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9600 is a piss poor card?

iversonyin

iversonyin

Diamond Member
i was thinking about getting one for the replacement computer i just build, but when i look at the benchmark at toms, the 9600 were outperformed by ti4x00 in some games

so aside from DX9, is there anyy reason to blow $90 on this junk?
 
Well you could always do what I did, get a 128bit 9550 for around $60 then flash the bios to a 9600 pro, overclock the bejesus out of it and have something that performs as well as a Ti4200 in DX8 yet still gets respectable performance in DX9. Not sure if that's cheaper than a Ti4200 though.
 
Originally posted by: Mavtek
Well you could always do what I did, get a 128bit 9550 for around $60 then flash the bios to a 9600 pro, overclock the bejesus out of it and have something that performs as well as a Ti4200 in DX8 yet still gets respectable performance in DX9. Not sure if that's cheaper than a Ti4200 though.
Click to expand...

Are there any in particular 9550's to look for?
I want to replace my aging 8500LE which doesn't OC worth crap on the RAM and has a dying GPU fan with something cheap, this might be a good option.
 
Those were probably without any AA or AF, though.

It's also possible that with ATI's driver advances, the 9600/pro/XT would do better in a review today.
 
Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Those were probably without any AA or AF, though.

It's also possible that with ATI's driver advances, the 9600/pro/XT would do better in a review today.
Click to expand...

how much better? would it pull away from 9500s and gf4 ti4x00? this is quite sad that these new cards are unable to beat older generation card....
 
Just dont get a 9600. My advice is to spend the extra money and go for a 6600 GT, but if you don't have the money right now go for a 9600XT/Pro.

I find that Tom's benchmarks are frequently innacurate so I wouldn't go by them if I were you, but it's your choice. The 9600 cards will be considerably better than your 8500LE plus they have DX9 support. But only unless you ABSOLUTELY cannot afford the extra money for a 6600 GT you should get a 9600.
 
The only 9500 that would beat a 9600 at equivalent clockspeeds would be a 9500pro. That's because a 9500pro has 8 pixel pipelines to the 9600's 4. You need a 9600XT, with it's high clock speeds to beat a 9500pro.

In general, a 9600 will beat a ti4X00 series card. You can always find a few benches where some oddities crop up, such as older games or without any eye candy or at relatively low resolutions where the CPU is a bottleneck.

The ti4X00 series will embarrass several of the Geforce FX cards in a few benches as well. This doesn't mean the FX line is inferior to the GF4.
 
I have no experience with the 4200 cards so I can't do a direct comparision but I loved my 9600 pro and it played very well. Here is a list of games and details I did with this card and my system:

System Specs at the time:
AXP 2500+ @ 2.2ghz
512 Giel PC3200
Retail Radeon 9600 pro non-oc
Abit NF7-S 2.0

Games: (all averaged 60 fps+ and did not have AA/AS on unless otherwise noted or game limited)
RTCW: 1600x1200 max
Half-Life 2: 1024x768 low
Doom 3: 800x600 med (1024 ran well but dropped below 30 once late in the game so I lowered res)
Homeworld 2: 1024x768 med
Rome: TW 1280x1024 max
Americas Army: 1600x1200 max
Unreal Tournament 2004: 1024x768 med
Unreal Tournament 2003: 1024x768 max
Starcraft: 640x480 max everything (lol, just a joke)
Warcraft 3: 1024x768 max
C&C Generals + Zero Hour: 1024x768 max
COD Original: 1024x768 max (dropped to 30's every once in a while but not often)
MOHAA Original: 1024x768 max

I know I am missing some games, but there is a brief summary of the 9600 pro's performance. I got it a year and a half ago for $140 and it served me very well. I personally would not hesitate to buy it for ~$90 but that is just me. As always, YMMV

-spike
 
Here is my progression:

I had the ti4200 AGP 8x. It is a great card. Served me well for about a year. I then wanted to play around with DX9 games (Doom3) and video recording/PVR, so I went with the AIW 9600XT. Not only did I get more functionality, but better performance. So I enjoyed that card. I must say though, I never was able to fully utilize the TV tuner. I was always getting poor reception, even with cable, but that's a whole other story. The bummer however was I was upgrading my display to LCD and needed DVI. The AIW 9600XT does not have a DVI connector, just 2 VGA connectors. That wouldn't do, so I wanted to upgrade again. Well it just so happened that the NVidia 6800 was on sale for a great price ($249), so I went with that. Whhhoooowww, what a difference. I mean, before I could run games at 800x600 with small lag, now I'm running games at 1280x1024 with absolutely no lag. It looks great on the LCD and it pratically doubled all my frame rates from 30's-40 to about 70's-80's in most of my games. To me, that was one of the best upgrades I could go with. In the back of my mind, I wished I would have gone the 6800 GT route w/ 256meg. But it works great and I won't feel like my stuff is going obsolete in 6 months to a year. I will go PCI E at some point, but AGP is just fine.

The bottom line, go with the best card you can. Shop around, set a price in your mind you are willing to pay and meet that goal. If you can only afford the 9600XT, go for it. If you can higher, do it. You'll be much more satisfied in the long run. Satisfaction is worth the extra few bucks.
 
Originally posted by: CraigRT
Originally posted by: Mavtek
Well you could always do what I did, get a 128bit 9550 for around $60 then flash the bios to a 9600 pro, overclock the bejesus out of it and have something that performs as well as a Ti4200 in DX8 yet still gets respectable performance in DX9. Not sure if that's cheaper than a Ti4200 though.
Click to expand...

Are there any in particular 9550's to look for?
I want to replace my aging 8500LE which doesn't OC worth crap on the RAM and has a dying GPU fan with something cheap, this might be a good option.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the ones that say 128bit, and preferrably have a fan.
 
Originally posted by: SneakyStuff
Simple answer, 9500 Pro, I have yet to find a card that can beat that for under $80 or so. ebay
Click to expand...


it really is becoming the new ti4200

im stoked..my 9500pro plays HL2 (DX9 mode obviously) at 10x7 with most of everthing at full, and a bit of AF and its wonderful

definatly reccomend gettin one
 
Originally posted by: iversonyin
i was thinking about getting one for the replacement computer i just build, but when i look at the benchmark at toms, the 9600 were outperformed by ti4x00 in some games

so aside from DX9, is there anyy reason to blow $90 on this junk?
Click to expand...

Your 8500LE is Junk . . . .the 9600 will be a big improvement. 😉
:roll:

Now, IF you can afford a 9700p, you will have a much better upgrade.
 
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