Best Budget Card:Sapphire Radeon Atlantis 9500 PRO

[Chaos]

Even though I am fairly new to the hardware aspects of computers(though i am learning mighty fast), I think it is obvious that the best budget card is the Sapphire radeon 9500 PRO for $180. I mean come on, it beats the pants off of the equivalent nVidia Ti 4200 just in horsepower alone. On top of that it supports Direct X 9 which means it is ready for Doom III. Get this, the Radeon 9500 is only 10% slower than the radeon 9700, yet 40% less expensive. The only real architectural difference between the two is that the 9700 is 256 bits wide compared to 128 bits wide with the 9500. And since that is such a steal, I have already ordered one myself.

Your wicked friend,

Chaos:shoot3:

[kenny83]

Damn right, i bought a HIS Radeon 9500 Pro about 2 months ago and it works like a dream, love playing games such as c&c generals, Unreal 2 with AA and Filtering. Something which you definately can't do with a geforce 4 ti. I used to have a Geforce 2 Ti, its not just the 3d performance, the 2d performance is great with ati, you can realli notice the better picture quality when playing videos and dvds. I've managed to overclock to 340/305 ..gettin 4328 for 3dMark2003 :thumb:
Considering gettin some heatsinks for the memory chips so i clock it higher.

:wow:

[TheOne�]

well,am having probs with it.


know it's said that radeon drivers suck and this is same **** as intel vs amd so don't start spamming this topic with ati sucks and gf rocks or ****, i only need some help.

i got a radeon 9500 pro but i can't run games like red faction, ravenshield, splinter cell, gun metal or others, i was able to run all of'em with a radeon 7500. most of those games support the radeon 9700 which is almost same(not saying same) as the 9500 but i can't play those games on my 9500 pro:(.
other sys specs are an amd athlon xp 1800+ t-bred @ 1.55ghz, a 512 ddr pc-2700 ram stick, creative sb live 5.1 and all the drivers are updated to lastest. i haven't put any special config on my vid card so if anyone knows a good config plz tell me!!!.

it seems like it's affecting dx (i got dx 9.0a) only cause i can play soldier of fortune 2 which runs on opengl but i don't know, could be something else.

oh ya,the resolution is at 1024*768 at 60mhz refresh(can't do more cause this is an old monitor which doesn't support more,lol).

[kenny83]

:confused:

Thats strange, i'm running DirectX9.0 with Catalyst 3.2 drivers and everythings runs fine. My specs are XP2400 - overclocked to XP2600 with 166FSB - on Epox nforce2 board with 2x 256Mb DDR-400. If its directX thats giving you problems try installing directX8.0 instead, since no game requires directX9.0 yet. Also try setting your AA and AF in your control panel to 2X and 4X respectively instead of application prefernce. Also a fresh install of drivers usually does the trick.

:snip:

:wave:

[TheOne�]

thx but that doesn't seem to help out:). any other ideas over sttings or something?

[tukinnam]

i just got sapphire 9500 pro a few days ago for $169 USD with 2 day delivery.. awesome graphics.,, i didnt think it was possible but i can see a lot more details besides the huge increase in speed on games..

btw, i used to have a radeon 8500..

9500 is awesome !

[Andy72]

... On top of that it supports Direct X 9 which means it is ready for Doom III...

I thought Doom III is OpenGL game.
Can anyone confirm. Other than that, I do agree with the subject.



Andy

[RDR]

Get this, the Radeon 9500 is only 10% slower than the radeon 9700, yet 40% less expensive. :shoot3:

Around here a 9500pro is about 25% cheaper than a 9700np & 10% slower is probably pretty accurate....a 9700pro is 35-40% more expensive than 9500 pro, but they're more like 20-25% faster

that's typical in video card product families - you have to pay big $$'s for those few extra frames


...following this line of logic - a 9100 is even a better deal since it delivers 80% of the speed of a 9500pro for less than 50% of the money:thumb:

it's all about how fast you want to go & how deep your pockets are :D

[Chaos]

You are right RDR. It is all about how my pockets go and I think that for my wallet the 9500 is the way to go. As for the speed and dollar ratio, I got that off of Maximum PC's latest issue. Correct me if I am wrong.


Chaos:devil:

[kenny83]

Yes, Doom III will be a openGL game, but it will utilise many features found in DirectX 9.0. Check out the benchmarks on the preview of the 9800Pro on Guru3D and you will see that DirectX9.0 cards, ie. 9500, 9700, 9800 and 5800 FX have much better performance.

[thewoody]

I just traded my Radeon 9500 Pro for a Sapphire 9500 Pro. Scores are same at stock speeds (within single digit numbers on 3DMark01SE). The only difference I see is the memory... Radeon had 3.0ns Infineon memory and Sapphire has 3.3 ns.

[ufuk21p]

but sont forget that 9700 pro or non p, have 256 bit mem bandwidth which is twice of that Radeon 9500 pro at 128 bit, other that that i believe the cards are identical in architecture.
this makes a good deal difference if the game really is huge, like doom3.
the crappy 9500 has 4 pixel shaders whereas 9500 pro and 9700 p&np all have 8.
(all GF4 tis have 4 pixel shaders and 128bit mbw)

[Chaos]

You are right, but I still think that the 9500 is the best budget card out there for under $200. Nothing will sway my opinion. Oh yeah, and like how can you compare a new card to an older one, eh?:laugh:

Chaos

[ufuk21p]

i like both 9500s, preferably the pro, they have full dx9 support first of all, and i agree that compared to ti4200 or ti4400 these are the right cards to choose.
i just wanted to point out that maybe u will pay a 30-40 bucks more for the 9500 pro compared to 9500, but it will last that little bit longer and enable you better aa,af performance in playing current games.