Power-Color sent over one of their new video cards, a Radeon 9200SE. This card has some new and older technologies implemented into it such as SMARTSHADER, SMOOTHVISION, FULLSTREAM and VIDEO IMMERSION. Though DirectX 9 has come out this card is only DirectX 8.1 compatible. Even though this video card is a budget card it would have been nice for it to support DirectX 9. Below is a comparison chart between the Radeon 9200, 9200SE, and 9200 Pro. The 9200SE is the slowest in the 9200 series of cards and only has a 64-bit memory interface; as you can see this is definitely a budget card.
| RADEON™ 9200SE | RADEON™ 9200 | RADEON™ 9200 PRO | |
| Performance | Fast | Faster | Fastest |
| Memory Interface | 64-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
Below are the specifications for the video card that were pulled from the Power-Color website. The card looks to be pretty low end however it does have a lot of features that look like they will help the card perform well. Also the fact that this card is a low profile budget card makes it perfect for LAN applications or project systems.
| Part # | R92LE-B3S | TWIN | YES |
| Chipset | Radeon 9200 | Video in/out | Video Out |
| Memory | 64MB DDR | TV Connector | RCA |
| Core Speed | 200MHz | AGP | 8x |
| Memory Speed | 330MHz | Game | None |
| TV-out | YES | DVD software | None |
| DVI | YES | Doungle | None |
Model
Power-Color RADEON 9200™ SE9 series delivers a dazzling 3D experience to PC enthusiasts with the best performance in its class, optimized for today’s most compelling gaming environments and applications. Driven by an advance quad-pipe architecture, RADEON™ 9200 supports the AGP 8X standard, doubling the bandwidth of competing products and enabling more engaging characters and effects.
Pixel Processing Power
- High performance of the RADEON™ 9200 Series is matched by competitive features and extra horsepower to deliver barrier-free entertainment.
- Four rendering pipelines for the fastest 3D gaming performance in its class.
- Full support for the AGP 8X standard doubles bandwidth for more engaging characters and environments.
- The GPU speed is 200 MHz
Redefining Realism
- RADEON™ 9200 Series sets new levels for visual realism in graphics and video content.
- SMARTSHADER™ supports Microsoft® DirectX® 8.1 feature sets, enabling more complex and realistic lighting effects.
- FULLSTREAM™ produces smoother-looking, higher quality streaming Internet content without putting extra strain on the CPU.
- VIDEO IMMERSION™ integrates features to provide unprecedented support for digital and high definition video.
- CHARISMA ENGINE II technology
Monitor Management
- Choose your own RADEON™ 9200 adventure with highly customizable display features.
- HYDRAVISION™, ATI’s multi-monitor management software, effortlessly organizes and controls multiple display configurations.
- Integrated display controllers to drive two monitors simultaneously.
- Enhance the gaming experience by utilizing independent resolutions and refresh rates.
Accessories
- 1 set A/V cable
- Manual
- CD Driver with S/W DVD player
- Low Profile bracket
The card comes in a box that is smaller than most other video cards so I am guessing not much is inside. The top of the box is pretty plain with a few details and the back of the box has some specifications with more detail.
This 9200 has a red PCB and a passive aluminum heatsink which is probably sufficient since it is a lower end card and won’t get too hot. The card comes in a 64MB and 128MB version, however I got the 64MB one. The card is very low profile which would be good for a lot of small PC type projects.
The card has a VGA, DVI, and RCA out connection which is pretty nice for a low end card. Because this card is designed to be low profile you have the option to make the card smaller by moving or removing the VGA connection. On most cases there is a cutout where you can mount the VGA port if you need to make the card low profile. If you do not need the VGA at all you can then just remove it.
The card is pretty lacking as far as what comes with it. Included is a RCA cable, a smaller back plate, users manual, and driver CD. There is also no software at all which is a little disappointing.
The heatsink is epoxied on so I did not attempt to remove it because I did not want to damage the card. This card uses 4ns Hynix chips; Because this is a lower end video card the RAM is not BGA but this shouldn’t make much of a difference.
I will be using 3DMark2001SE, 3DMark2003, Quake 3, Serious Sam 2, and Unreal Tournament 2003 to benchmark this video card. All of the testing was done with all the eye candy turned on and everything at it’s highest. I will be benchmarking with the resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×1024, and 1600×1200. With Unreal tournament 2003 I used 1280×960 because the benchmark tool did not have 1280×1024 as an option. I used ATi’s Catalyst 3.9 driver and ran all the tests from my system which was just formatted with Windows XP.
Test Bed:
- Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0
- 1800+ Thoroughbred
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX
- Power-Color Radeon 9200SE
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW
- SilenX 400w PSU (review to come)
- AOpen AC7L2 heatsink (review to come)
3DMark2001SE is a DirectX 8 benchmark and is the predecessor to 3DMark03 however I feel it is still a good benchmarking program. With all three resolutions this card falls behind the other 3 tested, even the lowley 5200 Ultra. This being the least intensive benchmark leaves me little hope that it will do any better with the other benchmarks. The low power of this card leaves it unable to break 4000 points at any resolution.
3DMark03 is one of the newest synthetic benchmarking programs from Futuremark and widely used for comparison of video cards. 3DMark03 is a DirectX 9 benchmarking program so this Radeon 9200SE is at a clear disadvantage. As with the 3DMark2001SE benchmark the results are very poor, worse even. The card was unable to even get 700 points at 1024×768 which isn’t good. Though these 2 tests are just synthetic it gives you an idea of how the cards are going to perform when it comes to real world application.
I set everything to the best settings then ran demo001 which is what I always use. I was happy to see that this card was able to do pretty well at all resolutions, especially at 1024×768. Above that the frame rates were not very good however they would still be playable and not too choppy. Quake 3 is a somewhat old game so the graphics are not too intensive so we will see how the card fares on the next page with some newer games.
Serious Sam 2 is another first person shooter game that is very graphics intensive. I set all of the video options, ran the Yodeler demo, and recorded the results. As I suspected this card did not do so well with the game, at 1024×768 the frame rate ended up being 39.7 which isn’t bad but also not very good. After increasing the resolution the results suffered and the game would be unplayable with the frame rates so low. The best thing to do in this situation would be to keep the resolution at 1024×768 and turn down some of the video options.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is a really good and graphically stressful game. I used the standard benchmarking tool which was included with the game to do this testing so you would be able to more easily compare with the results. The first half of the benchmark does a flyby test going through three of the maps and records the output. The results with this benchmark were very similar to that of Serious Sam 2, not too good. 1024×768 would be playable but any other resolution above that would get pretty choppy.
Unreal Tournament 2003 also does a bot match benchmark with the same three maps. The results with this portion of the benchmark were lower than the flyby as usual with any video card. Again the same results and comments hold true with this benchmark so there really isnt much more to say about it.
Conclusion
As you can see from all of the benchmarking results this card is definitely a low end budget solution. The card is not a bad card because it does serve its purpose it simply isn’t going to blow you away and keep you happily gaming.
This card is designed for someone who is looking for a low cost solution who isn’t too concerned about 3D applications. The card does not offer any overclocking at all unless you were to flash the BIOS to something else to give it that ability. I did not know this at first but soon came to realize it as soon as I started trying to overclock it. I also think that the lack of extras missing from this product is quite disappointing.
Though accessories would raise the cost of the card I think that some things would have been nice to have. I do like the fact that it is low profile, offers VGA, DVI, and TV-out, and is silent.
This video card is perfect for someone building a small project system or someone who doesn’t need all the bells and whistles of a Radeon 9800XT. Overall I am fairly happy with the results that this card turned out however I am only going to give it a 7/10. I would really like to thank Power-Color for sending me this card.
Pros
- Low profile design
- VGA, S-Video, DVI, and VIVO functionality
- Red PCB
- Silent because of the passive heatsink
- Low cost
Cons
- No software bundle
- No cables or adapters included
- No overclocking ability
- No DirectX 9