what the hell do these mean now?

[allanon1965]

why is ati doing this? i have a hard enough time trying to figure out what video card to buy, now they are adding 50 to some of their cards....i have a 9200(not se) and it plays ok, but not very good in games, i am looking to upgrade it but only have about 50-60 bucks to spend.....i thought about using an fx 5200 but was advised it was worse than what i have now.......i give up.....all i play are flight sims, usually ms combat 3, and the 9200 lags bad in it.....the rest of my system is fine, 2500 barton running at 2.2 ghz....512 pc2700 ddr.......this is so irritating, you cant get a straight up comparison chart anywhere, i read and reread the 2 posts at the top about video cards and still fail to understand all that stuff....any ideas? remember, keep it simple please......my brain hurts

 

[CraigRT]

not much you can buy better than the 9200... i think you'll have to eBay something.

 

[Schneider879]

I just bought my parents a 9550. I'll tell you how it works out.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Go for a Ti4200 (or Ti4600). That should be an increase.

 

[allanon1965]

got a new ti4200 128mb for 64.00....this hopefully will be an improvement over the 9200(not se) 128 mb radeon....

 

[mwmorph]

whatever happened to the fx line? is the ti4600 faster than most fx cards?

 

[dguy6789]

Ti4600 is faster than any fx card under the 5700ultra.

 

[gusk1200]

I think it depends on the game that you are playing. In the second half of year '04, the DX9 games are using more of the newer FX and GeForce 6, and ATI x series video instructions. If you are playing a flight sim like from MS, I would think it would be using DX8 or even DX7. So the GeForce 4 TI's would definitely support it and do pretty well. Your best bet is try to get a Ti 4200, Ti 4600 or FX 5700, or possibly a Radeon 9500 or 9600XT. You may need to shell out $20 more bucks, but it will carry you for a while longer.

 

[Prfstrkr]

9550 performs slightly worse than Ti4200 in DX8.1 area, but has HW support for DX9, and thus outperforms Ti4200 in this area~~
Furthermore, 9550s are known to be very good @ overclocking, most can easily reach 9600Pros' performance level, while some can reach that of 9600XT~~
i would go for that~~

 

[Malak]

Comparison Chart

And for $50, don't expect much. You need to drop a couple hundred if you want better performance. A geforce4 might be better, but only for a short time. You are lagging behind the games right now.