Is it the right time to buy a 9800 Pro

[niggles]

I can barely afford it, but I'd like to buy a 9800 Pro. I definatly can't afford the XT so there's no need to tell me to get an XT instead because it's only a few dollars more. Does anyone have any insight as to whether the 9800 Pro will be coming down in price again any time soon? Are there any releases on the horizon that will force the price down again?

 

[Evdawg]

watch on ebay, you can find samsung 9800 pro'ss for great price. I saw one the other night go for 225 (OEM). This spring ATI and nV are coming out with new cards... so if you can wait a few months the current cards will be cheap

 

[Matthias99]

Personally, I don't see a big move in prices coming until the next-gen cards come out next Spring (and it may take a few months for the prices to drop significantly, if supplies are limited of the new cards and/or they release uber-high-end ones first). If you can wait that long, you'll probably get a new card cheaper.

If the 9800Pro is too much for you, you may want to consider either a refurbed/used 9800Pro, or a 9700Pro/9800Non-Pro. It's like 90% of the performance for 2/3 the price. And if a 9800Non-Pro has 2.8ns RAM, it should overclock easily to 9800Pro speeds.

There's also the NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900Non-Ultra, which for $200 is a pretty good deal, even if it has (possible) DX9 issues and doesn't do AA/AF as well.

 

[niggles]

Ya, I guess I should clarify that I currently have a 9600 Pro, so I could probably wait a bit, there's nothing that really creams my card. Still, it would be nice to be able to turn everything up. KOTOR looked fantastic with everything on. Still, I probably had a frame rate of about 15FPS. I could turn AA to 2x and I was getting around 30 FPS. So With that in mind, knowing that I'm not dying, would you suggest waiting for the new cards to come out? It'll probably be in time for Doom3/Halflife2 release.

Edit: oh yeah... and I don't really trust e-bay... I know a couple folks who've been ripped off. I would be an e-bay noob so for peace of mind I would not go e-bay... thanks for that suggestion though.

 

[CountZero]

If you have a 9600pro I'd say wait. Like you said nothing is creaming your card at the moment, and if while waiting something does push it fairly hard you can lower settings for a little while and probably save a good chunk of change while suffering with less than highest quality graphics.

Just my 2 cents of course 😉

 

[niggles]

I guess my concern is that I get caught like I did with the 9700Pro where it's extremely difficult to find them and you can only buy the latest and greatest. Any thoughts on supplies of the 9800pro?

 

[Matthias99]

It may become quite difficult to find a *new* 9800Pro after the R4XX cards start to appear in volume, depending on when ATI starts cutting production. Used ones should be plentiful; it's not like they go bad. However, pretty much anything anyone has to say on this is speculation; it depends on what ATI and NVIDIA do, as well as how well the new cards are selling.

 

[blazerazor]

BeCareful... not all 9800np have the good overclock memory!

The build by ati 9800np have infineon memory. core oc good, memory oc about 25 or so.

The sapphire, powercolor, and gigacube have the samsung 3.3 or 2.8 but the 2.8 is usually on the more expensive card ie ~325. The after market cards are better bets, not buying one from bb or cc.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Evdawg
watch on ebay, you can find samsung 9800 pro'ss for great price. I saw one the other night go for 225 (OEM). This spring ATI and nV are coming out with new cards... so if you can wait a few months the current cards will be cheap

Spring is about 4 months away...

 

[Robor]

A few months ago I got a Sapphire 9800NP w/Samsung 3.3ns memory from NewEgg for $248 shipped. Flashed to pro and with stock cooling overclocked to 398/348. Put on VGA Silencer cooler with aluminum RAMSinks from SVC.com and got it to 409/391 with no artifacts or "sparkles". That's well over stock pro speeds for about what the Pro's are going for now. 🙂

Very happy with this card! 😀

 

[jim1976]

If you want the 9800pro this is the time for it.
Generally you can never say "now is the time", but if you wait for the next gen cards to come out then you will get it cheaper but you won't have the best.
You can never expect for a top class card to go below these prices until the next gen comes out

 

[niggles]

well all good points, thanks guys. I think the really important point is when are the 9800s going to be gone. Sounds like no one has the inside scoop, but with the advice I have I think I'll probably pick one up in the next few months.

 

[Davegod]

edit: nvm made my own thread instead of jacking this one.

 

[niggles]

Originally posted by: Davegod
I have similar quandary, 9800pro is more than I want to spend...

Everywhere does seem to be expecting the new cards to be vastly faster, with many even saying the high end will be double 9800pro? I think I would just wait, but the thing is I know full well the new high end cards will come out at a insane price and I'd be waiting like 6 months for them to be reasonable, and they might even be PCI Express.

Is this true? I haven't seen anything saying that the next gen will be twice the speed. That seems an insanely big jump. Who is everyone, Are there links that you can provide?

 

[Davegod]

One example is in the Digitimes link given: "[RV423 PCI Express] Performance expected to be double the Radeon 9800", though I think it's fair to assume that more likely is certain things will be twice as fast, at a guess some Dx9 stuff, rather than e.g. 16 pipelines or double mhz or something equally insane.

 

[niggles]

thanks, I'll look for this stuff. Still, with the idea of staying one step behind cutting edge it sounds like now through Feb might be the best time to buy one.

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[Jeff7181]

Personally I'd go for the non-pro if you want a new card... there's really not that much of a difference in performance. I usually recommend that people stick with the same brand they already have to avoid driver conflicts between manufacturers... so I don't think an nVidia card would be worth it to you at this point. A 9800 non-pro will run pretty much any game out there, and the added performance that a Pro would give you just isn't worth the extra cost.
If I were you I wouldn't upgrade at all, a 9600 Pro is perfectly capable of handling today's games... just save your pennies for the big boys next year.