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GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 REVIEW

"Gigabyte Radeon 9000 review comparing the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 to the Gainward GeForce4 MX440. Software used for testing was:- 3dmark 2001 SE, Dronez, Max Payne, Mercedes Benz Truck Racing, Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, Star Wars Jedi Knight 2 - Jedi Outcast, Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003."

GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 SPECIFICATIONS

MAYA GV-R9000 PLUS(AF64DGE) provides high-end performance to the mainstream graphics market at a competitive price point. MAYA serial features four parallel, highly optimized rendering pipelines usually available only for the high-end gaming cards that significantly enhance performance and game-play responsiveness by doubling the pixel fill rate compared to the standard 2-pipeline architectures found in most mid-range products.

Graphics controller

RADEON™ 9000 graphics processing unit (GPU)

Memory configuration

64MB of double data rate memory(DDR)

Features At-a-glance

Powered by ATi Radeon 9000 GPU
Comprehensive 2X and 4X AGP support
High performance dual-channel 128-bit DDR
Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon™ 3Dnow! processor instructions
Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support for WindowsR XP GDI
Best-of-class 3D gaming with a four-pipeline architecture
Supports DirectX® 8.1 and OpenGL® 1.3 features
Charisma Engine™ II supports full Transformation (T&L)
Complex, realistic lighting effects with ATI SMARTSHADER™ technology
Sharper-looking 3D graphics with ATI SMOOTHVISION™ technology
Featuring CATALYST™ - Industry-leading software suite
D-Sub and TV-Out connector supported

3D Graphics Features

Four parallel rendering pipelines process up to 1.2 billion pixels per second
Smartshader™ technology
Full support for DirectX® 8.1 programmable pixel and vertex shaders in hardware
1.4 pixel shaders support up to 6 textures per rendering pass
1.1 vertex shaders support vertex programs up to 128 instructions
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® via extensions
Programmable shaders provide enhanced 3D effects in over 100 existing and upcoming game titles

MAYA GV-R9000 PLUS Features

Smartshader™
DirectX® 8.1 support
OpenGL® 1.3
Smoothvision™
Hyper Z™ II
Charisma Engine™ II
Pixel Tapestry™ II
Video Immersion™ II
High Performance Memory Support
Dual Display Support
Integrated Transformation, Clipping and Lighting
Twin Cache Architecture
SuperScalar Rendering
Single-Pass Multi-texturing
True Color Rendering
Triangle Setup Engine
Texture Cache
Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
Line & Edge Anti-aliasing
Full-Screen Anti-aliasing
Texture Compositing
Texture Decompression
Specular Highlights
Perspectively Correct Texture Mapping
Mip-Mapping
Z-buffering and Double-buffering
Emboss, Dot Product 3 and Environment bump mapping
Spherical, Dual-Paraboloid and Cubic environment mapping
Fog effects, texture lighting, video textures, reflections, shadows, spotlights etc

Bundle Software

CyberLink PowerDVD XP
Motocross Mania (Game CD)
4X4 EVO and Oni (in 1 CD, Lite version)

NAME	CHIPSET	GPU SPEED	MEM SPEED	BANDWIDTH	UK PRICE	US PRICE
ATI RADEON 9000	RV250	250Mhz	400MHz DDR	6.4GB/s	£78	$83
ATI RADEON 9000 PRO	RV250	275Mhz	550MHz DDR	8.8GB/s	£91	$99
NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX440	NV17	270Mhz	400MHz DDR	6.4GB/s	£59	$63

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON XP 1700
VIDEO CARD	GIGABYTE RADEON 9000
	GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440
ATI DRIVER	CATALYST v7.75
NVIDIA DRIVER	DETONATOR v40.52
MOTHERBOARD	ASUS A7V266-C
MEMORY	CRUCIAL 512MB PC2100 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION	v8.1

QUAKE III ARENA

640x480

	211
	211

800x600

	198
	201

1024x768

	159
	159

1280x1024

	134
	133

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

COMMENT - "Going by previous results with Quake 3 based games it's almost expected that the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 will win this benchmark. As it turns out there is no clear winner, both video cards perform very well."

QUAKE III ARENA
2xFSAA

640x480

	186
	179

800x600

	141
	127

1024x768

	93
	81

1280x1024

	75
	64

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

COMMENT - "After the close result with Quake 3 shown above I wasn't sure which way this test would go so I was surprised to see the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 win all of the resolutions tested."

QUAKE III ARENA
4xFSAA

640x480

	104
	123

800x600

	72
	82

1024x768

	46
	40

1280x1024

	37
	32

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

COMMENT - "What a strange result for the Gigabyte Radeon 9000, it put in some good results at the lower resolutions beating the Gainward GeForce4 MX440. However at the higher resolutions the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 swiftly took the lead away."

QUAKE III ARENA
4xAA & 2xAF

640x480

	97
	117

800x600

	68
	79

1024x768

	44
	39

1280x1024

	36
	31

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

COMMENT - "Now we are going for high image quality with both 2x anisotropic filtering and 4x fsaa enabled. Once again it's a fairly strange result, the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 performs well at lower resolutions but then loses out to the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 at the two highest resolutions."

QUAKE III ARENA

BILINEAR

	168
	164

TRILINEAR

	159
	159

2x ANISOTROPIC

	145
	154

8x ANISOTROPIC

	N/A
	151

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

COMMENT - "The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 takes a smaller performance hit when using anisotropic filtering although the difference isn't very great with this game. The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 offers the full range of anisotropic filtering and the 8x results are especially impressive. The Gainward GeForce4 MX440 doesn't support 8x anisotropic."

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GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 REVIEW

GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 SPECIFICATIONS

Graphics controller

Memory configuration

Features At-a-glance

3D Graphics Features

MAYA GV-R9000 PLUS Features

Bundle Software

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

QUAKE III ARENA

QUAKE III ARENA2xFSAA

QUAKE III ARENA4xFSAA

QUAKE III ARENA4xAA & 2xAF

QUAKE III ARENA

QUAKE III ARENA
2xFSAA

QUAKE III ARENA
4xFSAA

QUAKE III ARENA
4xAA & 2xAF