Looking to upgrade, 9500pro or Gainward Ti4200 GS

[spidrmonkey]

I am building a whole new system. Going with Nforce2 board, xp2100, pc2700 sticks, and now I need to upgrade from my very old voodoo 3. I have narrowed it down to either ATI 9500 pro or Gainward Ti4200 Golden Sample. I have heard nothing but good things about gainward cards, but recently all of these new reviews of the 9500 pro have me confussed which way to go. WIll I need the direct x9, or the AGPx8? I am an advid gamer, but mainly stick to my racing sims.

 

[BowlingNut]

9500pro, no point in even looking at 4200s anymore

 

[kylebisme]

unless you are geting a laptop

 

[woodie1]

Since the 9500pro is new and will undoubtedly improve as the drivers mature I'd go with it.

 

[Ben88]

I wouldn't say there's no point in looking at ti4200's. They are 30-40% cheaper than the 9500 pro in some cases but provide around 90% of its performance.

 

[JuicyFruit]

How about the overclockability? Which one would prove to be more generous?

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: JuicyFruit
How about the overclockability? Which one would prove to be more generous?

I have an old school VisionTek GF4 Ti 4200 128MB card. 4ns DDR chips, 6 layer PCB. It came stock with a Blorb clone and no ramsinks. I installed some ramsinks using Arctic Silver Epoxy and did nothing with the core cooler yet. My card has run at 300/650 for short periods of time (I then chickened out and reset it to lower overclock values) with no artifacting or lockups. Everyday it runs at 275/550 (GF4 Ti 4400 speed) like it was made to do so. I did this overclock by reprogramming the card's BIOS.

I'd say that's a decent overclock and it plays every game I have perfectly. Now DoomIII and Unreal 2 may be a different story...

 

[Mardeth]

Nothing but good of Gainward cards!!! Hahahaha!! I dont know if this in american c gainwards but check this out. I have Gainwards Ti 4200 GS also. I had to change it once Im not going to suprissed if I have to do it again.