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TI4200, TI4800SE, or Radeon 9600

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AnAndAustin, I agree that those on a budget would be best served by a 4200 (or even a Ti200). They'll have to live with no AF or AA, but they'll get very playable framerates.

However, I really like AF, and I'm sure I'd like AA if I had a card capable of running it at a reasonable framerate 😉. I think a 9600P is the better buy in terms of future-proofing and enjoyable IQ + framerate in current games. I also compared a 9600P to a 4400 based on these benchmarks (I linked to the first page of benches, and you can find an index on the right side of the page). Q3A and JK2 aren't really GPU-limited these days until you begin to add in AF and AA, so I don't really consider their benchmarks too indicative of overall performance. If you look at the AA+AF numbers in the TR review you linked, you'll see the 9600P more than doubling the 4200's framerates in many situations. Digit-Life also shows the 9600P as superior to a 4200 in most situations--heck, there's a sizable gap even at 10x7 w/o AA/AF in RtCW, and DL shows the 9600P as faster in SS2 (as well as every other benchmark).
 
Originally posted by: niggles
Wow, where did all these 4200 folks come from? I just got rid of my Asus 4200.... I had the old 8420 4x and sure it was a nice card, but my 9600 kicks butt. Everything looks so much better and the frame rates are drastically improved.

Don't take my word for it... check out anandtech review:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1812&p=7

Also the 4200 isn't DX9 and the 9600 is... why buy a card you already know won't run HL2 or Doom (if it actually gets released next year) very well?
Click to expand...

i took a look at the benchmarks in the review you linked us to, and i noticed that the 9500 Pro performed as well, if not significantly better than the 9600 Pro in several games...UT3, JK2, Q3A to name a few (in framerates, AA, and AS filtering). my first thought would be that ATI, despite naming it with a higher number, created a more affordable video card. but then i looked at the video card comparison and noticed the 9600 Pro's core clock, memory clock, and memory bandwidth are all greater that of the 9500 Pro. so how is the 9600 Pro's performance and price less than the 9500 Pro?
 
Originally posted by: Sunny129
Originally posted by: niggles
Wow, where did all these 4200 folks come from? I just got rid of my Asus 4200.... I had the old 8420 4x and sure it was a nice card, but my 9600 kicks butt. Everything looks so much better and the frame rates are drastically improved.

Don't take my word for it... check out anandtech review:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1812&p=7

Also the 4200 isn't DX9 and the 9600 is... why buy a card you already know won't run HL2 or Doom (if it actually gets released next year) very well?
Click to expand...

i took a look at the benchmarks in the review you linked us to, and i noticed that the 9500 Pro performed as well, if not significantly better than the 9600 Pro in several games...UT3, JK2, Q3A to name a few (in framerates, AA, and AS filtering). my first thought would be that ATI, despite naming it with a higher number, created a more affordable video card. but then i looked at the video card comparison and noticed the 9600 Pro's core clock, memory clock, and memory bandwidth are all greater that of the 9500 Pro. so how is the 9600 Pro's performance and price less than the 9500 Pro?
Click to expand...

9500 pro has 8 piplines. 9600 pro only has 4. When the 9600 pro originally came out, it was selling for more than a 9500 pro. Since then though, 9600 pro's have dropped in price while 9500 pro's have shot up. The 9500 pro now has little source since that line has been discontinued. In many ways the 9500 pro line was a loser for ati--they cost a lot to manufacture and were sort of rushed out to fill a gap in their lineup.
 
yes, but they performed so well. if they hadn't gone up in price due to limited production, i'd rather have that than a 9600 pro.
 
Originally posted by: Pete


Doom3 is built around a GeForce 1 featureset, which is DX7. It can certainly take advantage of DX9 cards, but the game was built with DX7 limits in mind.
Click to expand...

facinating, so dynamic lighting is DX7, I'll have to look for that.

 
Originally posted by: Sunny129
but then i looked at the video card comparison and noticed the 9600 Pro's core clock, memory clock, and memory bandwidth are all greater that of the 9500 Pro. so how is the 9600 Pro's performance and price less than the 9500 Pro?
Click to expand...

The 9500P is 107M transistors made with a 150nm process. The 9600P is 65-75M transistors made with a 130nm process. The smaller process allows the 9600P to be clocked higher, but it remains generally slower simply because it was engineered to be a mid-range chip. The 9500P is a top-end chip compromised by a mid-range memory bus, thus its superior performance and price. Even if the 9500P were still in production, I don't think it would ever have been cheaper than a 9600P, simply because it costs more to make.
 
😉 The 9600PRO is only 15% slower in most situations, it can beat the 9500PRO in 1 game I saw but basicly the 4 pipes (half of 9500PRO) even with very fast clock speeds simply can't compensate in perf BUT the 9600PRO is easily cheaper for ATI to make and trials the 0.13mu process too. A Radeon card using 0.13mu and 8 pipes would be immense even using 128bitDDR ... anyway I guess we'll have to wait and see what ATI do next.

🙂 The 4400 like all GF4TI was designed with 2xAA in mind and it does that superbly, QxAA gives the same perf hit but gives a 4xAA type look ... but MUCH blurrier. 4xAA is a killer and basicly unusable. AF was designed to be high quality but did impact perf, not unusably so but still best to stick to 2xAF or 4xAF which still improve texture quality quite dramaticly over no AF. So as a general rule run 2xAA+2xAF ALWAYS but 2xAA+4xAF or 2xAA+8xAF are also possible depending upon specifics (game, prefs, res etc). If your CPU is pretty underpowered (eg Duron, std Athlon or P4 < 1.8ghz) then it's advisable to use 2xAA+8xAF or thereabouts all the time as this helps to use the otherwise wasted gfx card power. You should also find upping the detail and res come with very little impact on FPS if your CPU is 'slow'.
 
Originally posted by: AnAndAustin
😉 The 9600PRO is only 15% slower in most situations, it can beat the 9500PRO in 1 game I saw but basicly the 4 pipes (half of 9500PRO) even with very fast clock speeds simply can't compensate in perf BUT the 9600PRO is easily cheaper for ATI to make and trials the 0.13mu process too. A Radeon card using 0.13mu and 8 pipes would be immense even using 128bitDDR ... anyway I guess we'll have to wait and see what ATI do next.

🙂 The 4400 like all GF4TI was designed with 2xAA in mind and it does that superbly, QxAA gives the same perf hit but gives a 4xAA type look ... but MUCH blurrier. 4xAA is a killer and basicly unusable. AF was designed to be high quality but did impact perf, not unusably so but still best to stick to 2xAF or 4xAF which still improve texture quality quite dramaticly over no AF. So as a general rule run 2xAA+2xAF ALWAYS but 2xAA+4xAF or 2xAA+8xAF are also possible depending upon specifics (game, prefs, res etc). If your CPU is pretty underpowered (eg Duron, std Athlon or P4 < 1.8ghz) then it's advisable to use 2xAA+8xAF or thereabouts all the time as this helps to use the otherwise wasted gfx card power. You should also find upping the detail and res come with very little impact on FPS if your CPU is 'slow'.
Click to expand...

but keep in mind that the strength of the 9600 pro is its overclocking. i OCed mine to 500/375 and the performance is near identical to a 9700 NON pro
 
but keep in mind that the strength of the 9600 pro is its overclocking. i OCed mine to 500/375 and the performance is near identical to a 9700 NON pro

They say Albatron makes the most OCable nVidia Ti4200 these days. Which reseller makes the most OCable 9600 Pro?
 
😉 Brand makes very little diff really. Perf inc o/c is about the same unless they cheap out on clocks (ergo RAM type) or the cooling used. The exceptions tend to be the obvious SE / Lite (slower) type cards and the Golden (faster) type cards.

🙂 The 9600pro o/c's about 20% from what I've read but then the average 4200 o/c's very close to that too so it largely negates the 9600's boost again outside of AA+AF and DX9. The 9600PRO is 15% slower than the 9500PRO which was still a good 20% slower than the 9700nonPRO, the 9600PRO doesn't have a hope of getting near 9700nonPRO and when o/c'ed it still doesn't pull out a significant lead over the 9500PRO (stock) but that's not to say it isn't a good card, it is.

9700PRO (0.15) 325/310 256bitDDR 8pipes 19.8GB/s 2.6Gp/s
9700 . . . (0.15) 275/270 256bitDDR 8pipes 17.6GB/s 2.2Gp/s
9500PRO (0.15) 275/270 128bitDDR 8pipes 8.6GB/s 2.2Gp/s

9600PRO (0.13) 400/300 128bitDDR 4pipes 9.6GB/s 1.6Gp/s
9600PRO o/c'ed 500/350 128bitDDR 4pipes 11.2GB/s 2.0Gp/s
 
😉 4800SE are often slightly slower than the old 4400 which is only 10%ish faster than current 4200. Not fast enough considering the often come out at 9600pro pricing ... I still say 4200 or 9600pro (or look for a good deal on 9500PRO or 9700).
 
ti4800se is going to be about the same speed as a 9600 pro with AA/AF off, and not that much cheaper. I agree with austin that it's either a ti4200 (if you want to save $50) or get a 9600 pro (if you like to play with AA/AF enabled).
 
well i got my Ti4200 right now, and i'd upgrade to a 9600 pro any day before i go for the Ti4800SE...in fact i wasn't even considering upgrading to that. i'd definitely considering the 9600 pro, and i'd love to find a good deal on a 9500 pro or a 9700.

anyways, the reason i asked about brands is b/c Albatron makes a ti4200 on a bigger PCB and with better RAM than most other ti4200 resellers which, among other reasons, makes it a better OCer than most other ti4200 boards. i was just wondering if a similar situation existed with the 9600 pro. well it seems there isn't, so since most brands of the 9600 pro OC about the same, what brands would you say have a good reputation? i've never bought ATI before, so i just want to be sure...thanks
 
😉 Anything but Powercolor for ATI, Sapphire are known to be best in terms of quaility, perf and o/c but I'd largely go by price.

😀 The Albatron you mention is the SPECIAL P TURBO (from memory), they do a regular 4200 like all the other manus too. What you refer to is a 4200 built on the 4400/4600/4800PCB which has a longer design 8 layer design, BGA RAM and usually higher default clocks. Cards like that are often able to exceed 4600/4800 perf but you tend to pay a little more for them and it will only be a matter of time before DX8 proves limiting or you yearn for 4xAA+8xAF and of course when you seel the card on people only see it's a 4200 despite its quality. There are also other cards that use the 8 layer PCB and BGA RAM...

ALBATRON 4200P-128MB TURBO:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1226&page=1
http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/video/albatron_Ti4200p/

ASUS DELUXE (slightly inferior):
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx

SUMA SPECIAL EDITION:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1022073316 -> http://www.overclockers.ru/news/newsitem.shtml?category=2&id=1022012270
 
Originally posted by: AnAndAustin
😉 Anything but Powercolor for ATI, Sapphire are known to be best in terms of quaility, perf and o/c but I'd largely go by price.

😀 The Albatron you mention is the SPECIAL P TURBO (from memory), they do a regular 4200 like all the other manus too. What you refer to is a 4200 built on the 4400/4600/4800PCB which has a longer design 8 layer design, BGA RAM and usually higher default clocks. Cards like that are often able to exceed 4600/4800 perf but you tend to pay a little more for them and it will only be a matter of time before DX8 proves limiting or you yearn for 4xAA+8xAF and of course when you seel the card on people only see it's a 4200 despite its quality. There are also other cards that use the 8 layer PCB and BGA RAM...

ALBATRON 4200P-128MB TURBO:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1226&page=1
http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/video/albatron_Ti4200p/

ASUS DELUXE (slightly inferior):
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx

SUMA SPECIAL EDITION:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1022073316 -> http://www.overclockers.ru/news/newsitem.shtml?category=2&id=1022012270
Click to expand...

yeah...that's exactly the quality issue and video card i'm talking about. i wasn't sure if maybe certain 9600 pro resellers used higher quality RAM and PCB than others...so i guess i'll just steer clear of PowerColor...thanks
 
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