Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 3: ATI's Radeon 9600 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 15, 2003 10:26 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition Performance no AA/AF
SimCity is another game that was tough to benchmark. We finally decided that most of the time, people are scrolling around, so why not benchmark framerates while we scroll. This was done in the Big City Tutorial map; we essentially just moved side to side over a set path and recorded the framerate with FRAPS.
The NVIDIA cards are running neck and neck in this one, and both trail the ATI cards. The XT gains about 10% over the Pro in this bench.
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition Performance 4X AA/8X AF
We actually see our largest gain from the XT in SimCity (~22%). We are getting really close to our maximum theoretical performance increase due to core clock speed in this case.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
70 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Sorry but these scores are rubbishAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Is there a particular reason why a 9500pro card isn't included in these reviews. It seems at least as worthy as the the Ti4200, or I could be just biased because I have a 9500pro. Either way, if you could include it in future reviews it'd be appreciated.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
I agree with #4, the 9800se should be included as it is in the price range. Its widely available and radically different from the 9600pro/xt and fx5600ultra as its got a full 256-bit memory bus. That should certainly help with DX8 titles but its relatively slow four-pipeline (by default) core clocked at 325MHz could be a problem with future shader-intensive DX9 games.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Man I love to see how well the 9700 Pro still holds it own after all this time. What a great card!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
i remember an article where some guy from ATI said that this card would outperform the 9700 pro. i had serious doubts about such claim and kind of laughed about it.and i guess that i was right, as it does not outperform the 9700pro.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
THANKS FOR USING ALL CAPS #8!!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
homeworld 2 ran just fine on my radeon 9500 pro...I'm running the 3.7's though...Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
/me pets my modded 9500np->9700proAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Nvidia will be back. Not that I care. As long as I can buy a decent card from someone I don't care who it comes from.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Any idiot who "built computers for a living" should know better than to shout. Especially in the presence of his superiors. Check the settings again moron. They often AA/AF on and off, as well as V-sync off etc. If you had time to benchmark your systems with all these variables then you had too much time on your hands. Hence the "built" not build.