Connect 3D Radeon 9600XT

Manufacturer: Connect 3D
Street Price: $169.00

by Brian Tiller (1/11/2004)

Introduction

With the fairly recent release of ATi's XT series video cards, everyone and their brother (Dean included) has been clamoring to get their hands on the Radeon 9800XT. For those of us on a limited budget who still like to put in some decent frag time but don't want to spend the rent/mortgage, the mid range cards from both NVidia and ATi are a very attractive lure. 

The Radeon 9600XT is the successor to ATi's immensely popular mid-range solution, the 9600 Pro. Using a Low K Dielectric manufacturing process for the RV360 core of the card, ATi was able to reduce the power consumption and at the same time raise the clock speed from that of the 9600Pro. Doing this enables the card to use the computer's internal power without an extra power plug in. (For more information on the Low K dielectric process, check out this link, or do a Google search).

Our 9600XT that we have on the bench today is produced by Connect3D. Based in Europe, Connect3D is ATi's major European partner and produces the entire line of ATi graphics cards. With offices England, the United States, Germany and Sweden, they are currently branching out to Eastern Europe and the Middle East as well.  The box that the card came in is pretty hip looking, but the details for the card are somewhat lacking. After contacting them about more information, they were kind enough to send over some details and several links which helped, so kudos for some good customer support right off the bat here.

Specifications:

• Core Speed: 500MHz

• Memory Speed: 600MHz

• DX 9 Support

• SmartShader 2.0

• SmoothShader 2.1

• Four pipelines process up to 1.6 billion pixels/second

• Full Scene Anti-Aliasing

• Advanced Anisotropic Filtering

• Integrated Dual Display controllers

• TV Out

• Max Resolution: 2048x1536 @ 60Hz

• 128MB DDR

If you've read any of the reviews out there on the 9600 Pro, then you'll realize that the only difference between the two cards is the core speed which has been bumped up from 400MHz to 500MHz. 

 

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