Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb video card

Published: December 9, 2003

Editor: Amber Luapala

Provider: Sapphire

Conclusion

This is actually the only test where the XT card is slower and that is only in 800*600. When we get up to a higher resolution the Xt card is a bit faster again but only with 0,1 FPS. This is the finaly benchmark and we can see that this new XT card seriously is faster than the older 9600.

Overclocking:

Standard settings on this card is core 499,5 mhz and memory 324 mhz so let’s have a look how far we can get these with stock cooling. The overclocking software provided by Sapphire was already maxed out so we downloaded Rage3d for ATI cards. The software by Sapphire can be updated with a patch so it works better but we decided to give Rage3d a chance since it’s a popular program. After testing awhile we can finally give you some stats. The max overclocking for the core is 567 mhz so that gives us 56,7 mhz increase on the core. What about the memory? Well the memory could only be pushed up to 333 mhz so that’s 9 mhz more on the memory but the biggest problem with it is probably that there are no heatsinks on them. The overclocking test ended up at average comparing to other cards.

Conclusion:

Well it’s time for a conclusion which this time is relatively pretty easy . The numbers say everything that needs to be said. The 9600XT card is alot faster than the old 9600. It crushes in pretty much all the testing we have done. Overclocking was average but I think that was because there are no heatsinks on the memory. The addition of software that was included was very welcome along with a new Tomraider and Halflife 2 as soon as it’s released. THis card is really something we recommend because this is something that fits alot of peoples needs. This is for two reasons: First, because it’s cheap around 170$ and second, it’s just plain fast! Therefore rbmods gives this a recommendation and 5 out of 5 for a fast efficient card that you can purchase inexpensively and also includes a bunch of software as a nice addtion.

Pros:

+ Fast
+ Cheap
+ 2 games included
+ Acessories

Cons:

- No heatsinks on memory that might prevent more overclocking