Best time to buy Radeon 9500 pro?

[ianmills]

Hi ^^

I want to get a shiny new radeon 9500 pro soon. I live in Canada. It costs about $260 (~$175 US) now. I would prefer to get it when the price to go down to around $200 (~$130 US)... Is there any chance of a price drop that significant in the next couple of months? It seems all the new cards (with the exception of the 9800) will have poorer performance than it, so I wouldn't assume it's price would drop very much anytime soon... What do you guys think? Any opinions?
thanks

 

[10GHZ]

most likely after 2 month, the price drops gradually

 

[rubikian]

By that time 9500 might be hard to look for coz replaced by 9600...

 

[chuck232]

Depending, the R9600 Pro could provide better performance, becuaseof the more optimized memory and faster core, although half the pipelines will hurt performance. Who knows, $200 is kinda tough to be looking for, I'm a Canadian too, so I knida know. THe Ti4200 128MB started ~$300CDN, and they're still not $200 or less yet. I'd say, it'll be a long wait. You probably should just get a R9500 Pro, or if you really want to spend $200, look in that category, like maybe a Ti4200 64MB or R9100.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[ianmills]

Actually, I read at some site (Unfortunately I don't remember which one), that the 9600 pro was actually a bit slower than the GeforceFX 5600 Ultra (or whatever it wwas called)although they were hoping newer drivers would improve things...

 

[chuck232]

Really, I haven't seen any site with R9600 Pro benchmarks, so could you please show them. The R9500 Pro beats the Ti4200/Ti4400 handily, the Ti4600 with AA/AF. The FX 5600 Ultra beats the Ti's with AA/AF enabled, without, it loses to even the Ti4200.

The R9600 Pro, must be able to beat the Ti4200, or I think I'm gonna cry.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[ianmills]

Well.... there aren't really any benchmarks for the 9600 Pro yet... But

Preliminary benchmarks for the mobility radeon 9600 are here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDQ2

and an article mentioning the speed of the 9600 Pro is here (although this wasn't the orignal article I was talking about.. I can't remember where I read it unfortunately):
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8399

 

[chuck232]

Yeah, I don't really trust the Inquirer and the clock speeds for the Mobility are a bit changed from the actual card.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...