GigaCube Radeon 9600 Pro Game Buster

Company: GigaCube
Product: Radeon 9600 Pro Game Buster
Street Price: ~$145
Date Reviewed: July 30, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Introduction:

GigaCube has been around since 1990. They provide gaming solutions and all of their video cards are solely based on ATi's chips. Their goals are simple, "strong creativity, straightforward, and success." Today we have the opportunity to take a look at one of their video cards, the Radeon 9600 Pro Game Buster. The 9600 Pro is a budget/performance graphics card. It is targeted at the mainstream market for users who want DirectX 9 and 8x AGP support, but do not necessarily need the fastest gaming card on the planet. The card is a little different from the others we have reviewed. The heatsink also has some LEDs giving it some zing for end-users with window modifications on their case. Let us move on and see what this package has to offer.

Specifications:

• Powered by the AGP 8X RADEON 9600 PRO Visual Processing Unit (VPU).

• Supports 128MB/256MB of DDR memory for today's demanding games, applications, effects and animation.

• Integrated 4 parallel rendering pipelines and 4 parallel geometry engines for incredibly fast 3D graphics performance coupled with sophisticated real-time visual effects.

• SMARTSHADER™ 2.1 technology supports the latest Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 feature sets, enabling more complex and cinematic-quality lighting effects.

• SMOOTHVISION™ 2.1 technology delivers the sharpest, clearest textures, removes jaggies and brings out fine texture details without sacrificing frame rates.

• 128-bit full floating point precision enables billions of color variations to render the same lighting and effects as Hollywood studios.

• ATI's new FULLSTREAM™ technology removes blocky artifacts from Streaming and Internet video and provides sharper image quality.

• Full support for the AGP 8X standard doubles bandwidth for more engaging characters and environments.

• Display configuration supports CRT, DVI-I (2nd CRT via DVI converter) & TV-Out (PAL/NTSC).

• Support DirectXR® 9.0 and the latest OpenGL® functionality for unprecedented realism and sophisticated visual effects.

• Bundled Hydravision Multiple Monitor Management Software provides a flexible, user-friendly interface for multiple display settings.

• Industry-leading hardware DVD video playback with software DVD player support.

• Supports 3D resolutions (32-bit color) up to 2048x1536.

• Support Optional Video-in feature for Video Editing, Education training and Entertainment.