ASUS Radeon A9600 XT/TVD

.../> The memory of this Asus specific card is provided by Samsung and is in fact underclocked to meet the 9600XT spec of 600Mhz (Double Data Rate). Effectively, using an overclocker software tool, this can be set to the original 700Mhz DDR for a safe performance boost to make your own 9600SuperXT.

Bundled Stuff Galore
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This card comes with a lot of software and accessories:

CD ...
...demo disc

Asus DVD player software

Several video capture and editing tools

Drivers disc featuring overclock tools

Video In/Video Out Adaptor - This box plugs into one port of the graphics card and allows composite & S-Video in & out for video capture to your PC and picture display to your television, which is good when you want to play your PC like a console in a comfy position in front ... more

I needed something worthy to replace the mighty 3DFX Voodoo 3 to play the latest games that required all those fancy Pixel Shaders and Lighting Transformers. Avoiding the budget range of nVidia's FX5200 cards I put the biggest budget yet on the 9600XT specification of Mac(intosh) daddy graphics maker ATI.

Build
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Differing from ATI's reference board colour red, this is orange. One of the nicest heat sinks architected (with a slanted carving of 'ASUS') span over not just the graphics processor but the topside memory as well. Don't get your hopes up for overclocking the memory because it has a heatsink on it though as there are memory chips uncovered on the other side of the board as well. I think of ATI's designs as more efficient than nVidia's, this is because ATI don't need external power from the system's main power supply unit and don't have loud aggressive cooling in similar competing fields. When installing, the card doesn't outstep it's boundaries in length as long cards can cause crowding in many PC chassis. It is essential that the PCI slot next to the AGP slot that this card would go into is free to fit and allow good airflow to cool the GPU.

Graphics
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Making use of the latest Pixel Shaders, SmoothVision and Big Curvy Breast Rendering (TM Lara Croft) technologies in line with computer games standard Microsoft DirectX 9, this card has some nice visuals. Probably the best tests for showing the graphics capabilities of this card 'til Doom 3 explodes through the letterbox would be ATI's own 3D demos and 3DMark2001. I'll describe the ATI demos:

Monkey
Some bright and spunky music plays with chillout undertones as our view follows a multicolored butterfly travelling along a small river stream. We can see the water rippling as the butterfly bobs along it, wet stones lay glossy in the stream reflecting sun at the appropriate angles as we go by them. We are taken through some swaying reeds before we go to a dense area of the forest where we see a monkey seating around some trees. The monkey seated follows the butterfly in awe with it's reflective emotional eyes, we can see that the monkey is highly geometrically detailed upto the individual teeth. The fur of the monkey, instead of looking pasted flat, actually sticks out and looks real enough to stroke. Fade out as the butteryfly flies away.

Lava Caves
We are taken through an endless tour of randomly drawn volcanic complex lava caves. The graphics card in real-time, conveys a great depiction of intense heat from the fluctuation of lighting and hot steam rising that obscures the view ahead.

Gargoyle Clock
In this demo we can swing around and zoom in upon a gargoyle statue with a clock behind it. Everything is made of silver metal, the teeth and horns of the gargoyle are gold. Some fully rounded & sharp spikes peak out on the walls on either side of the room this is all contained in. All the metals give bright glinting accurate reflections and along with the glowing jewels of the clock and gargoyle eyes look almost valuable enough to be real.

Performance
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Without going into a legion of graphic settings and latency tweaks, which are only harder to control with Windows 2000 and XP. How fast does it allow you to play pretty games? You may well find that it is just alright for the games of right now. Coupled with an ideal central processor (say an AMD Athlon XP), turbo PC monster games like Deus Ex 2 and Far Cry should be fairly playable at high detail settings but still with some stuttering motion in places, disappointly. With the upcoming Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 to be uber-detailed I wonder again if my preparation is still underpowered as the mainstream market can't keep up with game requirements.

The memory of this Asus specific card is provided by Samsung and is in fact underclocked to meet the 9600XT spec of 600Mhz (Double Data Rate). Effectively, using an overclocker software tool, this can be set to the original 700Mhz DDR for a safe performance boost to make your own 9600SuperXT.

Bundled Stuff Galore
----------------------------
This card comes with a lot of software and accessories:

CD Carry Case - A transparent orange plastic shell case carries a lot of software discs.

GunMetal full game

Battle Engine Aquila full game

Games demo disc

Asus DVD player software

Several video capture and editing tools

Drivers disc featuring overclock tools

Video In/Video Out Adaptor - This box plugs into one port of the graphics card and allows composite & S-Video in & out for video capture to your PC and picture display to your television, which is good when you want to play your PC like a console in a comfy position in front of the TV. I also have the ability to record anything on the PC to videocassette.

Plus, there's a Half-Life 2 voucher to get this game free upon release...If you don't mind waiting whilst everyone else is playing it for it to be delivered with several weeks of delay from America with customs charges etc. Alternatively you can download the original Half-Life from streamer software called 'Steam' with the voucher code but I haven't successfully done this yet myself.

Value
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This thing cost near £150 from Dabs.com at the beginning of this year. The 9600XT being the best of the 9600 range was at the time half the price of the 9800, which have already been outclassed by double their performance by an 'X800' series from ATI. Bearing in mind the extra cost for added features like the bulky software bundle and the Video In & Out, you can buy this from dabs.com for £138.88 delivered. 

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