The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-02-25, 21:34:
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-02-25, 21:25:
I also added some pictures of my card. These things are really quite nice looking. I don't think too many companies bothered to make such interesting non-reference designs for this series.
From the looks of it, this still pretty close to the reference design, but cheapened out. Back side of the PCB looks very empty. But at least caps look high quality.
I wouldn't say cheapened out. They appear to have taken a mix of the existing 9600 reference PCB variants. Many of the 9600Pro use something close the 9600XT reference board, which uses the SC1175. That one brings a few more parts to the table, since it's basically what we'd nowadays call a "two-phase" regulator. They basically switched to using the ISL6522, which was also done on gigabyte cards. That - in theory - limits the amount of power available for the memory, as it's for MVDDC. The SC1175 combines two different voltage input rails, whereas the ISL6522 uses only one.
They got rid of the high-density connector & rage theater entirely, instead having space for the secondary DVI conversion (not used in this card here). And finally got rid of the never used footprint of the external power connector (the reference schematics would allow for the use of one).
Overall, not really a big deal. Nothing that I'd consider cheaped out. If you look at the Radeon 9600Pro Advantage from Sapphire you get a good feeling for what a cheaped out 9600Pro looks like. All linear voltage regulation for the Memory, no VTT (good-bye high memory speeds), TSOP memory and the flimsy single switching regulator for the VDDC rail (GPU power).
Granted, the RV350/RV360 are freaking efficiency beasts, so they don't sip a lot of power, but you'd notice that difference in any attempts of overclocking (the memory) for sure.
Some interesting side-notes:
The reference designs from ATI for the 9600 included temperature and fan control via an LM63. They used the internal thermal diode sensor of the GPU for that. They also proposed a BOM with fan speed measurement, using the ADM1030 instead of the LM63.
This can be seen used on a few 9600XTs that support overdrive (basically temperature based overclocking in the driver), but there are also 9600XTs which don't support it, though most of the boards I've seen have the components for it just not populated, though the PCB could.
Gigabyte did some models with WinBond Chips as well, I've got a Radeon 9200 that has one on board. There is a 9600 model from the too, the GV-R96P128DH (and GV-R96P256DH) - which both use the Winbond Chip as well. At least for the 9200 I can confirm they do not use the thermal diode of the GPU but an external thermistor. Since the 9600 implementation looks similar, I'd assume they'd done the same there as well.
I wonder if Tyan ever went down the rabbithole to use the GPUs thermal diode, but I guess they have gone with a thermistor as well.
Overall the Tachyon cards are nice to look at and interesting, because they at least put on a feature that was rarely seen at that time.
