Do not get the 9600xt, cancel your preorder. Revision 2 is comming!

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12161


all the reviews of the Radeon 9600XT that you saw starting yesterday could easily be false, since ATI did one more respin on its chip before sending it to manufacturers just yesterday.


It seems that they have silicon that can run faster than the one currently being reviewed all over the net.



This means the 9600xt right now at 500/600 is going to soon be replaced with something along the lines of 550-575/650-700
This is analogous to the fx5600u rev. 2! The exact clocks are not known for the 9600xt rev. 2 but expect at least 550/650 :) 700MHz ram is very possible. This would eat a 9500 pro and easily match the mighty ti4600 even in dx8 without aa/af :eek:

Good news to the ones that planning to buy the radeon 9600XT...

However, the source did not say how fast the chip would be...

Guess it will not be faster than my 9800np. :)


Computer Maniac :)

this whole xt series sounds pretty sweet

Man, I am starting to want a 9600xt:) I can't wait for the next card (9900?) which should be .9 tech instead of .13. I have a question. If the 9600xt had the number of pipelines of the other cards like 9800 Pro would it be better? Also if that's correct then why didn't ATi just realse one with the extra pipelines? I just love how high the clocks are!

Quote:

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Originally posted by ATilaptops
Man, I am starting to want a 9600xt:) I can't wait for the next card (9900?) which should be .9 tech instead of .13. I have a question. If the 9600xt had the number of pipelines of the other cards like 9800 Pro would it be better? Also if that's correct then why didn't ATi just realse one with the extra pipelines? I just love how high the clocks are!

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because the 9600 series of chips are a whole new core. it was originally designed as a high performance, low-heat and low=power laptop graphics chip. It's not the same as a 9800 core that was modified a little. Also, it's fabbed using a smaller process than the 9500/9700/9800 chips are. iirc, the 95/7/800 chips are all 0.15 whereas the 9600 is 0.13

It doesn't HAVE 4 more pipes that it can enable.

Geez, without even knowing it I was right about the 'early 9500Pro being quickly improved' analogy.....:D

Believe it when you see it

Quote:

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Originally posted by sapasion
Believe it when you see it

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That's what I'm thinkin... this is pretty sketchy if you ask me.

Sound sorta like they are doing the same thing with the 9600XT and the 9700 as they did with the 9600pro and the 9500pro, once you turned on AA/AF the 9500pro left the 9600pro setting at the starting gate.

I'm a little doubtful of this, some sites have managed to get the 9600XT up to 600Mhz on the core and the performance increase wasn't massive. Faster memory seems likely, but given this is still a mid-range card, and going to be appealing on its price, they surely can't go for much faster memory chip as it would put the price up too much.

John

*scrambles to cancel his order* :p


Really, though - the 9600 line has crippled pipes... What kind of speed difference do you expect from a 10% increase? ;)

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Originally posted by xDUCK
*scrambles to cancel his order* :p


Really, though - the 9600 line has crippled pipes... What kind of speed difference do you expect from a 10% increase? ;)

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It doesn't have CRIPPLED pipes, it just was never designed with 8 because that would increase power, cost, and heat, and for what was designed as a laptop card originally, that's a bad thing.

This would eat a 9500 pro and easily match the mighty ti4600 even in dx8 without aa/af

You like to post without a clue don't you. A stock 9600/9500 pro already is not far behind a T4600 as it is without AA&AF if you overclock a 9600pro to 547/365 its its still only the same speed as a 4600 and 9500pro. A 9500pro clocked at a lower 355/315 is still faster than a 9600p at 547/365.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ges/ut1024.gif

With any AA&AF turned on the Mighty 4600 shows it,s Mighty Old to the 9600p or 9500p overclocked or not.



http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...xaa8xaniso.gif

I just dont think higher clock numbers will help the 9600XT much it needs 8 pipes or 256 bit interface.

Well, if it was originally a laptop card (which is great!) then why even bring it to the desktop? I see no point in doing it really. I always though they introduced the 9600 because they wanted to make it so that you needed to buy a 9800 card for really good performance. Also that they didn't want to make the same mistake with the 9500, being so fast and all. Now hear me out. It was originally designed to be a laptop card and all that. Now why didn't they just add more pipelines and such and make it a new $500 card? I can't see the reasoning here. If it had the pipelines and such of a 9800 card then it'd be awesome! And even though it'd be more expensive and hot we would not be using these in laptops, we'd have them in desktops which means we could cool them well enough to get us the performance we desire. So I can see no reason why they didn't do this. I mena basically it's like saying them saying "Well we could make a .13 card with 8 pipelines and all the goodies with ultra high clocks and call it the 9900 Pro, but we're too lazy, so we'll just market the 9800 Pro instead. And obviously we'd rather use a beafed up laptop card instead of a full desktop card." I'm super confused. Unless the next card is going to be like that. Someone explain please.

Quote:

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Originally posted by ATilaptops
Well, if it was originally a laptop card (which is great!) then why even bring it to the desktop? I see no point in doing it really. I always though they introduced the 9600 because they wanted to make it so that you needed to buy a 9800 card for really good performance. Also that they didn't want to make the same mistake with the 9500, being so fast and all. Now hear me out. It was originally designed to be a laptop card and all that. Now why didn't they just add more pipelines and such and make it a new $500 card? I can't see the reasoning here. If it had the pipelines and such of a 9800 card then it'd be awesome! And even though it'd be more expensive and hot we would not be using these in laptops, we'd have them in desktops which means we could cool them well enough to get us the performance we desire. So I can see no reason why they didn't do this. I mena basically it's like saying them saying "Well we could make a .13 card with 8 pipelines and all the goodies with ultra high clocks and call it the 9900 Pro, but we're too lazy, so we'll just market the 9800 Pro instead. And obviously we'd rather use a beafed up laptop card instead of a full desktop card." I'm super confused. Unless the next card is going to be like that. Someone explain please.

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The 9500 Pro was canibalizing their higher end card sales. You basically had the exact same chip as the 9700 series, with all pipes in tact, clocked at the same speed as the 9700np, and reduced memory bandwidth via the 128-bit interface. However, a little o/c and most of the difference could be overcome, and with higher resolutions and AA/AF the differences were still not large enough for many to warrant the extra money for the 9700/Pro cards, but because the 9500 Pro was still the same 9700 core, their profit margins on the 9500 Pro were were very small Vs. the selling price of the card.

Because of this ATi needed to make the performance separation more pronounced. By cutting the pixel pipes and geometry engines in half (8 pixels pipes down to 4, and 4 geometry engines down to 2) they better managed that separation. Also, because of the decision to use this chip as their test bed for 130nm process, they were producing a chip that had fewer transistors, and built on a process that could get them more chips per wafer of silicon, thereby increasing thier profit margins on a card that was in a range that had a far larger market share than the higher end 9800/Pro cards, and even when o/c could muster enough power to really canibalize those current higher end products.

While I do think that ATi really does need a little faster RAM for the 9600XT, I don't see why anyone would be confused about why ATi did what they did when they replaced the 9500/Pro cards with the 9600/Pro cards.

You misunderstand me. I knew exactly what ATi was doing with the 9600 replacement of the 9500's. While everyone else was going "What the heck are they doing?" I knew exactly why they had. My confusion is, it seems like they could have made a .13 card with the same amount of pipelines and transistors as, say a 9800 pro, and made it their ultimate high end card. So the only reason I can see, is that they needed a mid range card so they didn't bother with the idea. And the next chip will be along those lines.

I'm thinking that ATI didn't want to switch to .13 earlier because they could have had problems, like NVIDIA. When you can produce a card on a proven technology, why take the risk to go to a new process which might cause problems and delays? The R420 will be made on .13 :)

Talldude is right on money. The more transistors, the more complex the process of manufacturing. Testing out a new process on a less complex design is a far better idea than possibly backing yourself into a corner by moving everything to an unproven process and risk have chip shortages. The 150nm process is very mature and good yeilds could be produced on this process.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Given the results of the 9600xt I think they just might have done incredibly well if they had gone .13 on the 9800's;)

I can see the 9600xt using 650mhz DDR since the all in wonder 9600P will have 650mhz. :)

But can we believe that website???

Quote:

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Originally posted by ATilaptops
You misunderstand me. I knew exactly what ATi was doing with the 9600 replacement of the 9500's. While everyone else was going "What the heck are they doing?" I knew exactly why they had. My confusion is, it seems like they could have made a .13 card with the same amount of pipelines and transistors as, say a 9800 pro, and made it their ultimate high end card. So the only reason I can see, is that they needed a mid range card so they didn't bother with the idea. And the next chip will be along those lines.

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Shrinking to a new process it a DARN tough thing to accomplish. That's why in the CPU world, it's most often done midway through a processor's run, when they know that they can still push out more chips on the old process if they need to, but have time to get the new process right on something that they know(an old chip).

In the graphics world, there are no old chips to learn on. This means that a process shrink almost always occurs concurrently with a new core design. This is doubly tough. The 9600 was the result of this. They had a new laptop core that was an ideal candidate for a process shrink, it's less complex, and it also benefits from the lower heat and power more than a desktop chip.

After they started to get the chip into production, they decided to use it not only in laptops but also as a mainstream desktop chip (because it had better separation from the high-end chips and wouldn't eat all the market for the high-end chips like the NV Ti-4200 did to the 4600, and the R9500P did to the R9700)

You have to admire the engineering and politics behind the new chip.

Quote:

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Originally posted by sapasion
Believe it when you see it

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w3rd.