MSI RX9550 good card for the money?

[justapix]

Hello, yes this yet another person asking for advice on a video Card.

Building a computer for a friend and need some advice, this will be his first personal computer and want to give him the most room to breath while keeping the price low.

I would like to load up warcraft3 and Quake 3 and if it runs well half-life 2 and Doom3 (those last two are more "would be nice" but NOT necessary)

found the
MSI RX9550 Video Card at newegg yesterday and was wondering what people have to say of this card for a $64 price point. Are there better cards out there at this price? Something that will give more bang for my buck?

any and all information would be extremely helpful, I feel like I?m wading through a mountain of crap when trying to find info on video cards there's just too much info out there. or may be its just me.

thanks a lot
justapix


PS these are the system specs so far:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton 333MHz FSB
ABIT NF7-S2 Socket A
pqi TURBO 512MB (2 x 256MB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel
120 gig Western Digital HD

 

[Munky]

It's a good card for the money, and you can play HL2 on it at medium settings.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Fair card for the price.

 

[justapix]

A friend of my just pointed me to the SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600 128M Video Card and was wondering how that stacks up against the 9550 that I have already linked,

also curious about moding the 9600, what can I push this to, with say a bios flash and a nice cooler, was wondering what peoples thoughts where on this?

thanks again
justapix

 

[BobDaMenkey]

9550 and 9600 are fairly close in performance. 9600s aren't really worth it unless you're getting a Pro or XT.

It's a pretty good card for the price.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

For a little extra money, see if you can get a Radeon 9800 Pro, which is probably more than double the card the 9550 is. They were on sale earlier for $125 shipped. You might also look for a 9600XT, which were available for $98 shipped earlier. (I'd spend the extra $27 and get the 9800 Pro though.) The prices have really come down some. Heck, now a 6600 GT is available for $160, but if money is really tight the 9800 Pro would be a good deal.

In terms of bang for your buck, the 9550 prices have barely budged, mostly because there isn't anything else down in that price range to compete against it. (People probably want to avoid the nVidia FX 5xxxx series.)

 

[justapix]

Those are all nice cards, and I agree if I was building the system for myself that?s the way I would go... but like I said this is my friends 1st computer he has owned. (Laptops from work don't count).

So I don't even now if he will be doing a lot of gaming on it or not, I'm just going to load those games on there for him, to see if he's interested or not... if he is and wants more out of his computer I can always go back and up grade him, mostly I wanted something not too flash but able to wet his appetite if he actually likes computer gaming again, he very well could just be using this as and email and word machine and never even touch the games... I don't want to charge him for stuff he will never use.

justapix

 

[IntegraGSR]

the 9550 is a great budget card.. it has the same core as the 9600 pro (rv350) and can be softmodded. not sure about the MSI model. but the my abit version came with samsung 3.6ns ram.. so far on stock cooling and stock voltages my card is modestly overclcoked to 430/250 from 250/200.. much more is possible with some good cooling..

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/search.php?searchid=507120 <-- some good info there about different brand 9550s and overclockability.