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9600pro upgrade to a 9800pro is it worth it?

N

niggles

Senior member
is it worth upgrading from a 9600 pro to a 9800 pro? keep in mind that I live in Canada before judging the price. I'm going to sell the 9600 pro for about $140 and buy the 9800 pro for $400 including tax... is it worth it for the difference in speed? I'm having second thoughts on this.
 
at that price, I wouldn't think it it's worth it. Right now, in US one can find a 9600xt for 150, and a 9800 np for 200. The price you're quoting seems quite high for what you're getting. Maybe you shoudl wait to upgrade until the new line of ati/nvidia comes out. That way, you can get a new card, or buy a 9800 for alot less.


my 2 cents.

lates.
 
Question 1) Does the 9600 pro run all your games?
If yes: No
If no: then maybe

Question 2) Are you buy the new card for 'future' games?
If yes: Just don't go there until they come out o.k.!
If no: Why do you want to spend more money, eh?

Question 3) Have you done your research? Read every review on both cards you could possibly find? Have your eyeballs turned inside out from reading too much?
If yes: Good for you... well, not the eyeball thing!
If no: Get to it!!!

Question 4) Am I bored?
If yes: Keep typing
If no: Fvck if I know...

Results: If the 9600 Pro is doing well for you at the moment, which it should be, don't upgrade yet. There will be new VPU/GPU cores coming out soon and the price of your 9800 Pro should drop at that point.

Question 5) Do you have money to burn?
If yes: PM me and I'll give you my P.O. #... Alternatively, you could wait, as in the Results above, and buy the new core equaling a much better card for your massive dollars.
If no: Read all of the above

Question 6) Shall I go on?
If yes: Pay me
If no: Have you ever tried putting a USB connector up your nose and tried .... wait, sorry, wrong forum... hope some of that helps.

Question 7) Does this forum rock? (We're talking the forum here, not the strange and odd sorts that frequent it, k)
If yes: You got it
If no: Don't even go there!

Later.......
 
OK, first off I need to point out again that I'm paying in Canadian funds and paying it in Canada. This means that I'm not privy to the same shipping costs in Canada as I am in the U.S. And also the prices will be different, not just by exchange rate, but also by the simple fact that things are generally cheaper in the U.S. On the money side I'll also list the prices now in us dollars. I was listing them to show the price difference ratio. The 9600pro I'm selling for $105 (u.s.) and the 9800 pro I was going to buy for $260 (u.s.).
My reasoning behind buying the 9800pro is that I try and stay about 2 steps behind leading edge to get the best bang for the buck. I get to sell my current card and pick up a newer card with the difference. The reason I'm on this forum and asking about the purchase is that I can't find a direct comparison between the two cards in the vid section and I haven't seen a comparison on just the purely ATI brand that I could say I trusted. I wanted to see what the consensus was on the difference in cards and if it was worth upgrading at this price ratio. Buying from newegg or e-bay is not an option. Can anyone suggest what I should do here without suggesting any offers that are available only in the U.S?
 
Niggles,

I can tell you that if I could buy a 9600 Pro for $105 (in your case save$155) vs. the $260 for a 9800 Pro I would get the 9600 Pro.

If the games you play today play great on your 9600 Pro, then the next generation of games will run okay on your card. The 9800 Pro comes in to the picture if you?re running high resolutions and still want excellent frame rates. Also, if you?re trying to get more AA/AF and don?t want your FPS to drop.

List your games, potential future games and current hardware (MB, CPU, RAM, etc).

-JC
TeamSNA
 
good point, I should have listed my hardware:

AMD2600
A7N8X Deluxe
ATI 9600 Pro
512 Megs RAM
40 Gig drive

The reason I even started wanting a faster card was that when I'm playing the BF42 Mod Desert Combat I've got some choppy frame rates. Most other stuff I'm fairly fine with, Halo runs like a dream on my 9600... but seeing as Desert Combat is the single game that I'm playing all the time I'd like it to run smoothly. I've got all the settings to medium so it's not like I think I'm being unreasonable in my expectations of how it should look. So you think I should wait until the next generation comes out and maybe pick up a 9800XT when they're cheaper?

 
Now that?s some good information.

I had 512mb of ram and battlefield played okay. I noticed, a couple times not always, some chopping going on. I upgraded to 768MB and defragged my drive using something other than the default OS defrag program. I think I used Diskkeeper lite. Also the 40GB hard drive might be part of the problem too. I would recommend an ATA100 or faster, 8MB Cache, 7200RPM and on it?s own IDE channel. I even think it was recommended to have a fixed swap file (not sure, you might want to investigate this further).

Other areas to check:
Drivers (latest or most stable)
Your AA/AF settings, you don't want them 8x16
Reinstall DirectX 9x

FYI..you could put your hardware in your sig so you don't have to keep typing it.

Abhoth - You do have some time to kill don't you. LOL!

Keep me (us) informed,
-JC
TeamSNA
 
So you really think that 512 isn't enough? ok, I'll give it a whirl. Also I should have mentioned that the drive is 7200rpm and ATA 133, so I'm fine there. You mentioned the size though... The drive is pretty empty so I would have thought that a larger drive would slow it down by having to access all kinds of space... I guess that's why you're suggesting fixed rather than dynamic... still... what would it matter if it's got lots of swap space?
 
HDD is on a fresh install on Windows XP pro (3 days old) so it's not that... I've just grabbed a couple of Corsair 512s so we'll see where that gets me.
 
I do have a custom swap file set at 1.2gb - 2.3gb.

Try here for some more tweaks. Checkout the tweakguide for Battlefield or any other game and OS you have.
http://www.tweaktown.com

Throwing the money around. I like it! Ya, 1gb of ram should do fine. You'll notice you load maps faster. Do some benching.

I have an 80GB main drive with just OS and Games. I think I have 20gb left on it. UT2003 and Mods take up 6gb of it, EA games uses 12gb, Enemy Territory only takes 600MB and I play this the most...go figure. Dam games. You should be fine with 30gb free.

Vaerilis - All I have to say about that is Halo@1280x1024x32 w/ 4AA&4AF!

Again, make sure you install the right software (chipset drivers, directx, video, sound, etc.)
-JC
 
oh yeah, the reason that I don't list my pc specs in my sig is that I feel it's like just whipping it out and showing it off... not really a lot of point really unless we're discussing my system... then I shouldn't be an idiot... I should just whip out the specs.
 
Definately not. This is arguably the worst time to upgrade, especially if you own a 9600pro.

Case in point:

r420 and NV40 are about to come out, which means massive price drop for the current series of cards. If you buy a 9800 now (a card that is Marginally faster than the 18 month old 9700 Pro) you'll be paying premium price for a card thats about a year old in performance. Moreover, as a player of 1942 and owner of 9600Pro, I can tell you that the card has enough power to tidy you over until the next price drops roll around (a few months). Plus the 9600 performs better in Directx 9 capable games than it does in older games, simply b/c i thas a lot of pixel shader performance and not a lot of raw power which older games require.
 
oh my god, I dropped 1 gig of Corsair memory in and it's like I have an entirely new machine... I had no idea.... I've got everything maxed out on BF42, Desert Combat and my god is it beautiful!

Thanks everyone.
 
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