how does a radeon 9200 compare to a 9600xt?

[Kaido]

I bought a 9600xt back in February or so, specifically to get the Half-Life 2 voucher and play it when it came out in March/April. Um...yeah. It's supposed to be coming out soon, but I don't really care anymore. Now I'm engaged, have two jobs, and go to college full time. I don't have time for the game anymore, and I probably won't get any for a loooong time. It's a great card tho. I like it, except for the fan which is a bit loud (my Dell doesn't make any noise). So I was thinking about a couple options:

One, put the card on the FS/FT forums and see if I could get two 9200's for it or something. I use Photoshop CD and Adobe CS in general, as well as a few 3D apps like TrueSpace and Rhino 3D. Would a 9200 be okay for these programs?

Two, I buy the Antec VGA cooler for $15 or so off Newegg. It's supposed to be quiet. It's cheap. It'd solve my noise problem and I could be happy with my nice, powerful card.

So. If I did a trade, I could probably get two nice cards, put one in my box and one in my dad's box. Maybe even a third PCI vid card for my mom's old box. I dunno. I got my fiancee a fanless 9200 from the FS/FT forums and it seems nice. How does it compare to the 9600xt, realistically speaking? I won't be playing games on it, just using 2D/3D apps and a bit of video editing. I feel kind of down that I blew $170 or whatever it was on this card, only to have the game which I bought it for delayed, and now I just don't have time to enjoy it.

What should I do?

 

[Arcanedeath]

If you do plan on playing games or runing any 3d apps you do not want to go from a 9600XT to a 9200, plus if you upgrade to longhorn down the road on this PC 9600 of some type is basicly the minium you would want to use for a video card. I would suggest spending aprox 10-15 dollars and getting a VGA silencer for your 9600XT, it should be fairly cheap and silence your card. you already own a decent card it's not really a good idea to get rid of it for less than you paid and get 2 lesser cards when you could prolly get the lesser cards cheap + anything that does not support DX9 is going to lose its value fairly quickly in the future. Thats my 2 cents... hope it helps...

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
If you do plan on playing games or runing any 3d apps you do not want to go from a 9600XT to a 9200, plus if you upgrade to longhorn down the road on this PC 9600 of some type is basicly the minium you would want to use for a video card. I would suggest spending aprox 10-15 dollars and getting a VGA silencer for your 9600XT, it should be fairly cheap and silence your card. you already own a decent card it's not really a good idea to get rid of it for less than you paid and get 2 lesser cards when you could prolly get the lesser cards cheap + anything that does not support DX9 is going to lose its value fairly quickly in the future. Thats my 2 cents... hope it helps...

yah, I'm kind of leaning towards the cooling solution. Cheap and silent, what more can I ask for?