First Tests: ATI's 9800 Pro
New graphics board lines include 9600 and budget 9200 cards.Joel Strauch, special to PCWorld.com
Enjoying its first solid lead in the graphics board wars, ATI is announcing three new lines of Radeon boards and launching its top-tier enthusiast board, the Radeon 9800 Pro, within weeks. But exclusive tests by the PC World Test Center show a preproduction 9800 Pro board struggling to outrun the competition, including ATI's own Radeon 9700 Pro.
The 9800 Pro is an evolutionary advance beyond the 9700 Pro. Boards based on the chip will cost $399 in a 128MB version; pricing for a monster 256MB version will be announced upon its release, which is scheduled for the second quarter. A 128MB 9800 non-Pro version priced at $349 will offer reduced clock speeds and will ship in the second quarter as well. In April, ATI will roll out products in the Radeon "performance mainstream" 9600 and budget 9200 lines. ATI builds its own boards but also supplies the graphics chips to other card vendors.
Technology Evolution
All of the 9800 boards still use 0.15-micron technology, though the company has moved to the 0.13-micron process for the 9600 Pro line. As a result, while the 9800 Pro essentially upgrades the 9700 Pro, the other cards contain brand-new chips. The newer process permits faster clock speeds, lower power consumption, and cooler operation. NVidia recently moved to a 0.13-micron process for its Geforce FX graphics chips.
The 9800 Pro supports DirectX 9 and AGP 8X, and it sports 380-MHz core and 340-MHz memory clock speeds and a 256-bit memory interface. ATI expects to focus on the 9800 Pro version for its own boards and resellers, says Eric Lundgren, Radeon 9800 Pro product manager.
"It's a quiet, single-slot solution," Lundgren says, in a bit of a dig at rival NVidia, which has drawn complaints about the noise levels of the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
The price of the 9600 Pro with 128MB of memory will be between $169 and $199, while the 64MB and 128MB 9600 (non-Pro) boards will range from $149 to $169.
"We have had a lot of success in moving our technology down to the 0.13-micron process for the 9600 Pro," Lundgren adds. "It is ideally suited to be able to deliver DirectX 9 support into the mainstream." The first games to use DirectX 9 should begin arriving later this year.
The budget 9200 line is based on ATI's Radeon 9000 technology. With support for only DirectX 8.1, the 128MB 9200 Pro will sell for $129 to $149, while the non-Pro version will offer 64MB or 128MB of memory and will retail for between $79 and $129.
Slow Start
The PC World Test Center conducted its initial tests on a preproduction 9800 Pro board equipped with prelease drivers (future driver updates should net better results). Benchmarks showed the 9800 Pro performing faster in DirectX games but slower in OpenGL games than NVidia's 5800 FX reference board.
The 9800 Pro hit 174 frames per second in Unreal Tournament at 1024 by 768 resolution using 32-bit color, while NVidia's board managed 168 fps--a negligible difference. Meanwhile, a production version of ATI's older Radeon 9700 Pro earned a top score of 176 fps. At higher resolutions, the 9700 Pro lagged behind the newer ATI model, achieving 139 fps at 1280 by 1024 resolution (whereas the 9800 Pro hit 158 fps) and 102 fps at 1600 by 1200 (compared to the 9800 Pro's 123 fps). Of course, few people run their PCs at these resolutions.
In tests with Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the Radeon 9700 Pro again surpassed the 9800 Pro by a few frames per second, while the 5800 Ultra beat both ATI boards. In Serious Sam game tests, the 9700 Pro again outperformed the 9800 Pro by just a few frames per second, and the FX 5800 Ultra topped the 9700 Pro.
The 9800 Pro card clearly has the edge is in anti-aliasing tests. ATI recommends higher anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings for benchmarks to create smoother edges at the expense of frame rates; NVidia suggests lower anti-aliasing and anisotripic settings for tests to maintain higher frame rates. Despite the FX 5800 Ultra's higher frame rates, testers reported that the Radeon 9800 Pro's image quality far surpassed that of both the NVidia card and the older ATI card.
ATI Enjoys Crown
Despite the PC World Test Center's mixed test results, ATI is clearly enjoying the limelight--even though an announcement from NVidia about new graphics boards is imminent.
"It's a good feeling," Lundgren says of the current lead. "We did great with the 9700 Pro and to be able to follow up on that with the 9800 Pro demonstrates our sustainability. It shows that it wasn't just a flash in the pan."
Keep the graphics board wars in perspective, suggests Jon Peddie, president of graphics and multimedia research firm Jon Peddie Research.
"Yes, ATI has done very well. They've got great new products that are performing well. They're hitting on all cylinders," he says. But NVidia is far from out of the game.
"Although it looks like [NVidia] missed the fight with the GeForce FX, they are still the dominant player," Peddie said.
NVidia will lose some board sales to ATI, but it's a give-and-take battle, Peddie added.
"We'll see lots more rocking back and forth between these two titans," Peddie adds. "It's good for everybody. It's good for them because of the competition. It's good for consumers."
Alexandra Krasne of PCWorld.com contributed to this report.