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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

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

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440211
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000211

800x600

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440198
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000201

1024x768

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440159
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000159

1280x1024

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440134
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000133

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

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440186
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000179

800x600

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440141
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000127

1024x768

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44093
GIGABYTE RADEON 900081

1280x1024

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44075
GIGABYTE RADEON 900064

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

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440104
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000123

800x600

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44072
GIGABYTE RADEON 900082

1024x768

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44046
GIGABYTE RADEON 900040

1280x1024

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44037
GIGABYTE RADEON 900032

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

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44097
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000117

800x600

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44068
GIGABYTE RADEON 900079

1024x768

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44044
GIGABYTE RADEON 900039

1280x1024

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44036
GIGABYTE RADEON 900031

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

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440168
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000164

TRILINEAR

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440159
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000159

2x ANISOTROPIC

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440145
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000154

8x ANISOTROPIC

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A
GIGABYTE RADEON 9000151

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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