Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO &
Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO
Video Cards Review
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CONTENTS
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General
information
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Peculiarities
of the video cards
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Test
system configuration
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Test
results from 3Digest
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Conclusion
The spring has finally arrived! March is traditionally abundant in announcements
from ATI and NVIDIA. Certainly, 3D enthusiasts are looking forward to seeing
what new solutions are going to be. But let's arm ourselves with patience
and wait a bit.
As a rule, announcements bring onto the market High-end solutions which
can be followed by a suite of less powerful accelerators meant for the
middle and lower price niches. But Spring 2003 will have a lot of exceptions.
In this month new mid-level solutions as well as new lines topped with
the most powerful game accelerator will be announced.
What will happen to the current products? The lines that ATI managed
to bring up? This is the family of RADEON 9500-9700. Which are going to
remain and which will be thrown away?.. At present, I can only say that
the prices for such cards are hardly falling down. The marketing policy
of the Canadian company is stuck making the NVIDIA's solutions more attractive.
And it primarily concerns mid-ranges such as RADEON 9500 and 9500 PRO.
By the way, here is the list of the video cards based on the RADEON
9500/9700 which were also already reviewed.
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Analyses of
architecture of the RADEON 9700 and Microsoft DirectX 9.0
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ATI RADEON 9700
Pro 128MB review
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MAYA II R9700Pro
128MB - performance estimated on the new testbed based only on the
Pentium 4 2.53 GHz, comparison with the NVIDIA's 40.41 driver
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Hercules 3D Prophet
9700 Pro 128MB - performance of the new CATALYST 2.3 driver estimated
in 3DMark2001 SE, and Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO final release
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PowerColor Evil
Commando2 RADEON 9700 Pro 128MB - performance of the new CATALYST 2.3
driver estimated in game tests, 3D quality issues
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Sapphire Atlantis
RADEON 9700 Pro 128MB - detailed analyses of anisotropic filtering
of the RADEON 9700
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ATI RADEON 9700,
RADEON 9500 64MB and Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 64MB
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Sapphire
Atlantis RADEON 9500 128MB - RADEON 9500 128 MB has a 256bit memory
bus! Tests of the video cards in the DOOM III
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HIS Excalibur RADEON
9700 Pro and tests in the DirectX 9.0 RC0
- ATI RADEON 9500 PRO - 128 bit memory bus and
buffer compression at AA (virtual 256bit bus)
- ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO,
9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0: Part 1 - Game tests and 3DMark2001, as well
as Soft9700!
- ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO,
9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0: Part 2 - Tests in DirectX 9.0 - synthetic tests
from RightMark 3D
- YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB and RADEON 9700
PRO
- Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9700 &
RADEON 9700 PRO Ultimate Edition
On one hand, RADEON 9500 128MB is very popular now with users which have
the Internet access because many are aware that such cards can be turned
into RADEON 9700 on the software level. But! Remember that RADEONs 9500
often get R300 chips with a broken HSR unit, which is simply disabled in
9500. To make the 9700 out of 9500 you must change the Device ID for the
RADEON 9700's one, that is why the drivers entirely enable the R300 including
the HSR. The consequences are easily predictable if this unit is broken.
Here are some unpleasant news for those who are still going to change
the RADEON 9500 128MB into 9700. The market now offers new-design cards
with the PCB of 9500 PRO. This PCB has a fixed 128-bit memory bus. That
is why such RADEON 9500 can be turned only into RADEON 9500 PRO, which
is less attractive than into 9700. By the way, the 9500 64MB cards which
are currently selling can also be changed into 9500 PRO 64MB, but I haven't
heard that users tend to buy such cards for this purpose.
That is why popularity of the widely-known 9500 128MB card is fading
away as the new RADEON 9500 128MB models are coming onto the scene,
which are even slower than the RADEON 9500 64MB. Who will spend so much
money ($150-160 for the beginning of March) for the card which is obviously
slower than the NVIDIA's counterpart?
I think the manufacturers are well aware of it - the fact that the RADEON
9500 64MB is an overpriced freak was clear from the very beginning, and
the 9500's days are numbered; it will be replaced with the RADEON 9500
PRO which, in its turn, will be pressed out by RADEON 9700 and (sh!...).
That is why we should study the 9500 PRO more carefully - thankfully,
the production cards are getting more in number. All the peculiarities
of this chipset are described in the previous reviews. Today we will only
test two production RADEON 9500 PRO cards.
Gigabyte and Hercules are not new-comers at all, though Hercules' solutions
are quite expensive and less competitive.
Cards
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
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| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
| The card has AGP X2/4/8 interface, 128 MB DDR SDRAM located in 8 chips
on both PCB sides.
128bit memory interface.
The Hynix's memory chips have 3.6ns access time which corresponds to
275 (550) MHz, but the memory runs at 270 (540) MHz. The GPU works at 275MHz
which is typical of RADEON 9700.
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
| The card has the same 128MB 128bit memory, AGP X2/4/8 interface.
The Infineon's memory chips have 3.0ns access time which corresponds
to 333 (666) MHz, but the memory runs at 270 (540) MHz. The GPU works at
275MHz. |
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| Comparison with the reference design, front view |
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9500 PRO |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9500 PRO |
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| Comparison with the reference design, back view |
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9500 PRO |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9500 PRO |
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Both cards are based on the reference design. The Gigabyte's one is
its pure copy, while the Hercules has two differences: the PCB is traditionally
sky-blue and the external power supply connector is soldered out on the
back (so that installation of heatsinks on the memory cards wouldn't be
prevented).
The most noteworthy feature of these cards is the coolers.
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
| Here is a massive heatsink which reminds a reference one, though has
larger dimensions. |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
| The developers at Hercules decided that the ThermalTake's cooler used
earlier on the NVIDIA based cards would suffice. |
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| And now look at the processors themselves.
Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO
Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO
Look at the chip from the Hercules card. When I took off the cooler I saw
a small notch on the die. I think the owners of Athlons got it: the dies
of R300 are very delicate. Thankfully, this surface defect is not fatal,
and the card works perfectly.
Now look at the package contents:
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| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
| User Guide, CD with drivers and utilities, CDs with old games and PowerDVD;
S-Video-to-RCA and DVI-to-d-Sub adapters and TV-out extenders. |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
| User Guide, CD with drivers and utilities, and PowerDVD XP; S-Video-to-RCA
adapter, TV-out extenders, DVI-to-d-Sub adapter. |
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| Both cards ship in retail packages. |
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
| A well-designed box. The style is similar to other packages for Gigabyte's
cards based on ATI's processors which are available for a year already;
the MAYA II differs from MAYA only in the color. The idea to combine the
MAYA's legend with the 3D accelerator is an excellent marketing step. |
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| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
| This company also keeps to its traditions in picturing mystic creatures
- but if MAYA were real, Hercules decided to stay with spirits (remember
Voodoo), and boxes with 3D accelerators always come with mystic gods and
spirits drawn on them. It's a good decision to indicate frequencies on
the front side. |
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Overclocking
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
After installation of the BIOS cracked version: 275/540 -> 360/616
MHz (BIOS was taken at http://www.radeon2.ru/. |
| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
Impossible so far as the cracked version of BIOS correctly working
with the Infineon's memory is not yet available |
By default overclocking is locked in the BIOS and you can't increase
the frequencies without modifying the BIOS. It's a pity we couldn't overclock
the Hercules because it has faster than default memory - 3.0ns.
Note that:
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during the overclocking you should provide additional cooling, in particular,
for the card (first of all, for its memory):
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overclocking depends on a sample, and you shouldn't generalize the results
of one card to all video cards of this trade mark or series. The overclocking
results are not the obligatory characteristics of video cards.
Test system and drivers
Testbeds:
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Pentium 4 3066 MHz based computer:
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Intel Pentium 4 3066 MHz;
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ASUS P4G8X (iE7205);
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1024 MB DDR SDRAM;
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Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB;
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Windows XP SP1;
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ViewSonic P810 (21") and ViewSonic P817 (21").
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ATI v6.255 drivers.
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Athlon XP 2600+ based computer:
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AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2133 MHz);
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EPoX (nForce2);
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1024 MB DDR SDRAM PC3200;
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Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB.
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Windows XP SP1.
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ViewSonic P810 (21") and ViewSonic P817 (21").
VSync is off in the drivers, the texture compression is off in applications.
The texture detail level is set to High Quality.
Test results
Before we start examining 2D quality I should say that there is no a complete
technique of objective estimation of this parameter because:
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Almost all modern 3D accelerators can have 2D quality much dependent on
a certain sample, and it's impossible to trace all cards;
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2D quality depends not only on a video card, but also on a monitor and
a cable;
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Besides, certain monitors do not get along with certain video cards.
As for the tested samples, together with the ViewSonic P817 monitor
and BNC Bargo cable the cards showed excellent quality at the
following resolutions and frequencies: |
| Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 PRO |
1600x1200x85Hz, 1280x1024x120Hz, 1024x768x160Hz |
| Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 PRO |
1600x1200x85Hz, 1280x1024x120Hz, 1024x768x160Hz |
Again in 1280x1024@75Hz the cards showed some horizontal ripples which
depended on user's actions. It wasn't noticed in other resolutions. I suppose
it's the fault of the design developers (ATI) not of the card makers.
Test results: 3Digest
For the performance estimation we used:
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Return to Castle Wolfenstein (MultiPlayer) (id Software/Activision) - OpenGL,
multitexturing, Checkpoint-demo,
test settings - maximum, S3TC OFF, the configurations can be downloaded
from here
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Serious Sam: The Second Encounter v.1.05 (Croteam/GodGames) - OpenGL, multitexturing,
Grand Cathedral demo, test settings: quality, S3TC OFF
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Codecreatures Benchmark Pro (Codecult) - Direct3D, Shaders, Hardware T&L,
Dot3, cube texturing, highest quality
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Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo v.1077 (Final Release) (Digital Extreme/Epic
Games) - Direct3D, Vertex Shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing,
default quality
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3DMark2001 SE Pro (MadOnion/Remedy), Game2 "Dragothic" - DirectX
8.0, Hardware TCL, multitexturing, LOW Details, DXTC
OFF, double buffering, 24-bit Z buffer
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3DMark2001 Pro (MadOnion/Remedy) - DirectX 8.0, Hardware
TCL, Game1, Game2, Game3, Game4, Low, High detail levels
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RightMark 3D (one of the game scenes) - DirectX 8.1, Dot3, cube texturing,
shadow buffers, vertex and pixel shaders (1.1, 1.4).
Summary diagrams of performance of the video cards on the latest drivers
for January 2003
The overclocked cards are marked with red color, the frequencies reached
follow the sign o/c (overclocked).
For the summary diagrams we used drivers v.42.01 for the NVIDIA cards,
v.6.255 for the ATI cards, v.3.07 for the SIS cards and v.1.03.00.043 for
the Matrox cards.
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1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein -
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2. Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO -
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3. Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
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4. 3DMark2001, Game2 Low Details (Dragothic)
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5. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
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6. 3DMark2001
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6.1. 3DMark2001 standard tests
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Windows
XP (January 2003)
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, 3D Marks
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game1 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game1 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game2 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game2 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game3 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game3 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1024x768, Game4
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, 3D Marks
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game1 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game1 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game2 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game2 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game3 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game3 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1280x1024, Game4
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, 3D Marks
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game1 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game1 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game2 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game2 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game3 Low
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game3 High
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Tests
on Pentium 4 3066 MHz, 1600x1200, Game4
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7. RightMark 3D
Both cards excellently performed and were very stable.
I must say that the ripples can be seen in 1280x1024@75Hz only in 2D,
in 3D games it was Ok.
Conclusion
These two cards are copies of the ATI's reference design, and they showed
ordinary results in their classes. The heatsinks mounted on the Hercules
are simply a decoration because such memory doesn't need any cooling -
it works at frequencies lower than the default ones.
Today RADEON 9500 PRO cards are priced at $185-190. Can they compete
against the NVIDIA's counterparts? Our tests (see the list of the reviews
above) revealed that they successfully fight with GeForce4 Ti 4200 - 8x,
which are selling at $180-190 (except the Chinese noname products). It's
parity but remember that the RADEON 9500 PRO looks more attractive due
to the DX9 support and its speed with AA and anisotropy is higher than
that of GeForce4 Ti 4200-8x.
As a rule, Gigabyte's products are not expensive, but the situation
with Hercules is not clear yet because such cards will arrive on our market
only by the middle of the March.
Highs:
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Very good performance in 3D;
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Excellent build quality;
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Reliability and stability;
Lows:
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Pickups and ripples at a certain resolution.
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