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Radeon 9500 Pro vs Dell Radeon 9700 TX

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First post, by Totempole

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With reference to the above, which would you say is better at factory defaults? A standard Radeon 9500 Pro or a Dell Radeon 9700 TX (Underclocked Radeon 9700)?

Here are the basic specs: Obtained from GPU review and adjusted to correctly reflect the Dell Radeon 9700 TX.

Radeon 9500 Pro
Manufacturer:_______ATi
Series:_____________Radeon 9
GPU:_______________R300
Release Date:_______ 2002-10-24
Interface:__________ AGP 8X
Core Clock:_________ 275 MHz
Memory Clock:_______270 MHz (540 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth:___8.64 GB/sec
Shader Operations:___2200 MOperations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate:_______ 2200 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate:_____2200 MTexels/sec
Vertex Operations:___ 275 MVertices/sec

Dell Radeon 9700 TX
Manufacturer:_______ATi
Series:_____________Radeon 9
GPU:_______________R300
Release Date:_______ 2002-10-24
Interface:__________ AGP 8X
Core Clock:_________ 260 MHz
Memory Clock:_______260 MHz (520 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth:___16.6 GB/sec
Shader Operations:___2080 MOperations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate:_______ 2080 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate:_____2080 MTexels/sec
Vertex Operations:___ 260 MVertices/se

So at first glance, it looks like the 9500 Pro is better, but the Dell 9700 still has double the memory bandwidth, although I'm not sure as to how big of a difference that would make.

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

My Retro Gaming PC:
Pentium III 450MHz Katmai Slot 1
Transcend 256MB PC133
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
MSI Geforce 2 MX400 AGP
Ensoniq ES1371 PCI
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

Reply 1 of 7, by AlphaWing

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9700, memory bandwidth makes a big difference, at the very least you can jack up the SSAA mode a notch or two.

Reply 2 of 7, by fyy

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The 9700 is still going to be much better overall.

Reply 3 of 7, by Maeslin

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fyy wrote:

The 9700 is still going to be much better overall.

Not to mention it can likely handle being clocked at normal 9700 speeds.

Reply 4 of 7, by Totempole

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Great, thanks a lot for the info guys, that clears things up for me a little.

My Retro Gaming PC:
Pentium III 450MHz Katmai Slot 1
Transcend 256MB PC133
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
MSI Geforce 2 MX400 AGP
Ensoniq ES1371 PCI
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

Reply 5 of 7, by obobskivich

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Yet another +1 on the 9700; double memory bandwidth is substantial. If you can bring the clocks up even to match the 9500P/9700 (at 275/540) it'd be even better.

Reply 6 of 7, by sliderider

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9700, for sure. When I got my Sapphire 9500 non-Pro, unlocked and overclocked it, it still wasn't capable of full 9700 speeds. The core was OK, I could get it to about 25mhz below a 9700 Pro, but the memory started glitching immediately as soon as I edged the clocks up even a teeny bit. I think I was able to push memory by only 5-10mhz, which was an indistinguishable difference so I just used the factory setting. The Pro has the pipes already unlocked, but utilizes the same restricted 128-bit memory bus as the non-Pro so it won't keep up with a full blown 9700 with 256-bit bus no matter how much you try to overclock it.

Reply 7 of 7, by smeezekitty

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The only difference in spec on the is the clock speeds and memory bandwidth.
That means if you crank the 9700 core up to 275 MHz it should have the same fill rates and operation speed
but with twice the memory bandwidth.

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