LOSTCIRCUITS

Conclusion

Time to wrap it up. In summary, we were looking at two different philosophies using the same basic hardware to come up with different graphics adapters, each of which is targeting its own niche. The Sapphire Ultimate RADEON 9600XT Edition with its default overclocking and fanless design is probably the esthetically more pleasing card, nothing beats a gold-plated heatpipe when it comes to show effects. Certainly, it is not only the visuals per se but also the non-conformism with a cooling world that is dominated by fans. Whether the extra 2 % of performance are going to make a difference in the grand picture is doubtful but at least, there were no issues at all with stability or overheating or anything else during the entire testing period.

The ASUS RADEON 9600XT is more conventional, as long as it comes to the cooling solution. The ASUS–fins at the back of the heatsink add a nice touch to the overall ambience of the graphics card. The RAGE Theatre chip adds the All-in-Wonder functionality to the otherwise humble 9600XT with all the additional ASUS goodies from Digital VCR to the security features that go way beyond the security application range.

With respect to performance, both cards are in the same league, with the Sapphire card being marginally faster, courtesy of a slightly overclocked core and in general, the 9600XT series is an excellent example of the diminishing returns when it comes to price / performance. On average, paying almost 3 x the price of a budget RADEON 9600XT for one of the top-of-the-line cards will buy a meager 30% in performance increase. Is it worth that extra amount of money?

      

Final Words

With every graphics review, the one overwhelming impression is how much graphics cards have evolved in the past 2 years. We had the RAGE Fury, we had the GeForce, we had the GeForce3 and the original RADEON followed by the RADEON 8500 and finally the 9700 and the nVidia GeForce FX series and each of these steps have brought us closer to a super-realistic representation of the visual world on a 2D screen. It is very easy to adapt to these improvements as they come along and forget about the insufficiencies we were facing only a few months ago – until something new comes along and then the high-end technology trickles down into the mainstream. This is exactly what the RADEON 9600XT series is all about, despite the fact that none of the benchmarks can really show it.

Quotables

We don't usually give out awards but in a nutshell, both manufacturers at least deserve some sort of a take-home message, so here they are:

Sapphire has managed to come out with the Ultimate RADEON 9600XT Edition, what else is there to say?

ASUS follows in the footsteps of their 9800 XT cards with the All-in-wonder technology in disguise and a great package.

Personally I would be very hard pressed to make a decision leaning towards one or the other card reviewed here but a purchase of either one will not be a wrong decision.

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