical. The board itself is much shorter than a 5700 Ultra and has about 2 cm less than a 9800 Pro. The 9600 XT reference card does not have the flair that the 5700 Ultra does. Aesthetics may be important to those of you with fancy windows and such in your case and if that's the case, you'll have to look at some of the ATi partner cards.