ATI 9600 128mb for $70?

Hi, first time post...go easy on me!

I have an ATI 128 Rage Pro currently (cheapo that came with my Dell, intended to swap it right away, waited 6 months for no good reason). I see that BestBuy will be offering an ATI Radeon 9600 w/128mb on Friday only for $70 (probably after rebates). The listing I saw didn't mention XT/Pro/whatever, so assuming the worst, is this worth the upgrade? I did this same thing last year on my other pc and got a Ti4200 for $90 after rebate and have been happy with it (in fact, I was going to swap that into my current machine originally but I got lazy).

Thanks!

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by rmrpbutt on 11/25/03 01:04 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Is the 9600 standard also a huge jump over the ti4200? I assume yes since the 9600 is dx9 compliant, but I loved that ti4200 on my win98 machine and wonder if it would be worth switching it over to my xp machine instead of buying the 9600.

A 9600 non-pro would probably a slight step DOWN from a Geforce4 Ti 4200. The only cases where it would excel would be true DirectX 9 titles, because the pixel/vertex shaders of the 9600 are very good.

But in your average DirectX 7/8 title, the Ti4200 would probably be faster.

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Radeon 9500 (hardmodded to PRO, o/c to 322/322)
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ (o/c to 2600+ with 143 fsb)
3dMark03: 4055

Captain Obvious says it also depends on the rest of your system!

It might be a waste to get the R9600 if the CPU < 800Mhz.


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Is it really worth it to get up that early the day after thx giving? I did it one year, showed up an hour or two before they opened, and there were still a few hundred people ahead of me. I didn't get the card either. They hid it on the back of an isle instead of in the normal spot and I never found it before all 10 of them were gone. They set up baracades and chains all over the store so that you can't get there easily.

You'll have to get up very very early.

Alternatively you could just buy it online.

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<font color=red>12 bit... The way games are meant to be played!</font color=red>

I have a 9600 here that belongs to a customer. It has 128-bit RAM, but it's only 4ns (rated to 250MHz), SDR. It's still better than the 9600SE would be, which should be 64-bit if I'm not mistaken. Not a match for the Ti4200 however.

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I know what you mean about getting up that early, but last year at Best Buy, I got there at 5:15, they were serving hot coffee to everybody for free, everybody was chatting and having fun, I got an awesome Ti4200 for only $90 after rebate, etc. I normally get up that early for work, so for me, no biggie. This year you can also get a Maxtor 120GB HD for only $50 after rebate! I figured if I was gonna get that and if all you guys whole-heartedly recommended the R9600 (which unfortunately you didn't), it would have been worth it. Now I have to decide if the HD is worth it or not since I will probably just swap the Ti4200 in and wait for better cards next year to drive the 9800 prices down.

From a Geforce3Ti500... yeah, it'd probably be worth the $70.

Especially since you could sell your Geforce for $30 or so.

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Radeon 9500 (hardmodded to PRO, o/c to 322/322)
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ (o/c to 2600+ with 143 fsb)
3dMark03: 4055