ATI or Geforce? please help

In your price range, the Radeon 9600 PRO is the card of choice.

The FX 5600 is very close... better in some benchmarks and worse in others... but Nvidia's driver cheating of late put's the card's power in question.

Plus, the 9600 PRO overclocks like a mad banshee.

what do you mean by driver cheating?

Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

If you really want to search, you'll see that Nvidia has been knee deep in a cheating controversy. They inflate their benchmark results by cheating on the drivers. They do things such as not render the entire screen even though they should. This essentially translates to benchmarks that don't reflect the actual cards performance in games. It also makes them look better against the competition who has not done these cheats. Cheats are being uncovered on a regular basis now.

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Go for the 9600 Pro and don't look back!

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what is the difference between the 9600 pro and the 9600pro ultra?

Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

I'm happy with my 9500 pro. I got a 9600 pro but turned out my motherboard couldn't dish out the voltage that it needed to take from my the agp slot. It was a abit kg7 raid motherboard.

The is no Radeon 9600Pro Ultra, unless some 'powered by' partner has added that. The name 'Ultra' is usually the domain of Nvidia.
The 9600 vs. the 9600pro differ mainly in two areas. The 9600NON-PRO is clocked at a lower speed and the Memory is lesser quality TSOP not BGA, thus meaning little or no overclockin on the lower card.

There are 4 versions of the GF FX5600, there's a lite version (can't rmember the exact name), there's the non-ultra version, and then 2 Ultra versions (original and Rev.2) Rev.2 Looks OK, but once again it's a question of trustworthy benchmarks.
Nvidia's cheats have been exposed to lower IQ, whereas the 'cheats' that people charge ATI with haven't affected IQ (I-mage Q-uality), are reproduceable in gaming (which means it's actually a useful optimization), and aren't in the current Catalyst driver (3.5).

So the only way to tell the true performance of an Nvidia card visa-vi an Ati card is if 'uncommon' benchmarking is done, where it is unlikely that the Nvidia cheats are applied. In those benchmarks the ATI have done well, and the FXs have fallen in performance.

If you can get a Radeon 9500pro go with that, otherwise go with the Radeon 9600pro (I personally have one). They are fine cards with unquestioned performanc. Also don't rely on the 9600P being an awesome overclocker, my experience was that, but it it's not guaranteed, and some peoplehave been disappointed that it's only a GOOD overclocker. Most people can push the core at least +70mhz (mine +130), but their memory may only get a bit higher.

So if you're not a tweaker, stick with the 9500Pro if you can, otherwise the 9600Pro is a good second choice.


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Both ATI and nVidia have been cheating of late in the 3dMark benchies. It's no biggie, it's lame, but they're both doing it so... shrug. If you get a 5600 series card, make sure you get the Ultra.

Shadus

It's a biggie when deciding which card to plonk your money on. And only Nvidia compromised the actually quality of the picture, Ati just switched the order it did instructions or turning on BETTER pixel shaders which Nvidia doesn't have. Nvidia on the other hand made the picture look worse, and render only portions of the scene, therefore giving an unrealistic view of what would happen in real gameplay. Ati's optimization would work either way. Nvidia's only if you were using the benchmark, unless you change the name, then it wouldn't work. So they are far from the same thing, and they do make a difference when trying to compare performance, Which is the point, especially for someone who naively thinks the FXseries (all levels) are competitive.


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