ATI Radeon 9600 XT with OverDrive Benchmarked

Introduction

The Radeon 9800 XT brought with it a new level of performance for the ATI high-end. This card features the revamped R360 core, and due to manufacturing enhancements, allowed an even higher core speed. The memory clock also increased, and the resulting performance surpassed that of the then-top dog ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. But that was only the base specifications, and with the Catalyst 3.8 release, ATI also enabled their OverDrive technology.

OverDrive is exactly what the name denotes, and drives the R360 core speed over the base 412 MHz. How far over is dependant on factors such as core and case temperature, and the hardware monitors these levels and adjusts the core speed dynamically. Overall, this is a nice feature, with the only caveat being that there is no method of "locking" the clock at a certain level. As we've stated in previous reviews, OverDrive is similar to the on-demand 4-wheel-drive you find in vehicles; it's there when you need it, but it is not manually adjustable.

The Radeon 9800 XT takes care of the high-end, but ATI also released similar technology for the mid-range. This came in the form of the Radeon 9600 XT, which also supports OverDrive, but not upon release. The feature was always there, but as with the Radeon 9800 XT, we needed to wait for the Catalyst 3.9 drivers before taking it on a test run.

The ATI Radeon 9600 XT with OD

The Radeon 9600 XT has default clock speeds of 500 MHz core and 600 MHz DDR memory, which is already a nice upgrade over the 400 MHz core of the Radeon 9600 Pro. This is a 0.13-micron core, but it still remains to be seen exactly how high the ATI OverDrive technology can take it over default. The cooling hardware is also standard issue, and we won't enjoy the high-end heatsink-fan of the Radeon 9800 XT in this benchmark evaluation.

As with the Radeon 9800 XT, the design of the ATI OverDrive feature means there could be a slight difference in overall performance depending on the operating environment and the game testing performed. For all our benchmarking, we have made every attempt to emulate a well-cooled, high-end desktop system, ensured that the GPU was adequately ventilated, and to take a break between tests. Throughout the testing, we didn't find any stability problems, and the lower performance over the longer term (due to higher core heat) we experienced with the Radeon 9800 XT was virtually non-existent with the Radeon 9600 XT.