ULTIMATE HARDWARE

• DIGITAL CAMERA REVIEWS • EMAIL • LINKS • MOTHERBOARD REVIEWS • PERFORMANCE DATABASE • PROCESSOR REVIEWS • SITEMAP • ULTIMATE HARDWARE • VIDEO CARD REVIEWS •

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200 REVIEW

"Sapphire Radeon 9200 review testing the Sapphire Radeon 9200 against the XFX GeForce FX 5200, MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 and the Gainward GeForce4 mx440. Software used during testing was:- 3dmark 2001 SE, 3dmark 2003, Quake 3 Arena, Serious Sam SE and Unreal Tournament 2003."

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200

Today we are testing the latest budget video card from Sapphire the Radeon 9200 Atlantis. This video card is a "Powered-by-ATI" video card which was released to compete against the latest video card from Nvidia the GeForce FX 5200. It was expected that the Radeon 9200 would also support dx9 however I can confirm that the Radeon 9200 only supports dx8. The Radeon 9200 is really just a Radeon 9000 with x8 agp support.

The Sapphire Radeon 9200 and the XFX GeForce FX 5200 both share very similar specifications. They both operate at 250mhz core and have a large 128mb of 400mhz ddr memory. The GeForce FX 5200 has the big advantage of being fully dx9 compatible but the Radeon 9200 has full vivo support.

In this test we will compare the Radeon 9200 against it's Nvidia rival the GeForce FX 5200. The test will also feature the more expensive GeForce4 Ti4200 and the budget GeForce4 MX440 for comparison. Being the most expensive video card in the test it is expected that the GeForce4 Ti4200 will win. The GeForce4 MX440 is expected to be last in the test due to it's limited dx7 specifications and it only has 64mb memory.


GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR AMD ATHLON XP 2500
VIDEO CARD SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200
MSI GEFORCE4 TI4200 VTD8X
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440
ATI DRIVER CATALYST v3.5
NVIDIA DRIVER DETONATOR v44.03
MOTHERBOARD ASROCK K7S8X
MEMORY 512MB CRUCIAL PC2700 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 1
DIRECTX VERSION v9.0a

QUAKE III ARENA

800x600

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200194
MSI GEFORCE TI4200236
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200212
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440198

1024x768

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200135
MSI GEFORCE TI4200218
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200159
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440145

1280x1024

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200111
MSI GEFORCE TI4200200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200132
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440121

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200 MSI GEFORCE TI4200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

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

COMMENT - "I was expecting much better performance from the Sapphire Radeon 9200 than it delivered. It wasn't even able to outperform the old Gainward GeForce4 MX440 which was a major surprise. The winner was the MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 which even delivered 200fps at the highest resolution tested and finished 68fps clear of the other video cards"


QUAKE III ARENA
4x FSAA

640x480

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920085
MSI GEFORCE TI4200203
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200135
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44096

800x600

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920057
MSI GEFORCE TI4200154
XFX GEFORCE FX 520090
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44066

1024x768

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920028
MSI GEFORCE TI420098
XFX GEFORCE FX 520055
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX44043

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200 MSI GEFORCE TI4200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

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

COMMENT - "The original ATI Radeon 9000 (which the Sapphire Radeon 9200 is based on) has always suffered a large performance hit when using 4x Fsaa. Here we see the Sapphire Radeon 9200 easily beaten by ALL of the video cards tested."


QUAKE III ARENA
4x FSAA & 8x ANISOTROPIC

640x480

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920079
MSI GEFORCE TI4200174
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200112
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A

800x600

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920053
MSI GEFORCE TI4200124
XFX GEFORCE FX 520077
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A

1024x768

SAPPHIRE RADEON 920027
MSI GEFORCE TI420081
XFX GEFORCE FX 520049
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200 MSI GEFORCE TI4200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

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

COMMENT - "The MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 and the XFX GeForce FX 5200 both outperform the Sapphire Radeon 9200 by quite a large margin. The Gainward GeForce4 MX440 only supports 2x Anisotropic filtering so there are no scores for this round."


QUAKE III ARENA

2x ANISOTROPIC

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200122
MSI GEFORCE TI4200193
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200138
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440125

4x ANISOTROPIC

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200128
MSI GEFORCE TI4200170
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200126
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A

8x ANISOTROPIC

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200126
MSI GEFORCE TI4200153
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200117
GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440N/A

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9200 MSI GEFORCE TI4200
XFX GEFORCE FX 5200 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

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

COMMENT - "ATI video cards have always been able to deliver great anisotropic performance and image quality. Here we see the Sapphire Radeon 9200 only drop 6fps going from 2x to 8x anistropic filtering which is very impressive. The MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 dropped a total of 40fps and the XFX GeForce FX 5200 dropped 21fps. The Gainward GeForce4 MX440 is only able to do 2x anisotropic filtering and it finished in last place. Although the MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 dropped the most fps when using 8x anisotropic it was still able to outperform the Sapphire Radeon 9200 by 27fps which is a good result."

PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE

• DIGITAL CAMERA REVIEWS • EMAIL • LINKS • MOTHERBOARD REVIEWS • PERFORMANCE DATABASE • PROCESSOR REVIEWS • SITEMAP • ULTIMATE HARDWARE • VIDEO CARD REVIEWS •

COPYRIGHT © 2002 - 2008 ULTIMATE HARDWARE ALL TRADEMARKS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THEIR OWNERS!