Introduction
TYAN TACHYON G9800 PRO-M 128MB
Tyan recently impressed us with its non-reference Radeon 9600 Pro graphics card. Branded under the Tachyon name, its double-sided cooler and variable-fan speed control through a Windows-based GUI made it one of the better 9600 Pros currently being passed through reviewing websites across the big world wide web.
The 9600 Pro, though, is a midrange card with an associated midrange price. £120 will buy you enough power to run the latest games at 1024x768x32 with no or little image enhancement applied. The problem is that cutting-edge games are now starting to use advanced image and rendering features as standard. A few games have popped up that require DX9 compliance and which make full use of the advanced vertex and pixel shaders that the API has to offer. Once you begin to bog down a midrange card with advanced gaming, albeit a card with full DX9 compatibility, one needs to look higher up in the range if fluid frame-rates or high resolutions is what you hanker for.
Tyan seems willing to oblige lovers of high frame rates and fat wallets. Tyan is one of ATi's main partners, so it's no surprise that it produces cards based on every VPU designed by the Canadians. The Tyan Tachyon G9800 PRO-M, as you may have guessed, is Tyan's Radeon 9800 PRO with a slight twist. We expect a card with a custom look, decent performance and a few features the reference card doesn't carry.