Thread: Buying a new graphics card

A 9600XT is a very good card, however if you can wait, or stretch your budget i would go for a 9800Pro or 9800XT.

Or IF you can find one, get a 9700Pro.

The 9700/9800 Range all have 8 pipelines, where as anything lower only has 4
for newer games you really would be Much better off with the 8 pipelines as it make a big difference.

The 9700Pro has slightly lower clock speeds than the 9800Pro, however has 8 Pipelines, the problem is that this card is rather hard to find.

Or, if you wanted a cheap 9800Pro, buy a: ATI Radeon 9800SE All In Wonder, it will cost you slightly more if not equal to a 9600XT, and with a simple software modification (merely done by downloading different drivers), you can "unlock" the other 4 pipelines, as they are Actually on the card, just disabled by the drivers

ProcalX is absolutly right, I sold my 9800 SE to someone so they could softmod it to a 9800 Pro. The 9700 is also an excellent card in your price range, you can run World of Warcraft without slowdown on the higher settings.

So would you recomend a 9800 Pro or SE above a 6900XT?

EDIT: I will probably end up with a Saphire made card if i go into the 9800's if it makes a diffrence (which i doubt)

Go for a Radeon 9800pro if you can over a 9600XT. But keep away from SE cards.

The performance (and price) should be very similar when compared to the Pro, it should run FarCry and maybe even HL2 on higher settings without much of a hitch. It's a little harder to come by though, Newegg only has one in stock but it's over $200.

I think you should, it's a better deal in the long run. Why pay $86 dollars more for something that will only give you between 5-10 fps better (or less)? The Pro does have more vram but depending on what your playing you wont notice it. My card has 128mb's of vram and I only have one stick of 512mb ram yet FarCry still runs smoothly. There are 9800's with 256mb's of vram but you will have a hard time finding them for $179 CAD. If you had PCI-express I'd suggest the GeForce 6600 line but oh well.

Originally Posted by Waffle

yeh I have the sapphire 9800 pro 128mbm, and it's so far handled every thing I've thrown at it and spat it back out again. And with my new chip n mobo, only D3 slows me down on 1600*1200, which is no major biggy.

Wow, what detail settings were you using? I'm impressed you cranked it up that high before the slowdown became particularly evident.