3D Image Quality

9600 XT	FX5700 Ultra

3D gaming image quality has never been a problem with past ATI cards, and trend continues for the HIS 9600 XT. I do play a fair amount of 3D shooters, and although speed is important to me, I don't play with bitmaps turned off, and contrast set to maximum. the whole point is to become immersed in the experience, and the HIS 9600 XT is up to the task.

2D Image Quality

We loaded up a 1600x1200 image David and I normarlly use in our video card reviews. I also pulled up an HTML document with various sized fonts to judge the text rendering. The document used white text on a black background, and vice versa. The screen resolution for all tests was 1600x1200 @ 85Hz on a Dell rebranded 21" Trinitron.

Scores are subjective, but having worked with many video cards the last few years, I got a pretty firm grasp on what card renders 2D better than the others. The scores will be out of 10, with 10 being excellent.

All the ATI cards looked pretty much the same to me with the bitmap file, but there is an obvious quality drop when moving to the FX5700 when it comes to reading small text. The FX5700 rendered white text on a dark background horribly, and in order not to lose my eyesight, I had to use the mouse to select blocks of text I wanted to read. Things weren't much better on the HIS 9600 XT, but the text seemed less broken up than on the FX. Overall, the AiW 9600 Pro exhibited the best image quality when it comes to 2D quality.

Overclocking

With the rather large fan, and the ramsinks for memory cooling, we had high hopes for overclocking. We snagged Powerstrip for our overclocking needs, and proceeded to crank it up. The core was done first, keeping the memory at 325MHz. From 500MHz, we topped off at 585MHz. At 590MHz, we experienced lockups when trying to run some benchmarks, and as we lowered the core speed down stability slowly returned until the card was rock solid at 585MHz. Temperatures wavered in the in the mid-forties, which isn't bad and credit must go to the iCooler.

We bumped the core down to 500MHz, and began moving the memory clock up. Eventually, we topped out at 356MHz. Anything higher resulted in either dropped textures, or image noise during benchmarks.

When we overclocked both the core and memory together, we settled for a 581/348 core and memory overclock. Since both items were being overclocked, we weren't able to run either component as high as we were able to when ran alone. What did this do for performance?

Splinter Cell, HIS OC'd @ 581/348

At 10x8, we don't see much of an improvement, but Splinter Cell does get a nice bump at 12x10. Nonetheless, the improvements are minor in the grand scheme of things, and considering video cards tend to be less tolerant than CPUs when it comes to overclocking, I'll leave it up to you to decide if the inherited risks involved in overclocking is worth the small boost in speed.

Final Words

The HIS implementation of the 9600 XT was well done with the Excalibur 9600 XT Turbo. The Excalibur is about as close as you can get to a perfect video card as you can get in the targeted price range. We don't have confirmed pricing on the card, but we expect it to retail in the 170$ - 200$ range, and although some people may find 200$ a bit steep, you have to realize that a Half-Life 2 (HL2) voucher is included. This game will likely retail in the 40$ - 50$ range, so buying this card now can be viewed as a 150$ purchase. We realize that HL2 may not appeal to everyone, but if you're even considering a DX9 video card, my guess is you're looking to play something other than Solitaire.

The HL2 voucher is nothing new for Radeon 9x00 based cards though (keep in mind not every manufacturer offers this game in their package), and HIS had to do more to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. The faster ram, which is 50MHz faster than the reference 9600 XT, is a start and the extra speed will make a difference at higher resolution and detail levels. The iCooler heatsink is more than just a flashy LED fan, as the large size of the cooler will aid in cooling the VPU. Add the ramsinks, and you have the makings of a fairly overclockable card.

Looking back at our tests, the HIS 9600 XT finished out on top in the majority of the benchmarks, though it did step aside for the FX5700 Ultra in four of the six Call of Duty tests. In terms of actual gameplay, neither card had a distinct advantage, and "felt" the same for CoD. Benchmarks don't always tell the full story, and although some of the benchmark results were favorable at 1280x1024 with AA and AF on, actual gameplay was something of a mixed bag. Older games such as Unreal Tournament and Return to Castle Wolfenstein played well, but the newer games saw some framerate drops as the action got more intense. 1024x768 is the real sweet spot for the 9600 XT, and it is at this resolution, even with AA/AF enabled, all the games tested today were very playable.

Image quality (IQ) is typical of what we've come to expect from ATI, which is very good. We've debated here whether it is ATI or nVidia that has better 3D quality as both cards are very close. It's a subjective opinion, but from what I have observed, ATI's 3D IQ is higher contrast and darker images, whereas the FX5700 Ultra had less contrast, but a brighter picture. Naturally, this can be adjusted via the control panel, but at default driver settings, this is what we observed. 2D quality does go to ATI though, as we found small font sizes easier to read than on the FX.

For those of you who already own a DX9 card in the form of the Radeon 9500/9600 Pro, or FX5600/5700 Ultra, this card's performance is probably not enough to warrant an upgrade, but if you're still sitting on a Ti4200 or Radeon 8500, this card is certainly worth a look.

Pros: Good gaming performance, excellent 2D and 3D image quality, Half-Life 2 voucher.

Cons: 2D quality slightly weaker than the All-in-Wonder 9600 Pro.

Bottom Line: All in all, the HIS Excalibur 9600 XT Turbo would be my pick as the best mainstream card on the market. It is faster than everything else in it's price range, and not priced much more than similar cards in it's class.

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