ATi HL2 Coupon ends January

Order your cards now if you want the HL2 coupon. I emailed the Sapphire Tech customer service dept. to find out if the Lite Retail version had the coupon, and while it does, the promotion itself ends in January. As helpful as Sapphire was, I'm still going to get the Powercolor card instead. It's got 80mhz faster memory bus speed and the retail is only $10 more than the Sapphire OEM card. Wicked good deal.

So to summarize:

The HL2 Promotion ends January!

That may just be for non-XT cards. XT cards will always have the HL2 with it (the non-XT deal isnt official from ATi anyways. Its 3rd party companies and resellers who are offering it)

id wait till the physical game comes out and it should come bundled directly in the box of card. when and if I grab a 9600xt itll be mostly for the game. prices would have to be very low to justify that too and if im not happy I can always ebay the 9600xt

XT cards will always have the HL2 with it

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I got a sapphire 9600 xt from gameve.com couple days ago and it did not have an HL2 coupon. However it was OEM, did you mean only retails XT cards have HL2 coupons?



nutrageous

nutrageous said:

I got a sapphire 9600 xt from gameve.com couple days ago and it did not have an HL2 coupon. However it was OEM, did you mean only retails XT cards have HL2 coupons?



nutrageous

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Of course. OEM's dont come with bundles included, or box, and seeing how HL2 is a bundled game...you get their idea

By saying the promotion ends january, does that mean if I buy a card from them that didn't get sold in time but has the half life 2 voucher in it, the voucher is useless?

Evnas said:

That may just be for non-XT cards. XT cards will always have the HL2 with it (the non-XT deal isnt official from ATi anyways. Its 3rd party companies and resellers who are offering it)

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-----Original Message-----
From: John America [mailto:3rdilateralus@*********]

Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 2:35 AM
To: [email protected]

Subject: Clarification on Lite Retail

Just to make sure, the Lite Retail 9600 XT also comes with the Half Life 2 voucher? Because this doesn't make much sense:

"Available in both FULL Retail and Lite Retail Versions

Full retail indicates that the package contains the entire bundle
including the Game software bundle and utilities. The Lite retail versions do not come bundled with the software bundle and are packaged with the neccessities needed to enjoy the pinnacle in performance from Sapphire alone."

So is HL2 part of the software bundle or is it just referring to DVD
software and the like? It's an ATI promotion, not a Sapphire promotion, so all XT cards should come with it right?

Thanks,
John America
--

Response:

It is presently, but will be removed in January from the 9600XT by
us and ATI and all the partners.

Regards

Brian Skelton
Director of Marketing
Sapphire Technology

Tel +44-208-879-6407
Fax +44-208-944-7096
Mob +44-7785-242594
Web www.sapphiretech.com




So you see, I was referring to the XT cards only, since those are the only cards ATi is doing the promotion with. Maybe the 9800 XT will still have it, since it is a $499 flagship card, who knows. But the real deal, the 9600 XT isn't going to have it after January, any of them.

Quailane said:

By saying the promotion ends january, does that mean if I buy a card from them that didn't get sold in time but has the half life 2 voucher in it, the voucher is useless?

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No. Especially since HL2 won't be out by January. They just won't make any more coupons after a certain point in January. Depending on how fast they sell, you might see them available with the coupon through January till February, but there might not be any guarantee. Most websites don't even mention the HL2 promotion on their Radeon XT listings. NewEgg makes NO mention of it on any model.

You will probably see these cards with the coupons way past January. I bet a lot of sellers will find this out and stock up before the promo ends.

Alacritan said:

No. Especially since HL2 won't be out by January. They just won't make any more coupons after a certain point in January. Depending on how fast they sell, you might see them available with the coupon through January till February, but there might not be any guarantee. Most websites don't even mention the HL2 promotion on their Radeon XT listings. NewEgg makes NO mention of it on any model.

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Newegg probably takes them out of the box when they get them in. There are many uses that these have. I seen some people selling the coupon by themselves which I do not think is right.

Alacritan said:

NewEgg makes NO mention of it on any model.

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If you look at the pictures on the retail XT products, it clearly states on the box "Free Half-Life 2 Game", which is mention enough.

Evnas said:

If you look at the pictures on the retail XT products, it clearly states on the box "Free Half-Life 2 Game", which is mention enough.

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Not sure which Sapphire you are looking at but the picture of the one I see has a picture saying "Bundled Software HL2 Coupon NOT included".

There are three Sapphire models: full retail, lite retail, and oem.

The first two include HL2, the third does not. I think what's confusing people is that with most card there are two models, full retail and oem, but sapphire decided to release a second model of their 9600xt that included some but not all of the retail parts.

Full retail indicates that the package contains the entire bundle including the Game software bundle and utilities. The Lite retail versions do not come bundled with the software bundle and are packaged with the neccessities needed to enjoy the pinnacle in performance from Sapphire alone.

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More can be read at http://www.sapphiretech.com/VGA/9600-xt.asp

wanna_b_rich_13 said:

Not sure which Sapphire you are looking at but the picture of the one I see has a picture saying "Bundled Software HL2 Coupon NOT included".

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Looking on the box of the retail Sapphire 9800 XT at Newegg (theres only one) it clearly says "Free Half-Life 2"

Hey can someone give me he link that goes straight to the ati site with info on HL2 for non xt cards. I saw it once and lost it.

Evnas said:

Looking on the box of the retail Sapphire 9800 XT at Newegg (theres only one) it clearly says "Free Half-Life 2"

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Im looking at the 9600Xts....

Subaru said:

Hey can someone give me he link that goes straight to the ati site with info on HL2 for non xt cards. I saw it once and lost it.

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Do you mean this link:

http://www.ati.com/gitg/promotions/halflife2/index.html

SpaceyWilly said:

There are three Sapphire models: full retail, lite retail, and oem.

The first two include HL2, the third does not. I think what's confusing people is that with most card there are two models, full retail and oem, but sapphire decided to release a second model of their 9600xt that included some but not all of the retail parts.



More can be read at http://www.sapphiretech.com/VGA/9600-xt.asp

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Unless some vendors are taking the coupons out I have seen the Lite retails without the coupons in them.

hmm thnx for the heads up, i hope they will do the HL2 deal with the new cores with pci-express that is what i want

I say screw it all, cause I just bought a Powercolor 9600 XT Retail for $10 more. Not only do you get the coupon, the memory is also clocked at 680mhz, as opposed to 600mhz for the Sapphire.