[Fineus]

Hail all,
Having a spot of bother working out the numerical system for ATI cards. I'm guessing that the 9800 Pro is the fastest / latest / bestest card in their selection and that the 9600, 9500 and so on are older, slower cards such as the GeForce 2 is a slower / older card than the GeForce 4...

Is this right? I've seen people recommend that people get the 9600 instead of the 9800 when they want a budget card and such... but surely the technology is much older?

It's confusing me... if anyone can decifer it that'd be nice

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Is this right? I've seen people recommend that people get the 9600 instead of the 9800 when they want a budget card and such... but surely the technology is much older?  

The 9800 is better. It's just that the 9600 is much cheaper.

The only oddity in the ATI range is the R9500 being better than the R9600.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Hail all,
Having a spot of bother working out the numerical system for ATI cards. I'm guessing that the 9800 Pro is the fastest / latest / bestest card in their selection and that the 9600, 9500 and so on are older, slower cards such as the GeForce 2 is a slower / older card than the GeForce 4...

Is this right? I've seen people recommend that people get the 9600 instead of the 9800 when they want a budget card and such... but surely the technology is much older?

It's confusing me... if anyone can decifer it that'd be nice

9600 is recommended quite frequently because of the budget aspect.  Its of bang for your buck, although the R9500 was oddly enough a slightly better one (although more expensive for ATI's manufacturing the 9500 was a stripped down 9700 - thus the expense).

The top of the line, best of the best, video card from ATI is the Radeon 9800 XT which is complemented by a 9600 XT.  The 9600 XT falls somewhere in the neighborhood of under the 9700Pro but above mostly everything else.  The 9800XT is the card to beat at the moment although the nVidia FX5950 is close.

Also be warned that nVidia XT cards which came out after are actually the budget edition video cards (the SE model of the nVidia line).  Nice little war going on.

[Fury]

IceFire got it pretty well summed up. Good job Ice, it's good some people knows where we're going.

I say go for Radeon 9600 XT. A lot cheaper than 9800 series and almost as fast as 9700 which is being phased out. But if you can find 9700 non-pro or Pro somewhere really cheap, go for it.

[Fineus]

Thanks all for the advice... I'm not looking to buy just yet but I figured I should clue myself in about whats on the market anyhow.

By the way, there may be speed differences but what technology differences are there between the cards? I'd kinda like something mildly future proof... full DX9 compliance etc...

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]Every card 9500 and up has full DX9 support. As for physical technology, I know the 9600XT is pretty high up the ratings in that it employs some pretty techy gizmos in its innards, whether the 9800XT does this or not I don't know but it doesn't seem to matter.[/color]

[Drew]

*pokes head in*
so out of the 9500, 9600, 9700 which one is the best buy?

[Ace]

If price isn't an issue, I'd definately recommend the 9800 XT. It even anti-aliases the text in FS2 better then the GeForces

[IceFire]

Drew...if you can find an old 9700Pro you're still coming up ahead of the 9600XT's.  Reason for that is the 8 channel 256bit memory channels versus 4 channel 128bit.

But the 9600's are a good buy through and through.

All of the Radeon 9500 and up are fully DirectX9 compliant...to the point that the ATI cards support the spec extremely closely (they were one of the manufacturers who really went with Microsoft to try and make it as good a spec as possible).  So compaired to comperable nVidia cards you are going to se a serious performance boost for the next little while.  Remedies are in the works apparently but the Radeon's got the FX's beat for now in the straight DX9 department.

You can't go wrong with those for fully DX9 abilities.  And performance too.

[magatsu1]

don't even look at 9200.  It's a bit of an imposter.

[Venom]

i myself own a great Radeon 9800 Pro!

sneezy little beast:D

but i would recommend to buy the Radeon 9800 XT...well....when you've enough money for it

[Grey Wolf]

It goes about like this:
9000
9000 Pro
9200
9200 Pro
9100
9100 Pro
9600
9500
9600 Pro
9500 Pro
9600 XT
9800 SE
9800
9800 Pro
9800 Pro 256MB
9800XT
9800XT 256MB

[LtNarol]

just got a 9600 SE, scp runs beautifully

[Lightspeed]

If youre looking for a good price and performance, I can reccommend a Radeon 9800

the Radeon 9800 is about as fast as the Radeon 9700 Pro, but it's slightly cheaper, and doesn't get as hot (since it's running on lower clock speeds). The 256 MB versions are not really worth the extra money yet.

The Radeon 9800 XT has a performance advantage of 0.1 to 2% over the Radeon 9800 pro, so someone who purchases it would be really wasting lots of money

a Radeon 9700 Pro, or a Radeon 9800 (9800 Pro if you can afford it) is a very good choice. Just be sure you do NOT buy a Radeon SE card (9700 Pro SE or something like that). SE cards are simply worse Radeon cards overclocked to the performance of newer cards. And they changed the layout.

Also, you should look for a good manufacturer, for example you should never buy a Club3d Radeon.

If you want a cheap card, buy a PowerColor (best of the cheap ones), if you really want very good performance go with HIS or Hercules (Hercules is top in performance but gets hot easily and is expensive as hell). Sapphire Atlantis is also good performance-wise but the image quality is horrible.

[Kosh]

9600 instead of the 9800 when they want a budget card and such... but surely the technology is much older?

The technology is actually the same in both. They use the same cores, but the 9600 doesn't have as many features (or quite as much performance) as the 9800.

[Admiral LSD]

Actually, the 9600 core is slightly different as 4 of the 9800's rendering pipes have been physically removed from the chip. It's not like the 9500 non-Pro where the pipes were there but were simply disabled and could be re-activated through a series of different hacks, you can't re-activate the pipes in a 9600 because they weren't there to begin with.

[Drew]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
Actually, the 9600 core *snip*

yeah i was looking at that. Thats why i want to get the 9700 if i can, but it is more money....


What do you guys think about buying theses things on Ebay?

[Admiral LSD]

If you're thinking about buying from eBay (I wouldn't but then that's just me) and aren't looking to spend a lot of money then have a look around to see if you can't find a used 9500 Pro in reasonable condition. A 9500 Pro will not only age better than a 9600 but should be considerably cheaper than a 9700 as well.

[redmenace]

Current Price watch listings
$422  -  RADEON 9800 XT 256MB
$367  RADEON 9800 Pro 256MB
    $274  RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB
$339  -  RADEON 9800 All-In-Wonder
$367  RADEON 9800 256MB
$144  -  RADEON 9800 128MB
$230  -  RADEON 9700 Pro 128MB
$285  -  RADEON 9700 All-in-Wonder
$192  -  RADEON 9700 128MB
$198  RADEON 9600 XT 256MB
$156  RADEON 9600 XT 128MB
$83  RADEON 9600 SE 128MB
$106  RADEON 9600 Pro 256MB
$83  RADEON 9600 Pro 128MB
$210  -  RADEON 9600 All-in-Wonder
$106  RADEON 9600 256MB
$83  RADEON 9600 128MB
$177  -  RADEON 9500 Pro 128MB
    $126  -  RADEON 9500 128MB
$112  -  RADEON 9500 64MB
$91  -  RADEON 9200 256MB
$44  -  RADEON 9200 128MB
$44  -  RADEON 9200 SE 128MB
$43  -  RADEON 9200 SE 64MB
$43  -  RADEON 9200 64MB
$68  -  RADEON 9100 128MB
$55  -  RADEON 9100 64MB
$71  RADEON 9000 Pro 128MB
$53  RADEON 9000 Pro 64MB
$45  -  RADEON 9000
$69  -  RADEON 9000 128MB
$142  -  RADEON 9000 All-in-Wonder
$45  -  RADEON 9000 64MB
$60  RADEON 8500
    $75  -  RADEON 8500 128MB
$46  -  RADEON 7500
$53  -  RADEON 7500 128MB
$30  -  RADEON 7000
$34  -  RADEON 7000 64MB DDR
$53  -  RADEON 64MB DDR VIVO
$30  -  RADEON 32MB DDR
$414  -  GeForce FX 5950 256MB
$289  -  GeForce FX 5900 256MB
$188  GeForce FX 5900 128MB
$414  -  GeForce FX 5800 256MB
$193  GeForce FX 5800 128MB
$108  GeForce FX 5600 Ultra 128MB
$104  GeForce FX 5600 256MB
$92  -  GeForce FX 5600 128MB
$79  GeForce FX 5200 256MB
$56  GeForce FX 5200 128MB
$58  -  GeForce FX 5200 64MB
$129  -  GeForce4 TI 4800
$129  -  GeForce4 TI 4600
$129  -  GeForce4 TI 4600 8x AGP
$105  -  GeForce4 TI 4400
$91  -  GeForce4 TI 4200 128MB
$70  -  GeForce4 TI 4200 64MB
$46  GeForce4 MX 440 8x AGP 128MB
$33  GeForce4 MX 440 8x AGP 64MB
$56  -  GeForce4 MX 440 4x 128MB
$34  -  GeForce4 MX 440 4x 64MB
$32  -  GeForce4 MX 420
$88  -  GeForce3 TI 200 128MB
$60  -  GeForce3 TI 200 64MB
$83  -  GeForce3
$109  -  GeForce2 Ultra 64MB
$55  -  GeForce2 TI 64MB
$100  -  GeForce2 Pro 64MB
$33  -  GeForce2 MX400 64MB
$28  -  GeForce2 MX400 32MB
$28  -  GeForce2 MX200 32MB
$31  -  GeForce2 MX200 64MB
$47  -  GeForce2 GTS 64MB

[Lightspeed]

.. and that would be cheap & sucky manufacturers i guess... (since not even one is mentioned in that list)