9600pro to 9800pro

[kill3ruk]

I am going to upgrade my system next month and I was thinking of buying a new Radeon 9800pro. This is my system so far:

AMD Athlon XP 2500
1gb PC3200 GeIL RAM
Asus A7N8X-X
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 sound card
1x120gb Maxtor HD, 1x40gb Maxtor HD

Will there be much improvement in my games if I do upgrade? I also need help chosing which Radeon to buy, the choices are:

Connect3D ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR - £131.54
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - £139.59
HIS ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR - £143.94
HIS ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR IceQ - £152.69

Or If someone could find a Radeon 9800XT for around the same price, please suggest one. Thanks for any help you can give me.

P.S. Someone suggested going for a 256mb DDRII card, is there much performance increase with these?

 

[nanaki333]

wait a month when prices go down on everything, then repost.

 

[magratton]

Whoa, lots in this post:
1) The PC you have will be just fine
2) The 9600 -> 9800 will be a jump in gaming performance yes...
3) From the four cards you listed I have to say that while it is a newcommer, the HIS models are nice with their pre-mounted VGA Silencer cooling. Another recommendation is the MSI 9800 Pro, which has a nice cooling solution as well and many folks have reported them having the R360 Core (though this is true of Sapphire as well).
4) The 256MB recommendation was likely due to Doom III and the possibility of playing it on HIGH settings. I do not think there is really a "Performance" increase, in fact I thought that someone on here posted that they perform the same.
5) I have looked about as well, and if you are going for a XT card, then don't and get a 6800 instead. I have not seen one single site selling the 9800XT/5950 Ultras for anything less that the $300USD range.

Hope this helped!

 

[FrustratedUser]

Ummm huh and WTF!?

An AT staff member asking this?

 

[botman]

I was thinking about getting an radeon 9800 pro for my rig, and narrowed it down to the msi 9800 pro. Newegg had it for about 200 us i think. The MSI didn't seem to have that many heat issues, and for lots of people it's recognized as a 9800xt. Finally i just decided to go for the upgrade and get an evga 6800.....it's coming tomorrow and i can't wait.