GF4 4200 or Radeon 9500? Which to buy?

[Audiofight]

Alright.

I am going to be ordering most of my new rig next week and am still stuck on which video card to buy.

I am looking at either getting a:

GeForce4 Ti4200 128 MB
Radeon 9500 128 MB (non-Pro or Pro, not sure)

I have been a die-hard Nvidia fan for some time and have owned a Riva128ZX, TNT2, GeForce SDR, GF2 GTS 64MB and I did, for a short while, own a GF4 Ti4600 (but had to sell to pay bills)

Now, I keep hearing all these good things about what the Radeon 9500 can do and how you can mod it to a 9700 and get some awesome performance.

My question is:

What brand/model do I have to buy in order to get a 9500 up to 9700 specs?

 

[rogue1979]

You want the Sapphire non-pro 9500 with two memory chips above the heatsink, and two next to it. Not one with 4 memory chips lined up in a row. All 9500 Pros have the 4 in a row configuration. The success rate for the mod is about 50/50, half show video corruption after the mod. Mine didn't work out, but I modded it back where it overclocked to 390/630. It was pretty fast, I'd say a little faster than a Geforce4 Ti 4200 overclocked.

 

[Audiofight]

So this one.....

I must be mistaken, I thought Sapphire was a really basic company and didn't really do the whole performance thing?

Got a write-up of this card and how to mod it? Software preferrably.

 

[AnAndAustin]

It's not so much about perf but more about happy coincidence really. It seems many Rad9500 std use the 9700 PCB (9500PRO use their own PCB), with 64MB only the 128bit DDR channel is used but with 128MB the full 9700 style 256bit DDR channel is used giving a nice boost. Of course the 9500 std only has half the pipes of 9500PRO/9700/9700PRO which will hurt but this too can reportedly be modded. Not sure of the precise details but you are relying on a little luck. In pure 3D speed a 9500 std is in GF3/Rad8500 territory (bit slower than GF4TI4200) but should easily overtake a 4200 when using full AA & AF plus you get DX9 for when that come s in useful (12 months ish) AND better image quality, DVD/MPEG playback and TVout too. The 9500PRO is comparable to a 4600, perhaps a tad slower BUT with full AA & AF it is clearly faster. ATI lock the 9500, 9500PRO and 9700 to prevent you o/c'ing but this is easily overcome via a BIOS edit or flash. Both the 4200 and 9500 series are VERY good, they have their pros and cons so it depends what your budget and priorities are really.

 

[Audiofight]

I have found both a hardware mod (no chance I will try doing that) and the software mods for the 128 MB Radeon 9500 non-Pro

I will be ordering a Radeon 9500 non-Pro and trying the software mods to it. If it works, I keep it in my system for some time. If it doesn't work, sell it and back to Nvidia for me.

Thanks.

 

[tapir]

Even if it doesn't work, the performance will still be equal or better to a Ti 4200 when AA and AF are enabled.
Also you can just enable the 256 bit memory bus and o/c the card to bring it up past the level of a 9500 Pro, even if you can't use all 8 pixel pipes (this is where most people have troubles).

Just FYI.

 

[SickBeast]

Ok to answer your question directly:

The 9500 (pro, non-pro...doens't matter much) is the best buy in the midrange graphics market right now. The 9500 pro will spank a GF4600 in almost every benchmark, and will obliterate it when AA/AF is cranked up. The 9500 non-pro will annihilate the GF4200 in every benchmark, and will strengthen this lead with AA/AF turned on.

Remember that the 4600 was the king of the hill up until a few months back...

Also keep in mind that the 9500 is fully directx 9 compliant, which is more than any nvidia card can claim right now. I have even heard that the legendary GFFX will not support all of directx 9's features in hardware. Hmm...can anyone say 3DFX deja-view???

 

[mroptimistic]

Toms Hardware marks showed the 9500 pro benching just a bit above the 4200, but a chunk behind the 4600. With AA/AF on then the ATI cards take the lead but the rest of it showed the pro version only having a bit on the 4200, there was no 4600 spankage by the 9500 pro.

 

[SickBeast]

Oh there will be spankage...in 3Dmark 2003 once DX9 features are used...

Not only that, but I have heard of people scoring ~13000 in 3Dmark 2001 with a R9500pro. Show me a 4600 that can do that!!

Oh, and the 9500 non-pro scores ~11500...show me a 4200 that can do that!!



Actually, the 4200 should be close to 11500, but once you turn on AA/AF it will get smoked.

 

[mroptimistic]

check futuremark.com you can search for results that get posted, and there are 4600s that score up into the 17000 range, and TONS that are in the 16000 range, i took this example from the 3rd page

Score: 16100 Silver - Overclockers.com


Date: 2002-9-26
Res: 1024x768 32bit
OS: Microsoft Windows 98
User: davidlhamel@juno.com
CPU: AMD Duron(tm) Processor 2277 MHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600


Even the 4200 can get up into the 17000 and 16000s but not as often and that is with overclocked past 3ghz processors, but even with high end p4s it can easily get in the 15000s, another example here

Score: 15146 =GIGI77=nVItalia 3DMark Team Italy


Date: 2003-1-9
Res: 1024x768 32bit
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
User: cavour_luigi@yahoo.it
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2805 MHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200

sadly you can't list the 9500/9700 pro/nonpro series seperately. If you have 9500/9500pro/9700/9700pro there is only one category to pick that includes all, but i do know the 9700 pro can get up to 19000s.

Turn on FSAA and top ati goes to 14000 and top 4600 goes into the 12000s but so does the top 4200.

 

[SickBeast]

I find that very hard to believe. I know for a fact that my R8500 is very comparable to a 4200, and the 8500's rarely break the 10000 barrier (I score ~8900). You have to take what you read on those ratings with a grain of salt; you never know what the guy has done to his system as far as the fsb, ram, cpu, and videocard go.

I would take the 17000 scores with a 4600 as being either totally bogus or else that is with a vapochill setup with peltiers, watercooling, liquid nitrogen...in other words with INSANE cooling that noone would use. He's probably got his P4 overclocked to 4.2GHZ like Dr. Tom did, and has his 4600 core up at something like 600mhz.

If you do a "search and compare" for a system with your specs you'll get a better idea, but again, ignore the top 10 scores as they probably had crazy cooling going on.

 

[mroptimistic]

ok, you can take the 17000s away from the 4600 but there are pages upon pages of 16000s, and pages upon pages of 15000s for the 4200, granted most of them are either in the 2.2-2.4 amd range or 2.8-3+ range in processor speed, but low to mid 2ghz intel processors still have tons in the 14000s but using those processor speeds also dropped the max of the 9700 pro even to 16000s.

 

[AnAndAustin]

You guys should get yor head out of 3Dmark and into some real world numbers. The 8500 is a very fine card and not a whole lot slower than a 4200 unless you're running a mid to fast CPU (8500's flatten out more easily), overall the 8500 is slower than a 4200 no question. The 9500 is slower than a 4200 as well, it is on par with an 8500 but offers the advantages of the newer ATI technologies. The 9500PRO is close to 4600 perf (ie 4400) BUT all the 9500-9700 cards really shine with full AA & AF, GF4TI run happily with 2xAA & some AF while 8500's run happily with max AF but suck at AA. If you consult many benchmarks on many diff systems this is what you'll find, this doesn't mean one particular card is better for everybody and the Rads particularly have many non-gaming strong points to back them up. They're all great cards, plain and simple. If non-gaming aspects are evry important the Rad9000PRO/8500 are very good choices, if you want more gaming or to maximise your CPU then a 4200 is great, if you want a DX9 ready card and to run with max AA & AF the 9500-9700 are great ... lets look at some prices ...

www.newegg.com

Rad8500LE $72 (clocks?)
Rad9000PRO $90
GF4TI4200 $118
Rad9500 $141
Rad9500PRO $180

www.dabs.com
Rad9000PRO £71
GF4TI4200 £102
Rad9500 £126
Rad9500PRO £144

 

I have a stock score (no OC's) of 9677 using:

Gainward Geforce 4 Ti4200 128MB (Golden Sample 650/TV) not running enhanced mode.
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ @ 1.4GHz (default)
Epox 8hka+ VIA KT266A Motherboard w/latest VIA Hyperion's
512MB (2x256) Generic PC2100 DDR @ Turbo settings
Windows XP Pro

I have a Radeon 9500 non-pro comming today via FedEx. I'll be using the exact same system but I'll let you know what I score with the Radeon tonight when I get it installed. I hope this helps.

PS - If you are OC'ing, my prior system (I miss it ) used to pull down 13,592 on a Ti4200 128MB. Stats are in the compare.

The 9500's to mod into 9700 are 9500 non-pros. A couple companies make them but the most popular and available one is Sapphire for $159 @ NewEgg.com. Just be sure you don't end up with a black pcb 9500 non-pro....They've finally started taking it off the 9700 pcb and onto it's own. Hence no longer are the additional 4 pipeline's able to be re-enabled.

 

[Audiofight]

Newegg is sold out of the 128 MB 9500 non-Pro cards for now.

Hopefully they will get some more in stock soon, otherwise I will be ordering my Ti4200 or else finding a 4400 or 4600 in the for sale/trade section.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: tapir
Even if it doesn't work, the performance will still be equal or better to a Ti 4200 when AA and AF are enabled.
Also you can just enable the 256 bit memory bus and o/c the card to bring it up past the level of a 9500 Pro, even if you can't use all 8 pixel pipes (this is where most people have troubles).

Just FYI.

I am not sure about this, but I think that you have to have 8 pipelines enabled to take advantage of the 256-bit memory bus. I think four pipelines will yield the same performance with or without the 256-bit memory bus mod.