Introduction:::…
In this day and age the focus for graphics is on the bigger and better. With NVIDIA just having released the Geforce 7800, and ATI delaying with their R520 chip, the heat is on for the crown.
One high-end card after another is released to meet the gamers' needs... those who can afford it anyway. But what about when the dust settles and the people that can’t afford the high-end cards want something different?
Here’s where ATI’s Radeon X600 series comes in; in particular this Asus Extreme AX600 pro.
It’s a card planted firmly in the mid-range section with lower speed than its bigger brothers and cheaper memory to lower the costs, but still has a PCI-Express connector.
The pixel and vertex shader are fully DirectX 9 compatible and although the specifications on the ATI site still report OpenGL 1.5 support, it’s actually already 2.0. (Full OpenGL shader language support)
Now people can upgrade their computer taking advantage of the PCI-Express system without having to spend much more money on a new expensive video card.
Let’s have a look at the Asus Extreme AX600 Pro and see how it performs.
There seems to be a difference in pricing between the US version and the European, I’m not entirely sure, but I think you get a bigger software package included in the US version.
General features:::…
RADEON X600 Technology Specifications
- World’s first PCI Express™Graphics Chip
- Native x16 lane PCI Express
- Double the bandwidth of AGP 8X
- Increased memory bandwidth to 12 Gigabytes/sec.
- Four extreme parallel 3D rendering pixel pipelines
- Two programmable vertex shader pipelines
- 128-bit memory interface supporting 128MB or 256MB DDR1 memory configurations
- Full DirectX® 9 support
SMARTSHADER™ 2.0
- SMARTSHADER™ defines the level of realism in latest 2D/3D games and applications
- Complete hardware-accelerated Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shader support
- Full hardware support for OpenGL® 2.0
SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1
- SMOOTHVISION™ improves image quality by smoothing jagged edges, improving blurriness and refining background details during on-screen motion and at lower resolutions.
- SMOOTHVISION™ settings are user configurable in ATI CATALYST™ Control Panel:
- 2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing modes
- Sparse multi-sample algorithm with gamma correction, programmable sample patterns, and centroid sampling
- Lossless Color Compression (up to6:1)at all resolutions
- Temporal Anti-Aliasing
- 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
- Up to 128-tap texture filtering
- Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and trilinear (quality) options
HYPER Z™ III
- HYPER Z™ ensures optimal hardware performance by discarding irrelevant object data that is not visible to end-user on their display.
- Leverages key features from ATI’s third generation HYPER Z™ III technology that conserves video memory bandwidth for improved performance in demanding 2D/3D games and applications.
- Lossless Z-Buffer Compression (up to 48:1)
- Fast Z-Buffer Clear
- Z Cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
VIDEOSHADER™
- Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
- FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
- VIDEOSOAP™ noise removal filtering for captured video
- MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
- DXVA Support
- Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
- All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
- YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays†
- Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)
Additional Features
- Dual integrated display controllers
- Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
- Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
- Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
- Windows® Logo Program compliant
- ATI CATALYST™ Software Suite
2D DISPLAY MODES
Resolutions, colors and maximum refresh rates (Hz) in 256, 65K or 16.7M colors
Monitor Resolution |
Hz |
640x480 |
200 |
800x600 |
200 |
1024x768 |
200 |
1152x864 |
200 |
1280x1024 |
160 |
1600x1200 |
120 |
1920x1080* 16:9 |
120 |
1920x1200 |
100 |
1920x1440 |
90 |
2048x1536 |
85 |
*16:9 aspect ratio monitors are supported on 1920x1080 and 848x480 on Windows® XP, and Windows® 2000. The complete list of resolutions depends on the driver version and operating system. NOTE: resolutions are limited by the performance of the attached monitor.
MAXIMUM 3D RESOLUTIONS
65K colors |
2048x1536 |
16.7M colors |
2048x1536 |
Specific Features:::…
Here are the specific features of this card.
Graphics Engine |
Radeon X600PRO |
Video Memory |
128 MB DDR |
Engine Clock |
400MHz |
Memory Clock |
600MHz(300MHz DDR) |
RAMDAC |
400MHz |
Bus Standard |
PCI Expressx16 Lanes Native |
Memory Interface |
128-bit DDR |
Max Resolution |
2048x1536 |
Pixel Pipelines |
4 Full Precision Pipelines |
Vertex Shaders |
2 programmable vertex shaders |
VGA Output |
Standard 15-pin D-sub |
TV-Out put |
S-Video and Composite |
DVI Output |
DVI-I |
2nd VGA Output |
Yes |
