9500,worth the wait compared to 9700...?

[Johnny Rotten]

I sure wish ATI would bin their chips like nvidia does. The one thing I've really appreciated with the GF3 line and the GF4 line is the availability of lower clocked and lower priced chips that are functionally identical to higher priced and higher clocked chips. I've been using a GF3Ti200 for the past year that is clocked juuuust a shade slower than a Ti500. And many people are overclocking Ti4200's and Ti4400's to near Ti4600/Ti4600 speeds. Id love to pick up a 9700 'lite' and be able to overclock it to 9700 Pro speeds (give or take).

 

[GetStuff]

It would be nice to see a lower clocked 9700 pro priced at $299 with the 9500 comming in at <=$200

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Thus far, the 9500 sounds like a board I hope that lots of people buy, but which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Popularizing the PS2.0/VS2.0 feature set is a wonderful thing. Developers will be encouraged to start (or continue) working on DX9 games.

In the meantime, however, the 9500 will be beaten by the 8500 and 4200 in current (multitexturing) games. With aniso+FSAA it will be competitive or superior, but probably not fast enough to be usable with those features at >=1280x1024 in most games.

 

[Nagorak]

I don't think it can be slower than R8500, after all R9000 is only 4x1 instead of 4x2 and it's only barely slower. The R9500 must be faster. After all it does have better HSR and other tweaks in it for more speed. We'll have to wait and see though. If it isn't faster than the R8500 then it's a waste of money.

 

[antlers]

Anyone thinks there's a chance it will be an 8x1, but with a 128 bit interface, so it will be bandwidth starved, but otherwise comparable to a lower-clocked 9700? Then it would beat a 4600 in all circumstances, but not by as much as a 9700, especially with AA and aniso. Seems like a good fit for the market and price points.

 

[Randell]

crucially it will best the 8500 in 2 perfromance areas and 1 quality area at least;

i) HyperZ III will work with AA
ii) AA is MSAA not SS.
iii) AF quality improved.

However I'm holding out on whole 9500/9700 considerations until;

i) AA does 16 bit - (Currently playing DAoC a lot)
ii) LOD bias slider is working properly (bias at 16x AF on my 8500 is too high without using AA to reduce shimmer - which MSAA doesnt do).

If NV30 is launched by the time these issues are sorted (or not) then it may be NV30 (lower model proabably) for me anyway.

 

[alexsok]

Anyone thinks there's a chance it will be an 8x1, but with a 128 bit interface, so it will be bandwidth starved, but otherwise comparable to a lower-clocked 9700? Then it would beat a 4600 in all circumstances, but not by as much as a 9700, especially with AA and aniso. Seems like a good fit for the market and price points.

That's very unlikely...
128bit interface - sure, almost confirmed!
8x1 - nah, not a chance.

4x1, 128bit interface, full dx9 compliancy - more than enough comptetition for gf4ti4600, which means further price drops and we all benefit!

Remember, the AGP 8x variants of gf4ti series of cards should begin shipping in October (after all the major retailers sold the old AGP 4x variants), so I still see nVidia offering some comptetition to ATI. NV30's release should further balance things and we shall see the real battle between these two giants!

 

[Sabastian]

Anyone thinks there's a chance it will be an 8x1, but with a 128 bit interface, so it will be bandwidth starved, but otherwise comparable to a lower-clocked 9700? Then it would beat a 4600 in all circumstances, but not by as much as a 9700, especially with AA and aniso. Seems like a good fit for the market and price points.

That's very unlikely...
128bit interface - sure, almost confirmed!
8x1 - nah, not a chance.

4x1, 128bit interface, full dx9 compliancy - more than enough comptetition for gf4ti4600, which means further price drops and we all benefit!

Remember, the AGP 8x variants of gf4ti series of cards should begin shipping in October (after all the major retailers sold the old AGP 4x variants), so I still see nVidia offering some comptetition to ATI. NV30's release should further balance things and we shall see the real battle between these two giants!

Radeon 9500 specs..... source

"Powered by the AGP 8x RADEON 9500 Visual Processing Unit (VPU).
Complete DirectX 9.0 support for precedented realism and sophisticated visual effects.
SMOOTHVISION 2.0 technology provides new levels of image quality with advanced full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) and anisotropic filtering.
Revolutionary new video features including VIDEOSHADER and FULLSTREAM technologies.
128-bit memory interface of the RADEON 9500 utilizes the latest HYPER Zâ„¢ III bandwidth-conserving technology and provides end users with faster graphics performance.
Supports 64MB of high speed double data rate (DDR) memory @550Mhz clock speed.
Compliant to the AGP 3.0 specification by Intel Corporation supports the corresponding technology, AGP 8X, doubles the peak bandwidth capability of the AGP bus to 2.1GB/s, while retaining compatibility with the previous-generation AGP 4X technology.
Featuring ATI -Industry-leading software suite for the best enhancement and accelerate the ultimate visual experience.
First 8-pixel pipeline architecture provides top 3D performance for both Direct3D and OpenGL games and applications.
Display configuration supports CRT, DVI-I & TV-Out (PAL/NTSC).
Multi-display configuration support with ATI HYDRAVISION software.
Industry-leading hardware DVD video playback with software DVD player support.

Supports 3D resolutions (32-bit color) up to 2048x1536.
Radeon 9500 ATI SMARTSHADER 2.0 technology, supports Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and the latest OpenGL functionality allowing gamers to experience complex, movie-quality effects in next-generation 3D games and applications.


Four parallel rendering pipelines.

Four parallel geometry engines.

AGP 8x technology support.

SMARTSHADER 2.0.

Programmable pixel and vertex shaders.

16 textures per pass.

Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 128-bit floating point precision

Vertex shaders up to 1024 instructions with flow control.

Multiple render target support.

Shadow volume rendering acceleration.

High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support.

Supports DirectX 9.0 and the latest version of OpenGL.

SMOOTHVISION 2.0.

2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes.

Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns.

2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes.

Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options.

ATI latest HYPER Z III support.

3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test.

Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)

Fast Z-Buffer Clear.

TRUFORM 2.0.

2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support.

Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon.

Displacement mapping.

VIDEOSHADER.

Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video.

FULLSTREAM video de-blocking technology for Internet Video.

Noise removal filtering for captured video.

MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion.

All-format DTV/HDTV decoding.

YPrPb component output.

Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion.

Dual integrated display controllers.

Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs.

Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI & HDCP compliant).

Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution (PAL/NTSC)

Optimized for Pentium 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon 3Dnow!

PC 2002 compliant. "

 

[Prometheus]

Powercolor specs are about radeon 9500(275/275).I've heard that there'll be a radeon 9500pro too.Radeon9500pro will be different(higher clocks and 128mb ddr)
The 128 bit bus it true.To add something radeon9500 will have all 4 vertex engines.I think some people overestimate the power of 256 bit bus(see Parhelia)If we just take the specs radeon9500pro will be faster than gf4ti4600.
IMO radeon 9500 will not be bandwitdth starved since it doesn't have 8 rendering pipelines!!
I think that nvidia will go for the high end battle since the ti4200 version of nv30 will come spring 2003.
Don't forget that mainsteram and lowend provide the profits and not the highend.

 

[Randell]

so is the only difference lower clock and 128 bit bus?

 

[Xmas]

Four parallel rendering pipelines.

Four parallel geometry engines.

 

[alexsok]

Something about their specs seems fishy and they removed them from their site too...

 

[Prometheus]

Something about their specs seems fishy and they removed them from their site too...

Maybe it's because they were not supposed too put up specs until the official announcement from Ati.

 

[alexsok]

Maybe it's because they were not supposed too put up specs until the official announcement from Ati.

I thought about that as well, but I quickly discarded this option after the following line in their specs:

Vertex shaders up to 1024 instructions with flow control

So let me get this straight, R9500 is more poweful than R9700?!

Unless they meant flow control based on constants, this seems to be the case...

edit:
after further thinking, it came to my mind that R9700 is also 1024 instructions with flow control (albeit, based on constants), so no big suprise there...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but at 1024*768 you have less than half the number of pixels than in 1600*1200. That means that if you cut the number of pipelines and the bus width of the R9700 in half, then you should still get similar performance in 1024 on the 9500 than in 1600 on the R9700.
(huh, long sentence
So whatever the big daddy can do in the higher resolution, you can still get it, wether it is 16x aniso or 4X FSAA, if you can obtain similar clock speeds. That sounds like a pretty good deal...

 

[RussSchultz]

Especially since my LCD monitor only does 1024x768

 

[alexsok]

Found an intresting tidbit about R9500:

There will be two cards, one R9500 and the other R9500pro, the clockspeeds on both variants will be the same (275/275), both will have 128bit bus, but the Pro version will have 8pipelines, while the regular one 4 pipelines!

 

[Randell]

Especially since my LCD monitor only does 1024x768

same here - thats what I was hoping for - perfromance of 9500 at 10x7 with 4xAA/16xAF same as 9700Pro.

 

[Nagorak]

Found an intresting tidbit about R9500:

There will be two cards, one R9500 and the other R9500pro, the clockspeeds on both variants will be the same (275/275), both will have 128bit bus, but the Pro version will have 8pipelines, while the regular one 4 pipelines!

If that's true they need to call the Pro the 9500 and the non-Pro 9300... Vastly different architectures should have different names.

Otherwise why not just call them 9700? I mean 4 pipes instead of 8 pipes is just as big a difference as 128 bit memory interface instead of 256 bit interface.

On the other hand, I hope it's true because I plan on going "pro".

 

[alexsok]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1033004236

Both RADEON 9500 and 9500 PRO are derivatives from the RADEON 9700 VPU. Both support AGP 8x, DirectX 9.0, provide four geometry engines, dual 400MHz RAMDACs, HyperZ-III, TrueForm 2.0 and so on. In order to lower the costs of their mainstream solutions, ATI decided to use 128-bit memory bus for the RADEON 9500 / 9500 PRO based graphics cards. All the RADEON 9500 powered products will be clocked at 275/550MHz for core/memory. The difference between the PRO and “non PROâ€￾ versions is the number of rendering pipelines: eight for the former and four for the latter.

A proof to what I said!