Hitting his kephale, Greek god wannabe, Nathan Davis, doubles his mneme.
With many high-end video cards now equipped with a fast becoming standard 256MB of RAM, there's little wonder we are beginning to see other slower cards chocked with a double serving of memory. As you probably now know, more video memory won't give you an immediately noticeable increase in performance unless, of course, you pump out some seriously stressful tests like high resolutions and massive textures.
But right now, there really isn't much out there that'll actually make full use of this currently profuse amount of memory. Used for a selling point to unsuspecting folk, but this is bound to go pear-shaped, in a good way. Just like when the original 128MB cards popped onto the market -- there was no need for it then, but they serve us well now.
Aimed at the mid-range market, 128MB 9600 RADEONs are far more affordable than the higher-end cards, yet they still provide results that don't completely suck. Their performance doesn't rock, but they're great for mini PCs and the like.
This 256MB incarnation is quite interesting in regards to its heatsink design. At first it appears severely under cooled, being so incredibly small, but this is definitely not the case. Amazingly, even when under full load whilst testing the card, it remained chilly to the touch -- quite incredible. Unless it was an awesome guess, the cooling must have had a great deal of funky research put into it. Even for a 9600, a .13µ card featuring cooling this chilly is fully commendable.
With this cool factor comes a high-speed fan. Sure, it has some sound to it, but unlike many FX cards, your ears aren't strapped to the inside of a Learjet's engine.
As you may have read from last month's review of the Albatron FX5600EQ (Atomic 32, page 62), the memory clock speeds of the 256MB version of the GeForce FX5600 range of cards have been stupidly slowed down. Even though the core was increased in a vain attempt at rectifying the slow down, faster memory offers the performance we're after, not the core. Ludicrously, this lead to a more expensive, yet slower card.
With the 256MB version of the RADEON 9600, the clock speeds are no different to each other, both with a core of 325MHz and memory speed of 400MHz. In theory this was a wise decision, but only for the people out there that have use for such a large wad of memory.
With the same memory speed and core clock as its 128MB sibling, we have good reason to believe this performs almost the same if not identically. Being our first review of a 9600 non-PRO, we can only speculate, but according to the Atomic Spy Ring(tm), it seems to perform around the same as that of the 128MB card. We aren't one bit surprised.
The advantage with this card is how you actually notice a decent improvement in performance on higher resolutions. This shows in our bench test results, racking it up against a 128MB GeForce FX 5600, coming in a few margins lower in all tests bar the most stressful -- Codecreatures at 1,600x1,200. Albeit, at a grand total of one fifth of a frame.
It comes out on top when its extra memory is actually being put to use through large textured, high res scenery -- the problem being gameplay is simply not possible at such settings. This fact completely pisses all over any memory advantage it may have.
If you're looking for a mid-range video card that's a decent performer and weighs up reasonably well in terms of both speed and low temperature, this will do the job.
However, unless you require a chilly card, investing in something significantly more powerful, yet similarly priced, just might be in your sights.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012