A card to replace my 9500pro?

[McMadman]

I'm looking for a suitable replacement for my sapphire 9500 pro. I'd like to keep my budget to low 200's, a 9700np would be good, but I can't seem to find a reputable dealer and card vendor.

Keeping the 9500 is not an answer, it has been rma'd and refunded.

 

[Blastman]

you could check a few of the vendors listed at pricewatch ...

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/5033-1.htm

 

[rommelrommel]

9500np and trying mod may work...

 

[McMadman]

I've heard some questionable comments about powercolors cards being oc'd. the non PC ones seem to be OOS or the site is so poorly designed the option of buying is hidden.

And on the 9500np, I'd rather not take the gamble on getting a card that can't be modded

 

[Brackus]

how long have you had that vid card? and how much did you pay for it at the time???

anyway, I just think its wierd cause I consider the 9500pro one of the best cards out there, I personally wouldnt get any of the cards out there yet....

 

[McMadman]

I had my 9500p for about 60 days, it always had these odd quirks. I would have standard booting prompts come up with total garbled text, some games would crash to desktop leaving a corrupted desktop, others would hardlock with some graphic corruption, some games would flat out say "not enough avaliable video memory." The final straw came when general use (browsing with ie) would drain my graphic memory, I could no longer view pictures, and then eventually it would be useless, a reboot solved it for a couple of hours (2-4) but it always returned. Newegg is supposed to refund me my purchase price of $177 which will get put back into a new video card. (which may not be from NE due to their selection of 9700's dying off and 9800's being too expensive.)

 

[McMadman]

on a related note, I see a few people in fs/t with 9700pro's in the high end of my price range, these are another option for me.

 

[McArra]

9700Pros are really good, but I believe you first should try new drivers in your 9500Pro or fresh instal. If you don't do that you may get the same problems with any other card you buy.

 

[McMadman]

I did do a clean install of 98se and I saw the garbled text after the cat 3.1's were installed (it happened no matter what install was used, as soon as it init'd the card text went screwy) The only other probably cause was the power supply, but the problem was there even before I slapped in an additional drive, and for the record, its a sparkle 350W supply, however connected to it are 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives, and of course video/mb. But I do not think the supply was the problem, besides the problem started out very minor and eventually became serious.

As I said before however, that 9500 is now returned to newegg.

 

[McArra]

A lot of drives there! I don't know if a 9700Pro will run if you don't change the PS to a more powerful one.

 

[McMadman]

Its supposed to be only 3 drives instead of 4, but I haven't cleaned things up from the old system drive. I thought of trying to rig up a second 300W supply to remove some stress.

 

[Jeff7181]

It's too bad that nVidia doesn't really have an answer to the 9500 and 9600 series cards... the Ti4600 is decent until you turn on AA and AF... the FX5600 Ultra is close, but it's the only FX that's close and still reasonably priced... the FX5800 is quite overpriced for the performance in my opinion... and the FX5900 Ultra is a top performer, but I can't see how anybody can justify spending $500 on a video card that doesn't wipe your butt for you.

 

[Corporate Thug]

maybe a 9600 PRO and OC it?

 

[selfbuilt]

The garbled text at cold boot-up is well documented for the 9500+ radeon cards, frequently blamed on mobo or PSU (note that it's only on cold boot - warm boot is fine). I experienced it myself on my system (9500 Pro, Asus A7V8X and Antec 330W true power), but it was gone with my new mobo (Asus A7N8X Deluxe, passed along the old mobo to my son). In any case, it never caused any system problems on the old board - just the cold boot issue. But keep in mind you are likely to see the same issue with the 9700nonpro (or other ATI card) on your current setup, if it bothers you. As for the rest, it sounds like a system config could be at fault. I've never tried these cards with Win98SE, but my 9500 Pro worked flawlessly in both WinME and XP.

I'd have to agree that the 9700nonpro is probably your best price/performance tradeoff at present (the 9500 pro used to be .

 

[McMadman]

nvidia's current offerings in my price range don't really interest me, especially when you factor price to performance.

My garbled text issue happened on warm boots, and hardlocking/errors came as a result, I still feel my problem was simply a faulty card.

My personal boundry for video depends on my money situation, I'd draw the line around $300 though for a top end card, the value deprieciates so fast on most computer purchases, especially when the next higher up model appears.

I should be set however, I'm buying a built by ati 9700 pro for $225 off fs/t

 

[Matt2]

I ahve a powercolor Radeon 9700np, got it for $207 shipped from FuturePowerPC
While it's not the greatest overclocker, I have got it way past PRO speeds. Memory is a mediocre overclocker, but the core overclocks great.

Mine I have set as high as 372/321 as opposed to 277/270 for np and 325/310 for pro.

Despite popular opinion, for $200 shipped, I highly reccomend this card.

 

[McMadman]

The 9700np's are a good deal, but they're becoming harder and harder to find.