Tuesday, November 21, 2000

The drivers

The drivers that we used in our tests are the same ones we recieved with the Radeon: v4.12.3044. Below, you can get a glimpse of the drivers configuration panels. The most recent drivers available at the time of this writing are those based on version D714-0831a-62B-SPD, and are available for Win/98 ME, Windows 2000and, WindowsNT4.

Overclocking

By default, the Radeon 32MB DDR operates with its memory oscillating at 166MHz (DDR), for an effective rate of 333MHz, and its graphics engine is set to a frequency of 166MHz. Thanks to the intervention of PowerStrip version 2.75.02, we were able to boost the Radeon's memory frequency all the way to 410MHz, and its graphics core to 185MHz, all for an effective gain of about 2%.

The software bundle

The Radeon 32MB DDR does come with a few bits of software, mainly video drivers, DirectX 7, and a "multimedia center" which is essentially a DVD player. Unfortunatly, no games were included.

Next: The test setup.