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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

TOTAL PERFORMANCE

DRONEZ

	605
	667

MAX PAYNE

	290
	293

MERCEDES BENZ TRUCK RACING

	437
	258

QUAKE 3 ARENA

	702
	704

RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN

	362
	404

SERIOUS SAM

	363
	400

STAR TREK VOYAGER ELITE FORCE

	530
	497

STAR WARS JEDI KNIGHT 2

	430
	410

UNREAL TOURNAMENT

	431
	459

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2003

	182
	174

TOTAL

	4332
	4266

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000

COMMENT - "As you can see the result is very close with the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 offering the best performance in 4 games while the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 is better in 6 games. After 10 games there is only a 66 point difference between the video cards. The Gainward GeForce4 MX440 performed very well at lower resolutions and with 2x FSAA while the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 performed better at higher resolutions and with 4x FSAA."

CONCLUSION - "The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 has DX8.1 features which will make this video card more future proof than the Gainward GeForce4 MX440. The ATI Drivers performed well with no stability or visual problems. The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 delivered great quality anisotropic filtering with only a small performance hit. The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 has excellent FSAA quality and good performance for a budget video card. The only bad point was that the drivers on the Gigabyte website need updated more frequently although you can ofcourse use the ATI reference drivers."

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