Budget card: 9200, 9100, or 9000?

[camswinton]

I'm looking for an inexpensive card -- light gaming but a fair amount of digital imaging. I've decided to go with ATI (don't want to start an NVidia vs ATI discussion here) and am trying to sort out the major differences between the 9200, 9100, and 9000. From what I've gathered from searching through previous messages, the 9100 is, in essence, an 8500LE and will outperform the 9000. The 64 MB 9100 cards also seem to have faster memory than the 128MB cards (at least Sapphire). SO, where does the 9200 fit in? Isn't it a 9000 w/8x AGP? I like that it has passive cooling (quiet) - how does it compare to the 9100? I was particularly interested in this 9200 card from Gigabyte. I'd like to stay close to $100 for this card. Note, I may be willing to sacrifice some speed for a passively cooled card, I want a quiet machine. Comments? Recommendations?

 

[ProviaFan]

The 9200 from Gigabyte has VIVO functions, so that might be something to take into consideration.

<-- hasn't seen the benchmarks lately, but if you search the web, you can probably find a good chart that compares the various cards.

Edit: I've found a review that contains a comparison of the 9000 Pro, 9100, and 9200 VIVO cards. Hopefully this will be of use to you.

 

[Regs]

It's mostly the default factory set clock speeds that differ the three. One may run faster memory...maybe. The 9200 is just an overclocked 9000 mostly. They all use the same 128 bit memory interface and graphic engine so there isn't much of a difference.

There might be slight differences however on how their pipelines work. Like the 8500 LE has hyper-z for better efficiency in rendering vertexes and pixels. So they say at least. Others have fancy named like "Fullstream" and Trueshader ext... However all cards do the same thing except they happened to name items of the cards pipeline to make them market better.

If you are willing to overclock a little, go with the 9000. If not, check out some of the default clock speed settings on the cards. The 9000 and 9100 will likely be ran at or around 250/200 Mhz.

 

[camswinton]

Thanks for the comments - I appreciate it! The review was also quite helpful. I still don't know which I'll get, but at least I understand the major differences now.

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

The best of the 3 would be a 9100 with VIVO, seen any? I think PowerColor has one.