Is this a good Graphics card?

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2005-09-21 06:24am

Asking price is £65 (US$117)

ATI Peak Radeon 9600 Pro
256 MB DDR
AGP 8X
DirectX 9.0
400/400 MHZ

According to my housemate the price they're going for is too goog to be true for a 256MB card and he smells something fishy

Ebay shop link, with ,more stats

Chipset: ATI Radeon 9600PRO
Interface: AGP 8x/4x
Video Memory: 256MB
Memory Type: DDR
Engine Clock: 400MHz
Memory Clock: 400MHz
Memory Interface: 128-bit
RAMDACs: 400MHz
Max. Resolution: 2048x1536
Connectors: SVGA
S-VIDEO
DVI-I
Pixel Pipelines: 4
Pixel Fill Rate: 1.3G
DirectX Support: 9.0
OpenGL Support: 1.5
Compatible OS: Windows 2000
WIndows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows ME
Windows XP
Special Features: Quad-Pipe Architecture Delivers real-time Cinematic Rendering
Cinematic Quality Lighting and Shadow Effects

Package Contents: User's Manual
Drivers CD
WinDVD
S-Video Lead
Composite Lead
S-Video to Composite Converter
SVGA to DVI-I Converter

Lord of the Farce · Post by **Lord of the Farce** » 2005-09-21 07:18am

A quick search using Google with the product code of "PK-CP-4351" got these results:
clickonit.com - £63.25
Specialtech - £58.98
But I don't know (and can't be bothered to look for

) the cost of delivery for these, so that's something you need to check up on yourself.

By the way, did you notice right towards the bottom:

Seller's payment instructions
PLEASE NOTE THAT VAT @17.5% WILL BE ADDED TO THE TOTAL

The two that I linked to, if I'm not mistaken, already includes that.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-21 07:23am

Thats a good card, what PC are you linkin it to?

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-09-21 01:10pm

I don't know how different prices are over there, but in the U.S., you can get a vastly superior card for about $30 more. Right now at Newegg you can get a 6800 non-ultra for about $140. It might not have 256 MB of RAM, but I can guarantee you that it will roughly triple the performance of the 9600 Pro on virtually any game or application. If you want to go the ATI route, you can get an X800 non-pro for about the same price, with roughly similar performance to the 6800. It's not that you'll be disappointed with a 9600 Pro per se, but the extra RAM won't mean much on a card like that, and for the extra cost of the RAM, you can instead get a card that's a lot faster.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2005-09-21 05:22pm

I upgraded to that froma geforce MMX 440.

According to my housemate it's a good budget choice that should last me at the very least a year. That about right?

Robin · Post by **Robin** » 2005-09-21 06:52pm

I had the 128 MB version of that card, before I upgraded to a GeForce 6800, and the ATI 9600 pro performed reasonably well, however you might want to bear in mind that on special offer I paid £80 (including VAT, didn't need postage) for mine back in July 2004, although that Ebay one has twice as much RAM as mine did, it still seems a tad expensive, especially as your going to get whacked with postage, then VAT on top which will bring it to about £84.

Some examples of how my 9600 Pro performed on my Athlon 2400XP with 512 MB ram:

I played both Deus Ex: Invisible War and Doom 3 at 800 x 600 with frame rates in the 30s and 40s, though that was with low to medium settings for Doom 3.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines ran well enough, probably about 30 fps max in the none hub areas (though I reckon this game really needed loads more RAM and a better processor, given as it still runs slow with my newer card).

Battlefield 2 at low settings and maximum draw distance was playable, though it struggled when flying planes.

RTS games like C&C Generals and Dawn of War ran fine.

It played Morrowind, plus numerous mods for it, ok given that I was running the utility that manages FPS and allows you to increases the draw distance.

Both GTA: San Andreas and GTA: Vice City had no problem at all.

By way of comparison; the bog-standard 128 MB GeForce 6800 I upgraded to, which on special offer cost me £99.95 (excluding VAT and postage), kicks my old ATI 9600 pro in the nuts. This card can run BF2 on medium settings fine, it can run the F.E.A.R. demo on decent settings at 30 to 40 fps, while the ATI card stuggled on low, and generally gives a huge boost to fps on most of the games listed above, even VtM:Bloodlines

Have a look at Overclockers, you can pick up budget graphics cards which will last a hell of a lot longer than the ATI 9600 pro. I found this chart at Tom's Hardware pretty handy for choosing what graphics card to buy for my upgrade so that I can play Oblivion and F.E.A.R. when they come out. If you don't play newer or more graphically demanding games on your PC, there are far more suitable cards for around that price and probably cheaper as well.

If you do get it, install the Omega drivers as they give the frame rate a boost. The only difficulty I had with the 9600 was that I could never run it in AGP x8 mode with out it crashing after a few minutes when playing a game, as many tech boards had topics on that particular subject I assumed it was a fairly common error and not one specific to my computer. It was easily solved by changing the AGP setting in the ATI tab in the Display Properties Control panel, although I am unsure of the performance hit this gave.

Hope that helps.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2005-09-22 05:44am

I have a NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-09-22 07:13am

Typhonis 1 wrote:I have a NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000

I pitty you

Star-Blighter · Post by **Star-Blighter** » 2005-09-22 07:27am

I have a an ATI 9600 with only 128 RAM and it works supprisingly well. I even won a bet with a friend who said I would never be able to play Half-Life 2 with it. (that 80$ was good company).

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-22 07:28am

ggs wrote:
Typhonis 1 wrote:I have a NVidia GeForce4 MX 4000
I pitty you

Agreed, no one should live with a OCed GF2 nowdays.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2005-09-22 04:53pm

Thought I was getting a good pice of hardware .

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-09-22 09:37pm

How does the Radeon X600 PCI-E compare to it?

With Robin's statement on game performance, mine is pretty much the same for Deus Ex 2, Doom, C&C and DoW. Not that the last two really have impressive requirements anyway.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-23 12:22am

Nephtys wrote:How does the Radeon X600 PCI-E compare to it?

With Robin's statement on game performance, mine is pretty much the same for Deus Ex 2, Doom, C&C and DoW. Not that the last two really have impressive requirements anyway.

The x600 is basicly a 9600XT on a PCI-E board, useless.

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2005-09-23 07:16pm

What would be a good vid card for about $150 to $200?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-23 07:19pm

6600GT unless your PC is going to severely bottleneck it.

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2005-09-23 07:43pm

Ace Pace wrote:6600GT unless your PC is going to severely bottleneck it.

I've got about one gig of RAM, Athlon XP 2400+ and an ATI 9200 SE.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-23 07:44pm

I think it would fit well, I'm running the same and doing fine with a 9700Pro.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-09-24 08:33pm

If you check Newegg, you'll find that you can get a 6800 non-ultra for perhaps $20 more than a 6600 GT, which is a much better value IMO.