Video card

Simpleman · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:45 am Post subject: Video card

Any suggestions this is waht I am looking at right now.

Detailed Specifications

Description: Radeon 9600 Pro Video Card (256MB, AGP 8X, 2D/3D w/ TV-Out)
Manufacturer: PowerColor
Lowest Price: $145.00
User Rating: (5.00 / 5.00) - (Read 1 Review)
Type of Video Card: 2D/3D Video w/TV Support
AGP Support: AGP 8X
Color Depth at Maximum Resolution: 4.3 Billion Colors (32-bit)
Interface Type: Video - 15 pin High-Density D-shell (VGA), Video - DVI (Digital Flat Panel), Video - RCA Composite Video
RAMDAC Speed: 400 MHz
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 (SXGA), 1280 x 768, 800 x 600 (SVGA)
Slot/Port Type: AGP
System Type: PC
Video Chipset: ATI RADEON 9600 Pro
Installed Video Memory: 256 MB
Memory Technology: DDR-SDRAM (DDRRAM)
Warranty
Base Warranty: 3 year(s)
Labor Warranty: 3 year(s)
Parts Warranty: 3 year(s)
Reference
Warranty Information: 3 years limited warranty
URL: Manufacturer Link
Description
RADEON 9600 Pro delivers a cinematic experience to devoted gamers and casual enthusiasts alike, featuring optimized DirectX 9.0 and AGP 8X support to push next-generation 3D games to their limit. Four parallel rendering pipelines process up to 1.6 billion pixels per second 128-bit full floating point precision enables billions of color variations to render the same lighting and effects as Hollywood studios Core Speed 400MHz and Memory Speed 200MHzx2 (400MHz DDR).
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Verman · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:52 am Post subject:

Impressive, although have not heard of the mfg.
Do you have enough monitor to take advantage of the card?
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YourPowersAreWeakOldMan · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:10 am Post subject:

For just $27 more you can get a 9600XT 256MB from www.NewEgg.com.

I don't know how good of a brand Powercolor is though.

Here's some good choices, Sapphire is a good company and they make this 9600XT.
$172
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-344&catalog=48&depa=1

When I was looking for cards I got the Sapphire 9600XT but was not impressed enough with it to keep it. I also learned the maximum texture size ATi cards can draw is half that of NVidia when I benchmarked them and used SiSoft Sandra to check it's system statistics. ATi has come a long way I think, but not far enough in other utilization other than games. For Games it's a great card, for everything else, eh not as impressive as I want/need it to be.
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Gamepro65 · Registered User Joined: 02 Dec 2001 Posts: 710

If you can find a Radeon 9500 with 2 ram sticks on top and 2 ram sticks on the side (they dont sell this anymore you would have to find someone to sell u it) Then you can flash the bios to be a Radeon 9700. If not just trust me on what i say next, for this is true.

NVIDIA SUXS NEVER GET A CARD FROM THEM.
ATI OWNZ NVIDIA!
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Bada Bing · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:52 am Post subject:

Yeah for games ATI is better from what I've heard.
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YourPowersAreWeakOldMan · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 2:06 am Post subject:

Replica · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 3:11 am Post subject:

my board is only an agp 4x... i'm assuming that'll limit my options?
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Blown · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 10:28 am Post subject:

powercolor is a popular brand name. Most speak pretty highly of it at the rage3d.com forums.

Personally, I'd wait a little bit unless you really need a card. They new cards will be out really soon and prices will drop on some of the higher cards.

ProudWhiteTrash · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:56 pm Post subject:

Do not buy a video card right now. PCIx is comming very soon and all these huge dollar cards are gonna be dirt cheap.
If you need to buy a card powercolor is a reputible ATI agent. The reason the cards are so much cheaper is mostly that the ram is not as fast as built by ati cards. But its easily over clockable and you can get even better performance that the built by cards.

I love the ati nvidia debate. nividia cards are fast, if you want wicked fast graphics nvidia is your card. If you want wicked deadly looking games with great performance ATI is for you.......
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Clay Pigeon · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 3:33 pm Post subject:

PCIX has been available for a very long time. If you dont plan on upgrading your whole mobo/cpu/ vidcard combo then a vidcard upgrade is fine.

Albino Gibbon · Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2004 6:21 pm Post subject:

I was an Nvidia user for over 3 years and switched to a 9600XT card a month ago. I still think Nvidia has better OpenGL and 2D support and generally have far fewer problems than the ATI cards. A correct ATI install procedure is fairly ignorant compared to Nvidia, although it still is the proper way to install a cards driver. You pretty much have to re-install the operating system to get it correct on a new install. May not be in all cases, but it has caused many people nightmares until they did this, including me. Just to upgrade a driver you have to uninstall driver, boot into safe mode, reinstall driver and hopefully it will work. That is probably the proper way, but the Nvidia drivers were so simple. They always worked without going to the extreme ATI wants you to. The visuals are definately better on an ATI card and if you are into AA and antriscopic filtering, Nvidia can't come close. As far as manufacturers for the 9600 Pro/XT they say Sapphire makes one of the better ones. I have heard of many problems with the Asus and Powercolor models on certain NForce II motherboards. I myself bought the ATI XT version of the card and have had no problems, except for the XP reinstall.. You should be able to overclock the Pro to achieve XT speeds, so no need to spend the extra money.