
Just four weeks ago, ATI announced the little brother of the Radeon 9700 PRO - the Radeon 9500 PRO, a graphics card tailored to the needs of the mid-priced market. The GPU is ostensibly the same as the one used in the 9700, apart from the fact that the 9500 has to make to do with a 128-bit memory bus, which reduces the card's memory bandwidth to a moderate 8.8 GB per second. To put this into perspective, a Radeon 9700 PRO delivers 19.8 GB per second, and a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 - also with a 128-bit bus - manages 10.4 GB per second.
Except for the reduced memory bandwidth, there are no other differences between the 9500 PRO and the well-known 9700 series. However, this is not the case with the 9500 (without the PRO). Here, ATI has reduced the number of pixel pipelines from eight to four, which cannot help but have a dramatic effect on the card's performance. This 9500 variant is expected to find favor in the OEM market, in ready built, value-oriented PCs.
Here is a summary of the differences:
- Radeon 9700 PRO: The fastest and most expensive card among the ATI models. Eight pixel pipelines, four vertex shaders, 128 MB with 256-bit memory bus, DirectX 9 support. Clock speed (chip/memory): 325/310. Official price: $399.
- Radeon 9700: The smaller of the 9700 series differs in its lower clock speeds: 275/270. Official price: $299.
- Radeon 9500 PRO: The memory interface was reduced from 256-bit to 128-bit, but it can still accept up to 128 MB of memory. Otherwise, it has the same features as the 9700 cards, meaning that it offers full support for DirectX 9. Clock speeds: 275/275. Official price: $199.
- Radeon 9500: Again, the memory bus is only 128-bit. The maximum memory is reduced from 128 MB to 64 MB. In addition, four pixel pipelines are left out. However, it still offers full DirectX 9 support. Clock speeds: 275/270. Official price: $179.
- Radeon 9000/9000 PRO: Based on the technology of the Radeon 8500 (R200). Supports DirectX 8.1.
Four weeks ago, ATI supplied a prototype for preliminary review (see ATI Increases Its Lead: The New Radeon 9700, 9500 PRO and 9500 ). It had been built on a Radeon 9700 PRO board with a 256-bit memory bus. The fact that the chip only had a 128-bit path to the main memory meant that only 64 MB memory was used on the prototype card. The memory also ran 5 MHz slower, at 270 MHz. The results were, of course, only provisional.
Now ATI has released the finalized version of the 9500 PRO. Thanks to the reduced memory bandwidth, the new board is much cheaper to produce, as it only has half the number of pipelines to the memory modules as the 9700. Apart from a revised layout for the memory modules and the voltage converter, the differences don't appear to be very major. ATI has also now decided to dispense with the heatsink at the rear of the card behind the converter.

The components on the Radeon 9500 Pro are arranged differently than those on the Radeon 9700 PRO.

The Radeon 9700 PRO for comparsion.

The backside of the card. You can see that it's using fewer wires from the chip to the memory modules than on a R9700 PCB.

The card is equipped with 3.6ns DDR BGA memory modules made by Hynix.

The voltage regulators are located close to the chip on the Radeon 9500 PRO PCB.
| NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 | NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200-8x | ATI Radeon 9700 PRO | ATI Radeon 9700 | ATI Radeon 9500 PRO | ATI Radeon 9500 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chip Technology | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Process | 0.15 Micron | 0.15 Micron | 0.15 Micron | 0.15 Micron | 0.15 Micron | 0.15 Micron |
| Transistors | 63 Mio | 63 Mio | ~107 Mio | ~107 Mio | ~107 Mio | -unknown |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR | 256-bit DDR | 256-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR |
| Memory Bandwidth | 10.4 GB/s | 8.0 GB/s | 19.8 GB/s | 17.6 GB/s | 8.8 GB/s | 8.8 GB/s |
| Pixel Fillrate | 1.24 Gigapixel/s | 1.1 Gigapixel/s | 2.6 Gigapixel/s | 2.2 Gigapixel/s | 2.2 Gigapixel/s | 1.1 Gigapixel/s |
| Anti Aliased Fillrate | 4.8 Billion AA Samples/s | 4 Billion AA Samples/s | 15.6 Billion AA Samples/s | 13.2 Billion AA Samples/s | 13.2 Billion AA Samples/s | - unknown |
| Max FSAA Mode | 4x(s) | 4x(s) | 6x | 6x | 6x | 6x |
| Triangle Transform Rate | 136 M Triangles/s | 113 M Triangles/s | 325 M Triangles/s | 275 M Triangles/s | 275 M Triangles/s | 275 M Triangles/s |
| AGP Bus | 1x/2x/4x | 1x/2x/4x/8x | 1x/2x/4x/8x | 1x/2x/4x/8x | 1x/2x/4x/8x | 1x/2x/4x/8x |
| Memory | 128 MB | 128 MB | 128/256 MB | 128 MB | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| GPU Clock | 300 MHz | 250 MHz | 325 MHz | 275 MHz | 275 MHz | 275 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 325 MHz (650 DDR) | 256 MHz (513 DDR) | 310 MHz (620 DDR) | 270 MHz (540 DDR) | 275 MHz (550 DDR) | 270 MHz (540 DDR) |
| Memory | BGA 2.8ns | BGA 3,3-4ns | BGA 2.9 ns | -unknown | BGA 3.6 ns | -unknown |
| Vertex Shader | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Pixel Pipelines | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 |
| Texture Units Per Pipe | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Textures per Texture Unit | 4 | 4 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Vertex S. Version | 1.1 | 1.1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Pixel S. Version | 1.3 | 1.3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| DirectX Generation | 8 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| FSAA Modi | MultiSampling | MultiSampling | MultiSampling | MultiSampling | MultiSampling | MultiSampling |
| Memory Optmizations | LMA II | LMA II | Hyper Z III | Hyper Z III | Hyper Z III | Hyper Z III |
| Display Outputs | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Chip Internal Ramdacs | 2 x 350 MHz | 2 x 350 MHz | 2 x 400 MHz | 2 x 400 MHz | 2 x 400 MHz | 2 x 400 MHz |
| Chip External Ramdacs | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Bits per Color Channel | 8 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Special | - | - | TV Encoder On-Chip; FullStream
Adaptive Filtering |
TV Encoder On-Chip; FullStream
Adaptive Filtering |
TV Encoder On-Chip; FullStream
Adaptive Filtering |
TV Encoder On-Chip; FullStream
Adaptive Filtering |
| Estimated Price | ~ $200-300 | ~ $150-200 | $399 | $299 | $199 | $179 |
We compared the Radeon 9500 PRO with ATI's brand new range and with the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and Ti4200-8x. To stretch the cards to their limits, we ran our tests using a powerful 3.06 GHz Pentium 4. If you are interested in how the cards perform with a slower CPU (2.2 GHz), take a look at the preview article that we published four weeks ago.
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz |
| Memory | 2 x 256 MB, PC333 cl2 |
| Graphic Cards | NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 128 MB
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 ATI Radeon 9000 Pro ATI Radeon 9500 Pro ATI Radeon 9700 ATI Radeon 9700 PRO |
| Motherboard | ASUS P4PE |
| Drivers & Software | |
| Graphics Driver | NVIDIA - v. 40.72 WHQL
ATI - v. 02.4 (6.13.10.6200) |
| DirectX Version | 8.1 |
| OS | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Benchmarks & Settings | |
| Aquanox | Retail Version v1.17 |
| Max Payne | Retail Version v1.05
Benchmark using 'Shooting Alex' |
| Unreal Tournament | Demo v1.1 |
| 2003 Demo | Antalus Benchmark |
| 3D Mark 2001 SE | Pro Version, Build 330 |
Benchmarks
Aquanox



The reduced memory bandwidth is quite noticeable in Aquanox. In 1280x1024, the 9500 PRO was 46% slower than the 9700 PRO and only marginally ahead of the Ti 4200-8x. The GeForce 4 Ti 4600 was a good 10 - 15% faster in all resolutions.



With Max Payne, the picture is similar. Here, however, the 9500 PRO performed better against the Ti 4200-8x than it did running Aquanox. It was close on the heels of the GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Both the Radeon 9700 and Radeon 9700 PRO were considerably faster.



In Unreal Tournament 2003, the 9500 PRO once again found itself in between both NVIDIA cards, although it was closer to the Ti 4600 than the Ti 4200-8x. The performance of the Radeon 9000 PRO was disappointing.



The 3D Mark 2001 SE benchmark becomes less meaningful when you use faster processors. Our results placed the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 very close to the Radeon 9700, something that would rarely happen with real live benchmarks. The Ti 4200-8x rating also seems much too high. Either the NVIDIA drivers are too well optimized for this benchmark or the ATI are inadequately optimized. Another explanation could also be that the CPU affected the result too much.
4x FSAA



The large Radeon cards come into their own on anti-aliasing. Despite its lower memory bandwidth, the Radeon 9500 PRO left the large NVIDIA standing. In 1024x768, it is well over the magical 60 fps mark of UT. The Radeon 9000 PRO refused to complete this test and rebooted the computer in protest each time we tried.



Thanks to ATI's adaptive filtering techniques, anisotropic filtering was twice as fast as with the GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Even the slow Radeon 9000 PRO clearly outperformed the NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA is in fact well aware that it needs to deliver better performance with anisotropic filtering, and the new GeForce FX will also incorporate adaptive techniques. It remains to be seen whether it will also be applied to the GeForce 4 cards as well. In theory this is unlikely, as NVIDIA has been talking about custom designed circuitry for the FX. We'll just have to wait and see.



At the highest video quality levels, the NVIDIA cards verged on the unplayable, while the Radeon 9500/9700 cards were acceptable. Unfortunately, the 9000 PRO was very prone to crashing.


The 3D Mark 2001SE fill rate tests were a surprise. Despite an identical processor speed, the Radeon 9500 PRO clearly came unstuck in the single texturing tests in comparison with the 9700. In multi-texturing, the scores were - as we expected - nearly the same. Has ATI changed the processor more than it would like us to believe?
At a selling price expected to be around $199 US, there is no doubt that the Radeon 9500 PRO is an attractive product, although it can't come close to delivering the performance of the Radeon 9700. Under normal circumstances it is slower than a GeForce 4 Ti 4600. However, it is an ideal card for anyone looking for good performance with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing.
It certainly provides stiff competition for the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4200-8x, which is already well established in this price category (street price between $170 and $200). If you are looking for good performance at a reasonable price, the Radeon 9500 PRO should be your first choice.
Be wary of the Radeon 9500 (without PRO). Although no samples of this card have been available for testing, we would expect the pixel pipeline restriction to adversely affect its performance. Look into this carefully if you are considering buying.
The poor showing of the Radeon 9500 PRO in the 3D Mark 2001 SE single texturing fill rate benchmarks is curious. Some more research is needed to find out exactly what the problem is here.
Expect to see Radeon 9500 cards from the following manufacturers:
- Connect 3D
- CP Technologies
- FIC
- Gigabyte
- Hercules
- Hightech
- Sapphire
- Wistron
- Yuan