What Video Card Should I Get

I know this is the generic question usually asked, so just to keep it circulating andl ask for some help picking one out

I was looking at getting a Radeon 9700 Pro, but quantities of them are falling faster then their price and I'm having trouble finding any sort of good (less then $265) deal a retail box. So now I'm looking at the next level down, a 9600 Pro maybe. Is this a good performing card (both stock and with minor oc)? I havn't tried oc'ing a video card before, (only cpu/memory) so I'm not entire sure of the process (will read up on it tho )

Can a Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB be overclocked to run neck-and-neck with a Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB? While running as "stable as stock" and without any added cooling (using an Antec SLK3700AMB Solution-Series case).

What is the best video card for less then $260 that run neck-and-neck with the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB on most real-world benchmarks?
(really I'm looking for something for that game that's coming along soon now, you know the name, Half-Life 2 or something )

Thanks

If you want something 9700pro-ish then get a 9800np for $250 or so. I wouldn't reccommend the 9600pro since it's not an extremely good performer for the price.

Also look to see if you can find a 9700np for $200-$230. Both the 9700np and 9800np will be much, much faster than the 9600pro.

I say go 9700np, same architecture just slower RAM and slightly slower core.

Speed_Mechanic said:

Can a Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB be overclocked to run neck-and-neck with a Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB? While running as "stable as stock" and without any added cooling (using an Antec SLK3700AMB Solution-Series case).

Click to expand...

Hehehe thats a good one

How do the r9700np differ from the r9700pro besides Core/Clock speeds? When Core/Clock speeds are oc'ed to match, how does performance differ?


Same with r9800np and r9800pro?

The memory chips on the 9700 n-pro cards may be slower a la 3.3ns vs. 2.8ns. If you overclock a non-pro to pro speed, it'll perform identically. This is not the case with the 9500s though as the non-pro only has four pixel pipelines whereas the pro has 8.

~THT

So all the extra stuff the r9800pro has is also in the r9800? Cheaper, slower, chips aside.

Bringing the r9800np's Core/Memory speeds from 325/580 to 380/680 using the nice little Windows-GPU-overclocking programs is relatively simple? (or hard b/c of the needed 17% increase?) I would guess it wouldn't be that hard, but ? If this OC'd GPU was put up on ATI's site, would it theoretically have equal Pixel Fillrates as the r9800pro?

For $212 at BananaPC, Should I get the PowerColor Retail r9700np for $32 less then the Sapphire OEM r9800np at $244.
A retail PowerColor r9800np goes for $250 at AllStarShop.

A Few Questions:

• With Video Cards, should I get retail (like when buying CD-RWs) or is OEM good enough (like when buying cpu's)?
• How good of a brand is PowerColor? (they seem to have the lowest priced cards)