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vid cards

Mon, 08/16/2004 - 23:25 — Kensu

i have an ATI Radeon 9600 pro 128 mb.

just wondering , if i had gone with 256 mb, or with the xt version, would i have noticed that much more of a diff on the performance as related to game play etc?

i thought about it but couldn't justify in my mind the cost difference.

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Mon, 08/16/2004 - 23:33 — Kensu

vid cards

haha.. actually this is their newest. it'd be the one to save up for. lol
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2537962

Tue, 08/17/2004 - 21:32 — Roachman

vid cards

Well...since this is game related, we should make you post it on DeadSpaceGaming, but we can let it slide...this time.

In the 9600 series, the difference between the 128 and 256 cards would not likely be noticeable in game play. The only two games I can think of that would benefit from the extra memory are Far Cry and Doom 3. I am not sure how the 9600 series does in Far Cry, but it does not really have the horsepower to utilize the 256 memory requirement of the high graphics setting in Doom 3. A 256 Meg 9800 Pro or XT could run Doom 3 at the high graphics setting and still be playable, the 9600 series can’t really hack it.

While the ATI X800 series is a good card in comparison to a 9600 or 9800, it is not fairing well against NVidia’s top offerings, most notably in Doom 3 benchmarks. This is not to say that the X800 is not a good card, it is just not considered the best card right now. From the reading I have done lately, the card that seems to be in the sweet-spot for price and performance in the high end is the BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC. Currently Best Buy is listing the BFG 6800 GT OC at $399, which is $100 less than the X800 XT Platinum, and is either equal to or better than the top X800 card (depending on the benchmark and who is running it). If you are going to drop a load of cash on a card, that would be my suggestion.

One caveat though, if you don’t have a processor running at least 2.6 GHz or better, you are wasting your money on a high end video card. You CPU will be the bottleneck, and all that money you spent on the video card will be wasted.