YUAN XpertVision
RADEON 9000 64MB and
RADEON 9700 PRO Video Cards Review
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CONTESTS
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Peculiarities
of the YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB and RADEON 9700 PRO
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Test system
configuration,
test tools, 2D quality
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Data on 3D quality
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Conclusion
YUAN High-Tech Development Co. Ltd is not known well on our local market
that is why let me introduce it to you:
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Foundation: October 1990
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Headquarters: Taipei, Taiwan
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Income in 2002: $40 million
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Circulating capital: $8 million
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Employees in the headquarters: 50
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Factories: Taiwan, China
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Main products: ATI graphics cards, video peripherals
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Factory in China:
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Location: Shanghai
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Foundation: 1992
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Total area: 66000 sq. ft.
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Employees: 1000
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Monthly full output: 1.2 million cards
The data are received from the guys at ATI
Premium Event
Last time we studied the cards from this company long ago when it dealt
yet with NVIDIA's processors. Now YUAN uses chipsets exceptionally from
ATI Technologies.
Moreover, the well-known company Palit is now an owner of YUAN but it
left the latter as an independent subdivision with its own trade mark XpertVision.
That is why further we will speak about YUAN as a company and its XpertVision
trade mark under which the firm produces almost the whole range of video
cards based on ATI's processors of the last generations, including the
most expensive RADEON 9700 PRO. By the way, here are the cards which were
reviewed before.
Theoretical materials and reviews of video cards which concern functional
properties of the VPU ATI RADEON 9700 (Pro) / RADEON 9500 (Pro)
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Analyses of
architecture of the RADEON 9700 and Microsoft DirectX 9.0
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ATI RADEON 9700
Pro 128MB review
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MAYA II R9700Pro
128MB - performance estimated on the new testbed based only on the
Pentium 4 2.53 GHz, comparison with the NVIDIA's 40.41 driver
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Hercules 3D Prophet
9700 Pro 128MB - performance of the new CATALYST 2.3 driver estimated
in 3DMark2001 SE, and Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO final release
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PowerColor Evil
Commando2 RADEON 9700 Pro 128MB - performance of the new CATALYST 2.3
driver estimated in game tests, 3D quality issues
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Sapphire Atlantis
RADEON 9700 Pro 128MB - detailed analyses of anisotropic filtering
of the RADEON 9700
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ATI RADEON 9700,
RADEON 9500 64MB and Gigabyte MAYA II RADEON 9500 64MB
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Sapphire
Atlantis RADEON 9500 128MB - RADEON 9500 128 MB has a 256bit memory
bus! Tests of the video cards in the DOOM III
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HIS Excalibur RADEON
9700 Pro and tests in the DirectX 9.0 RC0
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ATI RADEON 9500 PRO
- 128 bit memory bus and buffer compression at AA (virtual 256bit bus)
- ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO,
9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0: Part 1 - Game tests and 3DMark2001, as well
as Soft9700!
- ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO,
9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0: Part 2 - Tests in DirectX 9.0 - synthetic tests
from RightMark 3D
Today we will take a look at two cards from YUAN which are almost in the
opposite market segments: RADEON 9000 (from the lowest price niche) and
RADEON 9700 PRO (from the highest price niche).
Cards
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
| The card has AGP x2/x4 interface, 64 MB DDR SDRAM located in 8 chips
on both PCB sides.
The Samsung's memory chips have 3.6ns access time which corresponds
to 275 (550) MHz, but the memory runs at 200 (400) MHz. The GPU works at
250MHz which is typical of RADEON 9000. |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
| The card has AGP x2/x4/x8 interface, 128 MB DDR SDRAM located in 8
chips on both PCB sides.
The Samsung's memory chips have 2.8ns access time which corresponds
to 357 (714) MHz, but the memory runs at 310 (620) MHz in full conformity
with the RADEON 9700 PRO. The GPU works at 325MHz. |
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| Comparison with the reference design, front view |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9000 |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9700 PRO |
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| Comparison with the reference design, back view |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9000 |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
Reference card ATI RADEON 9700 PRO |
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While the XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO is just a pure copy of the reference
card, the XpertVision RADEON 9000 has its own design. If you remember, Palit always
developed a unique design for its cards. It seems that now YUAN is now absorbing
the spirit of Palit, especially regarding the dark purple PCB color...
As for 3.6ns, the overclockers won't benefit from this memory because
none of hackers managed to unlock the BIOS of RADEON 9000 so far. That
is why, fast as the memory may be, it will work at 200 (400) MHz - by default
for RADEON 9000.
Unfortunately, this card works very unstably on the EPoX's nForce2 based
mainboard and refuses to work on some i815 based boards (is it again inherited
from Palit? - if you remember, its GF3 Ti200 based card was incompatible
with the i815 based boards). That is why you should carefully choose a
RADEON 9000 card.
If we remove coolers, we will see the graphics processors themselves:
RADEON 9000:
and RADEON 9700 PRO:
Here are the coolers: |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
| The card is equipped with an ordinary cooler from the same company
the Palit's cards have coolers from. |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
| This is a copy of the standard reference cooler from ATI |
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| Both YUAN's cards have a TV-out based on the integrated codec. As to
TV-out quality, soon we will publish the article where all peculiarities
of the TV-out of the RADEON 9500/9700 and the settings will be covered.
Now take a gander at the accessory packs:
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
| Only a CD with drivers. No cables or adapters. |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
| User Guide, CD with drivers and utilities, S-Video-to-RCA and DVI-to-d-Sub
adapters, S-Video and RCA extenders. |
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Both cards ship in the retail packages.
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
| This is relatively a retail package because this small box doesn't
look like a normal package at all, especially because of the scarce kit
of accessories, - this is simply an OEM pack in cardboard. Note that the
box was developed probably when the XpertVision trade mark wasn't confirmed
yet, and they made an attempt to adjust the Daytona mark for the ATI based
cards. |
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| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
| This box is more impressive, though there is no a single word about
XpertVision and about YUAN itself. Unfortunately, the packing is awful
- they simply wrapped the card in pieces of foam-rubber (you can see it
above on the picture with the accessories). |
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Now when we are through with the cards' features, let's turn to overclocking.
Overclocking
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
No overclocking |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
325/620 -> 365/700 MHz, not bad. |
Note that:
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during the overclocking you should provide additional cooling, in particular,
for the card (first of all, for its memory):
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overclocking depends on a sample, and you shouldn't generalize the results
of one card to all video cards of this trade mark or series. The overclocking
results are not the obligatory characteristics of video cards.
Test system and drivers
Testbeds:
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Pentium 4 2530 MHz based computer:
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CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2530 MHz;
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Mainboard: ASUS P4T533 (i850E);
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512 MB 32bit RDRAM PC4200;
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HDD: Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB;
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OS: Windows XP.
The test system was coupled with ViewSonic P810 (21") and
ViewSonic
P817 (21") monitors.
In the tests we used ATI's drivers ver.6.255. S3TC was off in
the applications.
Test results
Before we start examining 2D quality I should say that there is no a complete
technique of objective estimation of this parameter because:
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Almost all modern 3D accelerators can have 2D quality much dependent on
a certain sample, and it's impossible to trace all cards;
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2D quality depends not only on a video card, but also on a monitor and
a cable;
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Besides, certain monitors do not get along with certain video cards.
As for the tested samples, together with the ViewSonic P817 monitor
and BNC Bargo cable the cards showed excellent quality at the
following resolutions and frequencies: |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9000 64MB |
1600x1200x75Hz (satisfactory), 1280x1024x100Hz,
1024x768x100Hz |
| YUAN XpertVision RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB |
1600x1200x85Hz, 1280x1024x120Hz, 1024x768x160Hz |
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Test results: 3D quality
I think it's not necessary to discuss once again the performance of such cards
as our 3Digest covers all these issues. Today
you will see some screenshots from the games obtained with the RADEON 9000 and
9700. In comparison there are screenshots made with the GeForce4 Ti.
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List of games:
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1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
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2. Unreal2 (alpha version)
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3. Comanche4
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4. Jedi Knight II Outcast
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5. Morrowind
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6. Colin McRAE Rally2
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7. Red Faction
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8. Rally Trophy
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9. Need For Speed
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10. Venom
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11. Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO
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12. DOOM 3 v0.02
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List of games:
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13. Blade of Darkness
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14. Neverwinter Nights
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15. 3DMark2001: Game1
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16. 3DMark2001: Game2
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17. 3DMark2001: Game3
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18. 3DMark2001: Game4
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19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
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20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
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21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
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22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
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23. Warcraft III
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24. Soldier of Fortune II
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List of games and tests:
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25. Command and Conquer: Renegade
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26. No One Lives Forever 2 Demo
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27. AquaNox
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28. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
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29. IL2: Shturmovik (Attack Plane)
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30. MoHAA
I think no comments are needed. The Alpha version of the Unreal2 failed
to start on the RADEON 9000, but who is guilty is unknown especially because
this game is already available in stores (in the next 3Digest we will publish
the screenshots from the release).
As to operation of the cards, the RADEON 9700 PRO showed no unstability
and caused no hanging; the card works on a high level like all the others
RADEON 9700 PRO based solutions tested before (in case of a good power
supply unit for at least 300 W as well as other high-grade hardware). We
can't examine operation of the card in all games; if you speak Russian
you can go to the forum at iXBT or Radeon2.ru where you can find out how
to solve various problems. English speakers can pop into Rage3D
where the guys deeply study performance of the RADEON 9700 in all possible
games and they often have experts from ATI who can answer questions concerning
problems the card has in one or another game.
The RADEON 9000 based card from YUAN left a less pleasant impression
because of the unstable operation on the nForce2; some readers also mention
problems on other platforms. On the i850/7205 this card works flawlessly.
However, the downsides can be forgiven as its price is one of the lowest
among all RADEON 9000 (though you should carefully read the reviews before
deciding on a card! :-) ).
Conclusion
Everything that should be said is said above :-).
In our 3Digest you can find complete comparison
characteristics of video cards of this and other classes.
Highs:
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Excellent performance in 3D games (RADEON 9700 PRO);
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Nice build quality of the RADEON 9700 PRO;
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TV-out;
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The RADEON 9700 PRO cards comes with S-Video-to-RCA and DVI-to-d-Sub adapters;
Lows:
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Unstable operation of the RADEON 9000 on some platforms;
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No adapters for the RADEON 9000 card.
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