Sapphire Atlantis 9600

Sapphire's latest card proves that fast DirectX 9 (DX9) gaming doesn't have to cost the earth. The Atlantis comes in at just over £100 before tax, though a few sacrifices have been made.

At first glance there's little difference between this and the reference design we saw from ATI in our June 2003 issue. VGA, DVI and S-Video outputs are supplied, and there's an S-Video cable included as well. Using the standard Radeon 9600 core (as opposed to the Pro version), the Atlantis' processor runs at 325MHz, but disappointingly there are just two pixel pipelines. On a more positive note the 9600 core does use 0.13micron technology, which can speed up a card considerably. It also means there's no need to root around for a spare power connector to drive a cooling fan.

Sapphire has opted for Elixir memory with a five nanosecond response time and a 200MHz memory core. Even though there's a huge 256MB of it, this clock speed isn't particularly impressive and may account for the reasonably conservative performance scores.

Graphics performance is good, but the 9600 doesn't pip the 10,000 barrier in 3Dmark 2001. As you can see from the graph, Unreal Tournament 2003 performance is acceptable but not startling. Extras in the box have also been pruned to keep the price down. Aside from the S-Video cable, all you get is PowerDVD and driver software.

But despite our grumbles over lack of bundled games and its slimmed-down nature, the Atlantis is still excellent value.

Contact: Sapphire www.sapphiretech.com

Specifications:

• 325MHz core
• 128bit DDR GPU
• 256MB memory
• 200MHz memory clock
• Two pixel pipelines
• OpenGL 1.3, DirectX 9 support
• AGP 2x, 4x, 8x compatible