HiS Excalibur Radeon 9600XT Turbo review (Page 2)

HiS Excalibur Radeon 9600XT Turbo review

Graphics cards 1054 Page 2 of 15 Published 2004-01-27 08:00 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Reviews

Page 2 - Product Overview

The ProductAs most of you know the Radeon 9600 XT is ATIs $199 answer to the Radeon 9600 Pro, it's their fall 2003 refresh product for the mainstream market . When we look at the competition this product is lined up directly against NVIDIA's 5700 Ultra. Not too long ago NVIDIA pulled a rabbit out of it's head though and released the (mind the name) GeForce FX 5900 XT. It's at the same price-level as the 9600XT yet has a few advantages. In our tests I would like to suggest you take a good look at the three products I just mentioned.

The Radeon 9600 XT GPU runs at 500 MHz, that's 25% faster than the previous 9600 Pro model which was handling a 400 MHz core frequency. The reference Memory frequency remained at 2x300 MHz (DDR), and this is where HiS does it a bit different with an additional 50 MHz increase.

Another advantage of the 'XT' series is that they support the 'Overdrive' function. Overdrive is designed in a way that even the non-guru's can make use of overclocking without the need of knowledge on the topic and done in a way that's safe enough ATI. Normally manual overclocking as we show you with any graphics card can be achieved by increasing the speed of the core and memory frequency. ATI have taken a new approach here, they built in a thermal diode on the card which consistently monitors the temperature of the graphics core. Overdrive is designed to clock to the next 'safe' level until it reaches a point where the core will get too hot. If that happens it'll clock back slightly to remain under that limit. The Radeon 9600 XT will run at one of three speeds depending on its temperature: 500MHz, 513MHz or 527MHz.

Installation
It's really not hard to install a graphics card yourself nowadays. Especially with brands like ATI and NVIDIA that use unified driver sets. If you have a really new product then make sure you have the latest drivers on your HD. First uninstall your current graphics cards drivers carefully, this is very important especially if the older graphics was from a different chipset manufacturer. Now power down the PC and pull out the power cable. Insert the graphics card in the slot, boot up windows, run the driver installation, then restart and you are set to go. That's all. Also important, make sure you have the latest version of DirectX (9) installed.

The Bundle
In the box we'll find a decent selection of goodies: CD with driver software, Cyberlink PowerDirector 2.5 VE, PowerDVD 5, and a 6-in-1 CD with demo versions of games. Besides software we'll find a good Manual, SVideo-to-RCA cable, SVideo out cable and a DVI to CRT adapter to hook up two analog monitors towards the graphics card. All in all a nice package. Oh hey, I almost forgot the Half-life 2 coupon.

Specifications:

Graphics Processor