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Attn: Need to know what to buy? This should help.

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bdw8

Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2003
Location
Virginia, US of A
I've seen countless threads with people asking what to buy. So I decided to go ahead and summarize what you should buy when choosing your next ATi card. (This can change based on price and availibility, but currently as of 6/18/03 these are my opinions.)

8500/8500LE/9100 - Good cards for the price. If you are looking for an inexpensive card to give you nice framerate, image quality, and overall performance (of current games, not Doom3 or any of the sort), this card will definately not dissapoint. People have been pulling off nice 3dmark scores with these card after they have been overclocked. When buying a 8500 make sure its at 250/250 clock speeds.

9000/9000pro - Outperformed by its little brother the 8500. Not the best card and mostly pairs up with the gf4 mx line. It will play your current games like ut2003 but don't expect anything special.

9200/9200pro - Basically just a 9000pro with 8x support (EDIT: Its dx9 compatible, but not dx9 compliant!). Same with this, not a TERRIBLE card but don't expect anything special.

9500np- Nice card for the money. EDIT: Its not clocked-locked. It has lots of potential if you get the "L" shaped memory and if it can be soft-modded. Many people on this forum have modded this card to 9700 standards and have been pulling off some very remarkable scores. The moddability IS NOT gauranteed and is basically luck of the draw. Otherwise a good card, but spend the money for its older brother...

9500pro- This card is said to have the best performance/price ratio. This card greatly outperformed its intended nVidia competition (ti4200) and even surpassed the other ti cards. This card is also clock-locked so you need to flash the bios. People have boosted their 3dmark scores with a little overclocking from this card. These cards are becoming scarce as ATi stopped production of them and I suggest you get one quick. These cards will play any of the current games, no sweat, even with AAxAF and eye candy. They will play the newer games coming out just fine, but the framerate won't be killer. Also, this card beats it "replacement", the 9600pro.

9600/9600pro - This card is still "mysterious." Benchmarks put it behind the 9500pro but they say that they can overclock greatly from their new core process. Some people on this forum will tell you they aren't too happy with it, but it plays current games with AAxAF up and eye candy on. It shouldn't perform THAT bad on the newer games coming out but thats just speculation. We'll have to see about this card as it is still not widely used by people on this forum. This card is not clock-locked. One overclocking tool I hear does good with this card is the RadClocker. Here is q149's encounter with the 9600pro:
q149 said:
I can't even imagine how crappy a 9600np would be. It sucks. The ones going out now do not overclock well.. It is much worse than a 9500np that's not modded.

9700np- This card seems to be a big thing now, and if I would have waited 2 weeks and saw the deal on mwave.com for this card for $200 I would have bought this over my 9500pro. People with this card are impressed and that $200 deal is awesome. I suggest you hop on this opportunity. This card is clock-locked but well worth flashing the bios because you can easily make up the $100 difference between the 9700pro and this card. This card plays current games with ease and with AAxAF at high res. and with high detail. They will also do just fine for the newer games coming out. GREAT BUY, IMO!

9700pro- Same as above except its $100 more. You get the extra clock speed and its not clock-locked. If you have the money and really don't mind paying $100 extra, go ahead. I would still suggest the 9700np over this because of the low price and both cards are essentially the same card except for the clock speed and the bios. The 9700np and 9700pro max out at around the same levels. People say that the 9700np's RAM is not as good but 9700np owners state that they recieve the same 2.8ns Ram as the Pro owners. This card does awesome with current games and leaves breathing room for the newer games.

9800pro - Hmmm, not much to say except if you have the money, buy it (Read further down in the thread for some very interesting benchmarks between the nVidia competion - thanks to the people who supplied their opinions and links). A little to expensive for my liking, but I am green with envy of all the 9800pro owners out there. This thing kills any current game you throw at it. It does good with the newer games and the 256mb will come in handy later on. Disco_Stu has more about 128mb vs. 256mb:
Disco_Stu said:
I think you should add the part about the 9800pro 128mb vs the 256 version. The 256 version is priced at over 500$ US right now, which is WAY too much for any average person to pay for a video card, or any single component for that matter. The 128 version is the one that most people on these forums have, and is priced at the standard price for a new generation card, 399$.



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If you have any comments, suggestions, error-corrections, additional information let me know. It is possible to go into much more depth about the pros and cons of each of this card, but I just wanted to give the basic overview of where each card stands currently. I know a lot of people want to know whats better (I can tell by the number of them threads) and I figured this would help. :)
 
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nice job, maybe we won't see to many threads about what ati card to get and then we can also keep it to only one thread instead of 10 or more.
 
good info may be u need a little more info about the 8500/le beating the 9000/pro i told alot off ppl but they dont belive me
they belive that if its more expensive and the name is newer or higher then its better
 
I think you should add the part about the 9800pro 128mb vs the 256 version. The 256 version is priced at over 500$ US right now, which is WAY too much for any average person to pay for a video card, or any single component for that matter. The 128 version is the one that most people on these forums have, and is priced at the standard price for a new generation card, 399$.
 
I think you should add this to the 9600 Pro part... I can't even imagine how crappy a 9600np would be.

It sucks. The ones going out now do not overclock well.. It is much worse than a 9500np that's not modded.
 
Yeah, I will add it later. I can't really right now because I don't know much about it. If you would like to write the little section on it, I would be pleased to add it. Any help would, well uh, help. I would write it up, but I don't know anything about the 9800np and its cost/peformance ratio and what the difference between it and the pro version (probably just clock speed).
 
Here is a little more info since all i really said before is that the 9600 sucks.

I have tested a 9600 Pro(around 488/355) and (L-shape)9500np(around 365/320) (not modded) head to head /w clean reformats and the 9500np won every time. I tested with performance settings and quality /w 2xAA/4xAF & 4x/4x with 3dmarks and Vice City. This is a moderate overclock in the 9500np and a slightly above average OC on the 9600 Pro... The first ones that went out clocked extremely high or at least over 500 and the newer ones going out ussually clock around 450-480. The card is a joke... I can't imagine how horrible a 9600np would be.

If you want to see benchmarks just look at Futuremark's ORB and make sure you ignore all of the 9600 TX ones because they are using 8 pipes and the R300 core. All of the highest ones are the TX's and you will find the 9600 Pro's with very low scores for the system.. even lower than a 9500np would score.

There is also some good things.. It's very small and light. It runs very cool and does not require an extra power connector. If you can't spare any power or don't want your vid card to produce any heat.. go ahead and get one. Also, a volt mod could possibly save this card.. but myself and someone from another forum have already tried and we both got very strange results and gained no core oc.
 
he 9800 pro anygame? at viaarena.com they claim this map for jedi knight has such complicated textures that a P4 3.0 ghz and a 9800 will run it at 40fps

i dun know if this is true i don't have jedi knight
 
good luck getting it stickied. I had this: http://oc3dmark.octeams.com/cardguide.html with at least 20 people requesting stickies, but it never happened.

edit: the 9200 is not DX9 compliant, it is DX9 compatible, but then again, so if a TNT2 :p

also the 5900 Ultra is not out yet, so the price is astronomical, over 500$, and imho the 9800Pro is still the better choice
 
A litte side question but, q149, I noticed you mentioned you tested the L shaped 9500np. Since its not modded, does it matter what kind it is? Dont they all perform the same?
 
I was all set to buy an ATI 9500 pro. I found out it doesn't support windows 98. now i'm back to square 1. can someone recomend a good replacement card that supports win 98 se
 
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