Radeon 9600 (non PRO)

[omegaRED]

Well i`m thinking of getting a Sapphire R9600 non pro for about 130$, which is IMHO a good deal (considering my location and prices here). I cant afford a more powerfull card (9600 Pro is ~180$ and 9700 is ~240$). 50$ for a clock difference is too much for me (9600 Pro).

Anyways, i was/am pretty satisfied with my 9100 (250/200Mhz clocks), but i figure if i can upgrade relatively cheaply it`d be worth it.

Questions: Any opinnions on the card? How overclockable is it (i know the 9600Pro is a terrific overclocker, so i`m hoping with a little extra cooling to get past 9600Pro clocks with the non pro)? How much of a performance increase am i looking at compared to the 9100 (250/200), paired with my 2700+ and 512MB DDR 333MHz RAM?

TIA

[Kooldino]

Feel like selling your old one?

[omegaRED]

Heheh... Sure but i`m afraid the shipping would be too much (i`m in Macedonia)

[Kooldino]

Ahh.

[dZeus]

Sapphire 9600 and 9600 Pro cards are quite different. the 9600 Pro uses BGA memory ICs, where the plain 9600 uses TSOP ICs, which probably don't clock near as high as the BGA ones. Dunno if there are other differences though.

[Indiana]

I have a Notebook with a Radeon9600 Mobility chip and even this is quite an excellent overclocker - in the tiny heated notebook environment.

It's clocked VERY low by default, maybe to save battery power?: 337/190MHz (GPU/RAM).
But it overclocks to 500(!!!)MHz GPU and 255MHz RAM. Sadly the notebook manufacturer apparently used cheap RAM.

So I'm sure that the 9600 non-Pro (which is nearly identical to the Mobility9600) will overclock well - but be aware that the Performance of the 9600 is still a bit below that of a 9500Pro and much lower than that of a 9700, even if you take the great oc'ing potential into consideration.

And (as dZeus said): Have a look at the RAM as well. The GPU will oc by a good margin, but that won't help that much if it is held back by slow ram.

[Fat Tone]

This review nicely shows the difference between the 9600's and 9500's.

My advice: spend the extra on the Pro if you can.
My other advice: find out exactly what you are buying; People like Scan call the ATI cards when in fact they are Connect or some other.

T.

[omegaRED]

Thanks all for the replies.

Frank, i figured the non pro would use lower quality memory (TSOP), but still, considering Indiana`s experience with the Mobility 9600, i have hopes

I`m looking at a budget card purchase, not high-end-ish. So if it clocks as good as Indiana`s, i`d be satisfied. My first option was a 128MB 9500 non pro (then enable the 4 disabled pipelines), but you need a huge amount of luck to find one that is with L shaped mem chips (first form factor).

I`m afraid i cant afford anything more than 130$ for a vid card (i earn 220$/month, i`d be killed by someone in my family in an instant if i spent more). So essentially i`m looking for a decent increase in speed at an affordable price... the 9600 seems to fit quite nicely...

I`ll definitely have a look at the card and the mem chips rated speed before buying it.

[J1NG]

Be careful though, I've got a 9600 Pro (from sapphire, unfortunatley not the Fireblade edition ) Anyway, the OC on it is pretty good, but not as great as it is in the general overall group.

Usually 500Mhz for the GPU
Usually 330Mhz for the RAM

I managed to get
490Mhz for the GPU
328Mhz for the RAM

So be prepared if your 9600 doesn't go as much as most others.

J1NG

[omegaRED]

Oh thats fine. Besides, it seems like your 9600 is very near the general overclocking limit... I dont think you can complain about 10MHz on the Core and 2/4Mhz on the mem...

[Indiana]

Re: Radeon 9600 (non PRO)

Originally posted by omegaRED
How much of a performance increase am i looking at compared to the 9100 (250/200), paired with my 2700+ and 512MB DDR 333MHz RAM?

TIA

I totally overlooked this part of your question:
You won't get much improvement in performance in older titles with the 9600 when not using FSAA. But that doesn't really matter as those should be fast enough even on your current card. With FSAA enabled the R9600 will simply smoke the 9100, the same goes for upcoming DX9 titles.


I did some first tests and while the standard 3DMark2001 bench of the notebook was not better than that of my old R8500 (this is equal to the 9100 you have) it kills the 8500 when FSAA is enabled. Plus: the bad 3DMark01 performance can be mostly attributed to the Notebook using a crappy el-cheapo chipset (SIS) and using non-modifyable slow RAM-timings - and we all know 3DMark2001 is very sensitive to this.

To sum it up: while FSAA was simply unusable with the R8500 it provides VERY playable framerates on the Mobility9600 in everything I've tested up to now (like UT2003, NFS6) even in the 4xFSAA setting and when combined with 8x anisotropic filtering. What's more the R9600 delivers much more steady framerates than my 8500 did.
The ATI DX9 demos run smoothly, even the one released with the R9800Pro (the "Chimp" Demo), Matrox ultracool ReefDemo works very nice at 1024x768, even nVidias Dawn demo runs smoothly as long as you do not use the "Ultra" dataset via editing the batch file.

Some first figures (1024x768x32, 4x FSAA, 8x aniso):
3DMark2001SE:
6264

UT2003:
Flyby: 88,2 fps
Botmatch: 45,6 fps

P.S.: While with the 9500 it was really important to get the PRO this is not true with the 9600. The difference between the Pro and non-Pro models here are only clockspeeds and those can be mostly eliminated by oc'ing. All you have to do is look that you don't get a card with slow RAM.)

[omegaRED]

Many thanks for the detailed reply Indiana

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Fat Tone
This review nicely shows the difference between the 9600's and 9500's.

My advice: spend the extra on the Pro if you can.
My other advice: find out exactly what you are buying; People like Scan call the ATI cards when in fact they are Connect or some other.

T.

Everybody (that's 90%) calls them ATi where it's only a "Powered by ATi" card.

ATi ONLY sells in the USA (maybe Canada too). Sapphire makes the boards for ATi (hence is equal to ATi in IQ). ALL the other ones have a worse image quality (not talking about fractions of % in speed).

You might not notice the difference in IQ at low res though.

[omegaRED]

Yeah, but i run at 1600x1200 85Hz... So i do notice the difference between my old G400 and my PBA Radeon 9100...

[The PIT]

Originally posted by omegaRED
Yeah, but i run at 1600x1200 85Hz... So i do notice the difference between my old G400 and my PBA Radeon 9100...

Let me guess the G400 is a lot better.