LOSTCIRCUITS

3DMark2001SE

Before going into more benchmarks, here is once again the "redlined" score of the Sapphire Ultimate RADEON 9600XT Edition. Basically, there are no anomalies at all, the "theoretical" numbers are exactly where they are supposed to be. This includes the fill rate that looks a bit low compared to some other cards, however, keep in mind that the 9600XT core uses four pixel pipes with a single texturing unit. At 500 MHz, this would in theory allow a peak fill rate of 2000 Mpixel/sec, however, in reality, most graphics adapters are not even getting close to that number. A notable exception from this rule are the GeForce FX 59xx cards that are running at about 90% efficacy for both single and multitexturing fill rates. A single texture fill rate of 50 % is definitely at the low end.

3DMark2001SE Continued

Turquoise: RADEON 9800XT; Yellow: GFFX 5900 Ultra; Pink: RADEON 9800 Pro; Blue: RADEON 9600XT

We didn't expect the 9600XT to win here but a score of ~ 75% of the big guns at the default resolution (10 x 7) is very respectable. Naturally, with higher resolution, the more limited memory bandwidth kicks in and drags the 9600 XT down to about 50% of the high-end cards' performance. For clarity reasons we will not show the ASUS benchmarks that are 2% lower than the Sapphire results, a difference that would only result in smudged graphs in the context of the overall capabilities compared to the high-end cards.

      

Top to bottom within each group: Wings of Fury, Battle of Proxycon, Troll's Lair, Mother Nature.

What you see above is the difference between $500 at the top end and about $160 for the 9600XT. Who says that it is impossible to game on a shoestring.

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