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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."

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

SERIOUS SAM SE

800x600

	157
	180
	160
	152

1024x768

	129
	171
	120
	108

1280x1024

	94
	162
	99
	87

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

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Elephant Atrium demo
Fullscreen Enabled
Quality Settings
Large Texture Size
Optimal Texture Quality
Detail Textures Enabled

COMMENT - "The Sapphire Radeon 9200, XFX GeForce FX 5200 and Gainward GeForce4 MX440 all deliver roughly the same very playable performance. The MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 starts off strongly and finishes a clear 63fps ahead of the XFX GeForce FX 5200.

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2003

800x600

	77
	150
	96
	88

1024x768

	51
	117
	64
	58

1280x1024

	35
	80
	43
	39

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

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Antalus Benchmark
Flyby Benchmark
Character Shadows Enabled
Decals Enabled
Dynamic Lighting Enabled
Detail Textures Enabled
Projectors Enabled
Foliage Enabled

COMMENT - "The Sapphire Radeon 9200 puts in a very poor performance with this game, it was beaten by all of the video cards tested. Once again the MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 puts in a stonking performance and delivers a performance which is way ahead of the other video cards."

CONCLUSION - "The Sapphire Radeon 9200 offers excellent anisotropic filtering performance and image quality. The video card was very stable and there are no problems to report. Unfortunately the Sapphire Radeon 9200 suffers from a general lack of power, it's performance with certain games is lacking especially if you enable fsaa. It's support for 8x Agp offers no real performance increase and is worthless right now. It's performance in general is closer to the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 than the latest budget video card from nvidia the XFX GeForce FX 5200."

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