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ATI RADEON 9800 PRO Preview March 06, 2003 Brandon Bell |
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Summary: With its supercharged 380MHz core clock and armed with faster DDR memory, ATI's RADEON 9800 PRO delivers more performance than ever before. See what's new with this card and how it fares against the competition in our RADEON 9800 PRO preview!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 22 ) |
Unless you’ve been living in a cave the past six months, chances are you’re pretty aware of ATI’s dominance of the 3D graphics market on the desktop PC. In the mainstream and high-end segments ATI was first to market with DirectX 9 parts in the form of the RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9500, while ATI’s DX8 compliant RADEON 9000 PRO is the best solution available in the value space.
NVIDIA meanwhile has struggled with GeForce FX, supply of GeForce FX 5800 Ultra cards has been at best, limited. BFG Technologies is the only manufacturer to ship retail products, and in their case it was only a limited number of consumers who pre-ordered the card in early 2003. Our conversations with other manufacturers have been very vague when it comes to ship dates, suggesting that NVIDIA’s Comdex 2002 projections for GeForce FX were extremely optimistic. In addition, performance of GeForce FX 5800 Ultra has been fairly lackluster.
In our testing we found that while it offers good performance overall, when scene complexity is increased by factors such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, it quickly falls to the incumbent RADEON 9700 PRO. Making matters even more difficult is the heat output of the core and memory, and the extreme noise level of the FX Flow cooling solution. We also ran into clock throttling issues, but those may be the cause of a bug in the current GeForce FX drivers.
With so much going for them, you’d think ATI would grow complacent and rest on its laurels. However, today’s launch of the RADEON 9800, 9600, and 9200 family proves that this isn’t the case. Today we’re going to focus on ATI’s new product for the high-end segment, the RADEON 9800 PRO.
Core changes
Formerly known under the codename R350, RADEON 9800 PRO builds on the RADEON 9700 architecture that has been so popular with gamers since it was launched last summer. Like RADEON 9700, RADEON 9800 PRO is built off a 0.15-micron manufacturing process and utilizes a 256-bit DDR memory subsystem.
With RADEON 9800 PRO, ATI’s engineers have gone over the R300 core and tweaked it a bit. Optimizations have been made to improve timings and signal integrity, allowing the RADEON 9800 PRO to scale to higher clock speeds than its predecessor without generating an excessive amount of heat. As a result, the RADEON 9800 PRO ships at a core clock frequency of 380MHz (versus 325MHz in RADEON 9700 PRO), while the memory clock has been boosted to 340MHz (680MHz effective). RADEON 9700 PRO memory was clocked at 310MHz. These changes boost fill rate by 14% and memory bandwidth by 2GB/sec.
SIDEBAR: The Official PR
| Shaders/HYPERZ/AA | Page:: ( 2 / 22 ) |
SMARTSHADER 2.1
Besides the optimizations made to the RADEON 9800 PRO core, ATI has also improved its pixel shading engine with a new F-buffer. The F-buffer works like a form of cache memory, storing pixels that require multiple passes rather than writing them out to the frame buffer each time. This feature in particular was meant to address the shortcomings of RADEON 9700’s instruction length. With RADEON 9700 limited to 64 instructions, some complex shader effects required the pixel shading engine to make multiple passes. While this produced lifelike images, performance is crippled in the process. The F-buffer eliminates some of the redundancy from the graphics pipeline, saving time and reducing memory bandwidth requirements.
ATI also likes to point out that the F-buffer allows them to support fragment shader programs of unlimited length.
HYPERZ III+
HYPERZ III+ builds on the HYPERZ III occlusion culling technology first introduced in the RADEON 9700 family last year. The key improvement is the enhanced Z-cache that has been optimized to work better with stencil buffers. This is important for the next generation games that like Doom III that will be using real-time shadow volumes extensively. Take a look at some of our E3 2002 Doom III screenshots for a few eye candy examples.
We ran a few tests with PowerVR’s FableMark to get an indication of the improvements:
In the tests we underclocked our RADEON 9800 PRO to RADEON 9700 PRO levels, as you can see we saw a performance improvement of up to 2%. Not a whole lot, but as scene complexity is increased so should performance.
SMOOTHVISION 2.1
Besides the aforementioned improvements, ATI also states that it has incorporated optimizations in the memory controller that improve efficiency. The end result is greater performance when anti-aliasing is enabled, especially in the higher AA modes. We ran a few quick benchmarks to test this as well:
Other than 1600x1200, where we noted a 2% performance improvement, we really don’t see any gains. You’ll need to go up to 6xAA to really get any benefits from the improvements implemented in SMOOTHVISION 2.1 and by then the added bandwidth demands may be too much for the RADEON 9800 PRO core to handle.
SIDEBAR: We’ll be taking a closer look at the RADEON 9800 PRO’s 2D quality, compatibility, and more in an upcoming review.
| RADEON 9800/RADEON 9600 Family | Page:: ( 3 / 22 ) |
DDR2 RADEON 9800!
Yes, you read that correctly, ATI will release a RADEON 9800 PRO product with DDR2 memory, except its not quite what you think. The DDR2-equipped RADEON 9800 PRO will ship with 256MB of DDR2 memory. We’ve been told that the memory core will ship at the same 380MHz as the 128MB boards, but the final clock speed of the memory has not been determined. ATI is shooting for the same 21.8GB/sec currently offered by the 128MB RADEON 9800 PRO, but since this product isn’t final this may change.
The reason ATI decided to go with DDR2 for the 256MB board was power consumption. 256MB of DDR memory would have put RADEON 9800 PRO over the power budget ATI’s engineers were shooting for, so they elected to go with DDR2. We were not given an MSRP for the 256MB board, but were told that it will begin shipping sometime next month.
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The RADEON 9800
We know that the RADEON 9800 PRO ships in a 380/340 configuration, will begin shipping this month, and is priced at $399, unfortunately the details on the vanilla RADEON 9800 aren’t quite as clear. Final clock speeds have not been determined, and availability is listed as Q2, which could be anywhere from 1-3 months from now. ATI has quoted an MSRP of $349, so the board is only $50 less than the 9800 PRO flagship.
Based on all this, we don’t have the same excitement for the 9800 as we did for the 9700 when it was released. As you’ll see in our overclocking results, even the 9800 PRO appears to be clocked conservatively, so we have no doubt that the 9800 will scale to high clock frequencies well, but we’re only saving $50 (versus $100 last year with the 9700) and we’ll have to wait longer for it. Surprisingly, ATI plans to market their PRO and non-PRO cards this time around, for R300 they left non-PRO cards to third-party manufacturers. We’ll have to wait and see how everything plays out with street prices and 9800 performance but right now we don’t see any reason to hold out for the RADEON 9800.
The RADEON 9600 Family
Unlike the RADEON 9500 series, which shared the same R300 core among all four products (including as it turns out, the “4”-pixel pipeline RADEON 9500), RADEON 9600 is based on an entirely different core.
The biggest change is the new 0.13-micron manufacturing process. As a result, RADEON 9600 doesn’t require an external power source. Like RADEON 9500 (non-PRO), RADEON 9600 utilizes a 4-pixel pipeline architecture with one texture unit per pipe. To get around the fill rate disadvantage in comparison to RADEON 9500 PRO, ATI has cranked up the core clock frequency: 400MHz in the case of the RADEON 9600 PRO, and 325MHz for the RADEON 9600. To further improve performance for the 9600 family ATI has integrated an enhanced memory controller as well as new 8:1 loss-less Z-Compression (versus 6:1)
We’ll have to wait and see how things play out with the RADEON 9600 PRO. It’s 400MHz core/300MHz memory should help it perform well, but the RADEON 9500 PRO still enjoys a fill rate advantage. The RADEON 9600 PRO will be priced in the $169-$199 price range while the RADEON 9600 will come in around $149-$169. The RADEON 9600 will be clocked at 325MHz core/200MHz memory so you’ll be better off with the RADEON 9500 PRO. Both cards will begin shipping in April.
SIDEBAR: The codename for the RADEON 9600 core was RV350.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 4 / 22 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz
ASUS P4G8X Deluxe (E7205 “Granite Bay”)
512MB Mushkin PC3200 (operating at DDR266) SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (“Balanced” Driver setting)
Detonator 42.69
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO (“Quality” Driver setting)
Driver version Catalyst 3.1
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO (“Quality” Driver setting)
Driver version 7.84 beta
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 8.1
DirectX 9.0
Benchmarks
3DMark 2001 SE
3DMark03
Quake III: Arena version 1.17
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (Elephant Atrium demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003
Comanche 4
FableMark
ChameleonMark
Codecult Codecreatures
SIDEBAR: ATI also announced the RADEON 9200, but this is nothing more than a 9100 with AGP 8X.
| Fill rate, T&L Performance, Bump mapping | Page:: ( 5 / 22 ) |
Fill rate Performance
The 9800 PRO and 9700 PRO are off quite a bit in hitting their theoretical potential in single texturing, the GeForce FX architecture is much closer to reaching its potential. The situation changes quite a bit in multi-texturing however, as tested with 3DMark 2001SE RADEON 9800 PRO is within 3% of its theoretical fill rate while GeForce FX is at around 15%. As a result RADEON 9800 PRO is able to approach GeForce FX’s actual fill rate in multi-texturing.
T&L Performance
Bump mapping
Notes
GeForce FX is strong in polygon testing, but RADEON 9800 PRO comes back with a vengeance in bump mapping tests. Neither one of these series of tests are as important as they were a few years ago, but they’re still interesting to look at nonetheless.
SIDEBAR: Clock speeds haven’t been announced for the RADEON 9200 yet.
| Shader Performance | Page:: ( 6 / 22 ) |
Pixel Shader Performance
Vertex Shader Performance
ChameleonMark
Notes
The RADEON 9800 PRO exhibits excellent pixel shader performance in 3DMark 03 (PS 2.0) and 3DMark 2001SE (01), vertex shader performance is also best in class according to our benchmarks. However, in our GeForce FX preview we noted GeForce FX’s deficiencies in these benchmarks only to see it turn things around in synthetic benchmarks like Codecreatures. So we’ll reserve final judgement on shader performance until after we see those results.
SIDEBAR: We used ChameleonMark 1.0 for our tests. As far as we know this is the latest version of the benchmark available.
| Occlusion Culling | Page:: ( 7 / 22 ) |
FableMark
SIDEBAR: You can find more details on FableMark at PowerVR’s website
| Codecreatures | Page:: ( 8 / 22 ) |
Codecult Codecreatures
Notes
GeForce FX puts up a strong showing in Codecreatures, but ultimately RADEON 9800 PRO is able to prevail. Interestingly enough the GeForce FX 5800 is largely able to keep up with RADEON 9700 PRO, despite the shader performance results we saw earlier, which would suggest otherwise.
SIDEBAR: Codecult used the Codecreatures engine to model a high-speed train track in Shanghai.
| 3D Mark 2001 SE | Page:: ( 9 / 22 ) |
3D Mark 2001 SE v.330
Notes
In testing with 3DMark 2001SE, RADEON 9800 PRO offers some nice performance gains over its predecessor, at 1280x1024 the difference is 11% -- enough to allow RADEON 9800 PRO to outperform GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
SIDEBAR: Don’t forget to check out our GeForce FX preview to hear FX Flow in action!
| 3D Mark 2001 SE – Frame Rates | Page:: ( 10 / 22 ) |
3DMark 2001 - Car Chase
3DMark 2001 - Dragothic
3DMark 2001 - Lobby
3DMark 2001 - Nature
SIDEBAR: ATI recently announced that they’ve shipped their 1,000,000th DX9 graphics card
| 3DMark03 | Page:: ( 11 / 22 ) |
3DMark03
Notes
While NVIDIA has done their best to improve their performance with 3DMark 03, RADEON 9800 PRO comes out on top across the board in this benchmark. Of course, the overall results have come into question, so we also provide the frame rate results from the individual game tests.
SIDEBAR: What do you think of the new 3DMark benchmark? Drop your thoughts in the news comments!
| 3DMark03 – Frame Rates | Page:: ( 12 / 22 ) |
3DMark03 – Wings of Fury
3DMark03 – Battle of Proxycon
3DMark03 – Troll’s Lair
3DMark03 – Mother Nature
Notes
Looking at the results, we see that RADEON 9800 PRO comes out ahead of GeForce FX in all individual game tests except mother nature, which uses 2.0 pixel shaders in several places. In the full review of the 9800 PRO we’ll go back and run a few tests with the RADEON 9800 PRO underclocked to see if HYPERZ III+ is able to enhance RADEON 9800 PRO’s performance in tests 2 and 3, which use stencil shadow volume for shadows.
SIDEBAR: ATI recently announced an extension of its partnership with Nintendo. Remember it was ATI’s Nintendo team that brought us RADEON 9700.
| Serious Sam SE | Page:: ( 13 / 22 ) |
Serious Sam SE (Elephant Atrium) – OpenGL
Notes
Serious Sam has traditionally favored the NVIDIA GPUs, although we’re able to see RADEON 9800 PRO come out ahead at 1600x1200. One interesting aspect to note is the performance of RADEON 9700/9800 at the lower resolutions, suggesting we’re CPU-limited. We see the same situation occurs with the GeForce FX family at 800x600 in this benchmark.
SIDEBAR: With its impressive flexibility and individual game tests designed to stress difference PC components, Serious Sam has always been one of our favorite benchmarks.
| Quake III: Arena | Page:: ( 14 / 22 ) |
Quake III - OpenGL
SIDEBAR: ATI shipped some new demos with the RADEON 9800 PRO card. We’ll provide the screenshots in the official review.
| Comanche 4 | Page:: ( 15 / 22 ) |
Comanche 4 – DirectX 8
SIDEBAR: What’s up next for ATI? R400.
| Unreal Tournament 2003 | Page:: ( 16 / 22 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby – DirectX 8
Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch – DirectX 8
Notes
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra performs well in UT2003, besting RADEON 9800 PRO by 9% at 1600x1200. But lets see how the story plays out once we turn on AA.
SIDEBAR: You can check out the new lava caves screensaver on ATI’s website.
| 4x Anti-Aliasing | Page:: ( 17 / 22 ) |
Quake III – High Quality
Notes
The tables have turned for GeForce FX 5800 Ultra in Quake 3 was anti-aliasing is enabled. In fact, RADEON 9700 PRO is able to outperform NVIDIA’s latest and greatest. RADEON 9800 PRO outshines 9700 PRO by 12% at 1600x1200.
SIDEBAR: ATI is launching all of its DX9 cards at GDC today.
| Q3 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering | Page:: ( 18 / 22 ) |
Quake III – High Quality
SIDEBAR: NVIDIA also has a few things in store for GDC.
| Serious Sam SE AA/Aniso | Page:: ( 19 / 22 ) |
Serious Sam SE (Elephant Atrium) – OpenGL
Notes
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is able to hold its own until it hits 1600x1200x32, at that point RADEON 9800 PRO is able to nose ahead.
SIDEBAR: The usual players will all be producing RADEON 9800 PRO cards, FIC pre-announced accidentally a few days ago
| Unreal Tournament 4x Anti-Aliasing, 8x Anisotropic Filtering | Page:: ( 20 / 22 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby
Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch
Notes
The RADEON 9800 PRO offers nearly 100 frames per second at 1280x1024, that’s a 17% improvement over RADEON 9700 PRO, its closest competitor. At 1600x1200 that margin increases to 19%.
SIDEBAR: We’re glad that ATI got rid of that fragile floppy connector!
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 21 / 22 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby
Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch
Notes
We were pleasantly surprised by our overclocking results with the RADEON 9800 PRO – we nearly hit GeForce FX 5800 Ultra speeds on the core! This is certainly a tribute to ATI’s engineering, we’re looking at a 10% core clock over default and 11% on the memory. We were actually able to crank both speeds higher but ran into visual artifacts, with better cooling (Tyan Tachyon 9800 PRO anyone) who knows what we could accomplish!
SIDEBAR: The RADEON 9800 PRO card we used for testing is VisionTek's reference board.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 22 / 22 ) |
With RADEON 9800 PRO, ATI extends its lead in the high-end segment. The improvements ATI has made should ensure that the RADEON 9800 PRO will provide more than enough horsepower for the first crop of DirectX 9 games that will debut later this year, and just like its predecessor it appears that the core has a wealth of headroom for overclocking.
The real beauty of it all is the price and availability. At $400, ATI has established new performance expectations at that price point, and once cards from third-party manufacturers trickle onto retail, it won’t be long before you’re paying $350 for the best graphics card money can buy. Also keep in mind that these new releases will quickly drive RADEON 9700 PRO and 9500 PRO prices south this spring. When you factor in the GeForce FX 5800 availability situation, it becomes even more of a no-brainer to go the ATI route on the high-end. Even the most die hard NVIDIA fan must be tempted by ATI’s latest offerings.
It remains to be seen how RADEON 9800 will fare. If it isn’t priced significantly lower than 9800 PRO, we have a feeling most consumers will spend the extra money for the PRO model. Lets face it, once you’re spending over $300 on a graphics card does it really matter if it’s say $325 versus $375? And once you factor in the low, low 9700 and 9700 PRO prices we’re likely to see soon we see many gamers taking an all (RADEON 9800 PRO) or nothing (RADEON 9700/9700 PRO) approach. It’s a pretty beautiful thing when even a vanilla RADEON 9700 is considered mainstream isn’t it?
We’ll have to wait and see how the RADEON 9600 and 9200 battles play out -- NVIDIA looks pretty competitive in these areas. Of course, we said the same thing back in August when we were comparing ATI’s R300 core to NV30, and we all know how that one played out.
Check back for a full review of the RADEON 9800 PRO in the coming weeks. There are quite a few topics we still need to address, most notably being compatibility.
SIDEBAR: What do you think of the RADEON 9800 PRO? Were you expecting more from R350 or are you pleased with what you saw? Speak!