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a good budget card??

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grifter510

Registered
Joined
Jul 16, 2004
I'm replacing my old card (powercolor 9550) is this a good choice

Gecbue 9550xt

I'm on a buidget side...
 
Stay away from anything below a 9600 in ATI cards as they are NOT DX9 compliant. Anyhting in the NVidia FX series IS, but they do not start to be competitive with the 9600s and up until you get to the 5700 Ultra. Stay away from ANY ATI that has SE after the #s and any NVIDIA that has XT afte the #s
 
theMonster said:
Stay away from anything below a 9600 in ATI cards as they are NOT DX9 compliant. Anyhting in the NVidia FX series IS, but they do not start to be competitive with the 9600s and up until you get to the 5700 Ultra. Stay away from ANY ATI that has SE after the #s and any NVIDIA that has XT afte the #s
Actually, anything less than 9500 will not work with DX9. The 9500 and the 9550 both are DX9 cards.

JigPu
 
really depends on your budget...if you would have asked me a year ago i would have said youre insane for buying a card more than $100 USD... now i layed down $225 for my 9800np. to give you some sort of idea. i say go with a radeon 9700 np/pro/xt. they seem to be the hottest flavor and they are going pretty cheap.
 
Back when I built this computer in june I found a 256-bit Sapphire Radeion 9800 Pro for $151 shipped from newegg :attn:. Now it looks like the cheapest 9800 Pro they have is this one which is still a very good price. I don't have any experience with this particular brand but the stock cooling on that does look like it could handle a little bit of overclocking too.
 
Get a 9800se 256-bit version. It will blow that 9550xt out of the water. I hate ati's stupid naming. These new 9550 series of card look like they have nothing to do with the original 9500 series. These cards run pretty slow and some with 64-bit memory. Just look on newegg.
 
K I'm gonna give you a listing of cards and prices...some new others refurbished from newegg (Great deals IMHO).
...here is my listings:
round 50...
radeon 8500le or 9100 (same card) from newegg refurbs

round 75
...ti4200 from newegg refurbs

round 100
9600Pro or XT (don't buy the np) refurbed

round 125
9600p or XT new

round 150
9700pro (performs same as the 9800np...but no the same card...same performance) newegg refurb
Nvidia 5700U new
Nvidia 5900XT newegg reurb
9800p newegg refurb

round 200
9800pro new
5900 and XT versions new

Now, out of those I would get the 9700pro for 140 from newegg refurbs (best bang for the buck if you ask me)...but you might not want to be looking that high as the 9550 is around 65.
So for 65 bucks, your best bet is to find a for sale/trade forum and buy a ti4200 128mb from someone for 65 bucks. Only trade with people who have established good (50+ usualy) heatware (www.heatware.com)....anandtech is a place to start looking.

If you really want to stick with new cards, for 65 bucks you want to find a 8500le or 9100...you can find these on pricewatch. It's not a DX9 card...any card under a 9700/9800 and 5900 will not have the power to run DX9 smoothly. the 9600 and 5600 cards are crippled...meaning they cut pipelines and other things to make them slower...the 9600 series from ATI and 5600 from Nvidia are IMHO worthless, and for just a tad more cash you get a ton more performance.
 
9800 SE's with a 256bit memory interface that are clocked the same as a 9800 Pro (Powercolor R98SE-C3) aren't that bad of a choice actually. I got mine from newegg refurbished for 110$ and used the Omega drivers to enable the extra 4 pixel pipelines, changing it into a full fledged 9800 Pro. It's overclocked to around 435 on the core and 370 on the memory. The chances of it being softmoddable are quite high I believe... I think I recall a 2 in 3 chance. But I was very lucky on the refurb part... most of them that are sent back failed the soft mod. You still have a pretty solid card if the softmod doesn't work... and that's what I bought it for.

The 256bit 98SE's by themselves, with no softmod, should smear any 9600 XT.
 
theMonster said:
Stay away from anything below a 9600 in ATI cards as they are NOT DX9 compliant. Anyhting in the NVidia FX series IS, but they do not start to be competitive with the 9600s and up until you get to the 5700 Ultra. Stay away from ANY ATI that has SE after the #s and any NVIDIA that has XT afte the #s

I have a BFG 5900XT in my AMD rig and I love it. It also overclocks nicely, although I have not tried to flash it to a 5950U. I would definatly say that the 5900XT are very viable cards, especially since I picked it up new at BB for less than 160 AMR. It outperforms a 9600xt easily and comes pretty close to a 9800pro, and since I like nvidia cards better it works out great for me.

Also at completely stock core/mem and everything set to default in the nvidia tools, it scores a 5715 3dmark03.
 
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you can get a new sapphire 9800pro 128MB off of newegg for about $195 including shipping and just flash it to xt. IMO the best bang for the buck
 
If you can wait until the end of september early october go for a 6600 (150) or 6600gt (200) when they come out, the blow away anything ATI has to offer in the mainstream category, and support Direct3d9.0c and some other neat features that even the 6800's don't have.

They also play Doom3 nicely and since a lot of games will use that engine it will mean you are good to go.
 
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