$150 to $170??

You know my price range and I want good all around card that will give me hopefully no problems and work well on my ABIT NF7-S board.
What do you recommend??

Rob

I would say in this order:
Radeon 9600xt, $150
GeforceFx5900, ~$175+
Radeon 9800pro, $212

The 9800pro is millions of years ahead of the pre-mentioned cards, blowing them both away.

like yuri said the 9600XT and 5900 and 9800 pro are good cards, and remember the retail 9600XTs come with Half Life 2

id say the 9600XT or 9800Pro and the pros are 210$ Free shipping on newegg, just orderd 1

dguy6789 said:

and remember the retail 9600XTs come with Half Life 2

Click to expand...

Not any longer. It hasn't come with HL2 in a couple months.

Is the 9800pro that much better for the occasional gamer??

$210 for 9800pro is a really good price...
and you will be able to play modern games at high detail levels, and run full scene anti aliasing with anisoscopic filtering…
well worth the extra $50 over the 9600XT!

collins8 said:

Is the 9800pro that much better for the occasional gamer??

Click to expand...

Check the signatures around the forum.....even the guys with huge amounts of money to spend are running 9800 pro's, fantastic cards and absolutely wreck the 9600XT in performance

If only $150 to spend, then there's not much reason not to buy a 9800SE w/ 256-bit memory interface (R98SE-C3). It has everything the 9800 Pro has, except for lower-quality memory and half-of-eight pixel-pipelines disabled. A Radeon 9800 Pro costs ~$50-60 more then a PowerColor R98SE-C3.

Compared to a 9600XT, a PowerColor R98SE-C3 has a leg-up in every aspect except memory usage. But high memory clocks arn't worth a damn if you lack half of the 256-bit memory interface found on the 9800 Pro and PowerColor R98SE-C3.

Radeon 9800 Pro - $210-220
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory: Samsung/Hynix 2.86ns
Core: R350

PowerColor R98SE-C3 - $160
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory: Infineon 3.0ns
Core: R350

Radeon 9600XT - $150-180
Memory Interface: 128-bit
Memory: Samsung 3.3ns/2.86ns
Core: RV-360

right now at newegg refurb you can grab the 9700pro, or 9800 np for 160, its a smokin deal and will not last long so you better hurry.