Specifications
Please let me present to you by photo the Hercules 3D Prophet 9500 Pro.
As you can see from the photo's the Hercules build a PCB very close the the reference design. As explained the Radeon 9500 Pro has a 128-bit memory bus, contrary to the normal Radeon 9500. So for all you modders out there there is no way that you can turn your Pro into a 9700 model as physically you cannot change the memory bus. Furthermore we notice that the card is equipped with D-SUB, DVI-I output and S-Video output. Memory manufacturer is Infinion, memory design is BGA with what I think is 3.6 ns memory (it's hard to see).
You all know R300, this is the codename for the Radeon 9500/9700 graphics core. What's in that name ? The Pro model is clocked at 275 MHz and 550 (2x275) MHz for it's 128-bit DDR memory the 9700 Pro for example has 310/650 MHz (256-bit DDR). The big difference between the 9500 and 9700 series we need to seek in memory bandwidth.
Next to pounding the NVIDIA GeForce4 in the face this card was the first on the market to have full support for DirectX 9 and the ability to beat GeForce 4 Ti 4600 on many fronts. This 9500 Pro ladies and gentlemen is performance wise close to NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti 4400 and 4600.
| Radeon 9500 | GeForce4 Ti 4600 | Radeon 9500 Pro | ||
| Performance | ||||
| Process | .15 micron | .15 micron | .15 micron | |
| Memory Clock Speed | 270 MHz | 325 MHz | 275 MHz | |
| Memory Interface | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR | 128-bit DDR | |
| Peak Memory Bandwidth | 8.6 GB/sec | 12.0 GB/sec | 8.8 GB/sec | |
| Engine Clock Speed | 275 MHz | 300 MHz | 275 MHz | |
| Rendering Pipelines | 4 | 4 | 8 | |
| Textures Applied per Pass | 8 | 4 | 16 | |
| RAMDAC | 400 MHz | 350 MHz | 400 MHz | |
| Features | ||||
| DirectX Version | 9.0 | 8.0 | 9.0 | |
| Memory Optimizations | HYPER III | LightSpeed Memory Architecture II | HYPER III | |
| Higher Order Surfaces | Yes (TRUFORM II) | No | Yes (TRUFORM II) | |
| Vertex Shaders | Yes (version 2.0) | Yes (version 1.1) | Yes (version 2.0) | |
| Pixel Shaders | Yes (version 2.0) | Yes (version 1.3) | Yes (version 2.0) | |
| Anti-Aliasing | SMOOTHVISIONTM II | Quincunx / Accuview | SMOOTHVISIONTM II | |
| FSAA Modes Supported | Up to 6X | Up to 4X | Up to 6X | |
| Anisotropic Filtering | Up to 16X | Up to 8X | Up to 16X | |
| Temporal Filtering | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Video De-blocking | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Multi-Display Mgmt Software | HYDRAVISIONTM II | nView | HYDRAVISIONTM II | |
