Like the 128mb version of the 9600, the 256mb version uses the same PCB which the low-end Radeon 9000, 9100, and 9200 uses. Using the same PCB design across a fairly broad range of products like this saves manufacturing costs, which are then passed on to the end user.

The Sapphire 9600 256MB ships clocked at 325MHz for the core and 200MHz (400MHz DDR) for the memory - both standard speeds for 9600 non-Pros. Overclockers don't have much hope with the memory though; it's rated for 5ns which equates to 200MHz, the first time I've ever seen a card who's memory is set exactly to it's rated speed and not below.

	Radeon 9600 Pro	Radeon 9600	Radeon 9500 Pro	Radeon 9500
Manufacturing Process	.13µ	.13µ	.15µ	.15µ
Transistor Count (millions)	75	75	110	110
Core Speed	400MHz	325MHz	275MHz	275MHz
Memory Speed	300MHz DDR	200MHz DDR	270MHz DDR	270MHz DDR
Memory Interface	128bit	128bit	128bit	128bit
Max Memory	256MB	256MB	256MB	256MB
Rendering Pipelines	4	4	8	4
TMUs per Pipe	1	1	1	1
Peak Bandwidth	9.6 GB/s	6.4 GB/s	8.6 GB/s	8.6 GB/s
Pixel Fillrate (million pixels/sec)	1,600	1,300	2,200	1,100
Texel Fillrate (million texels/sec)	1,600	1,300	2,200	1,100
Pixel-Shader version	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.0
Vertex-Shaders (version)	2 (2.0)	2 (2.0)	4 (2.0)	4 (2.0)

• 4 parallel rendering pipelines
• 2 parallel geometry engines
• 128-bit DDR memory interface
• AGP 8X support
• SMARTSHADER 2.0
• Programmable pixel and vertex shaders
• 16 textures per pass
• Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 128-bit floating point precision
• Vertex shaders up to 1024 instructions with flow control
• Multiple render target support
• Shadow volume rendering acceleration
• High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
• Supports DirectX® 9.0 and the latest version of OpenGL®
• SMOOTHVISION 2.1
• 2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
• Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
• 2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
  • Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
• HYPER Z III+
• 3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
• Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear
• TRUFORM 2.0
• 2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
• Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
• Displacement mapping
• VIDEOSHADER
• Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video
• FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology
• Noise removal filtering for captured video
• MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
• All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
• YPrPb component output*
• Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
• Dual integrated display controllers
• Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
• Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant)
• Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution