Page 1 of Can anyone recommend a good graphics card?

Hi,

I am looking to upgrade my computer graphics card shortly. I have heard that the Radeon 9600 Pro is a good card at a reasonable price. Is anyone using this card and is it any good?
I want a card that will be able to play the new games such as Doom 3 and HL2 (if they ever appear! >:( ). I am looking to spend about £90-£120.

My PC specs are:
1.3 Ghz Athlon
40GB HD
256MB RAM

....but I am planning to upgrade to:

2.8 Ghz
512MB RAM

Cheers

This item was edited on Monday, 22nd March 2004, 19:13

According to another thread, both those games are going to be optomised for nvidea cards, however i don`t know how much difference this will make, if any.
as for your upgrades, that would be a good idea, tho you may need another motherboard as well, as i don`t think you can go from a 1.3 (thunderbird ? ) upto an xp proccesor (sp) i could very very well be wrong, so don`t quote me on this, but it`s worth checking out, also your memory will probably be sd133/100 rather than ddr, and ddr is actually cheaper at the moment :/ so factoring this in it may be in your interest to upgrade the mobo anyway :D

hope this helps

This item was edited on Monday, 22nd March 2004, 21:59

The 9600Pro is the best one to get atm out of the two.

What i would suggest is that for £150 you can get yourself a Radeon 9800Pro from here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/connect3d_ati_graphics_cards.html You talking nearly double the performance, depending on which game, for only £30 more.

By far a much better card than a 9600pro or NVidia 5700.

For your budget of £120 though you can get a radeon 9600XT, quite a bit better than the 9600Pro. But as i said, the 9800Pro for £150 is a bargain.

The 9600XT is £100 from Dabs. And that same site if you look around.

BTW, HL2 is optimised for Radeons(why do you think you can get a free copy of the game with Radeon XTs?)

I tell you what, I`m pleased I`ve waited this long to get a new graphics card, I was considering a 9600XT but now I`m going to save up a bit more money and get a Radeon 9800 Pro(despite my reservations about how it will perform in BF:V)

One question though. How much is delivery from here? I can`t seem to find a price for it anywhere.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 23rd March 2004, 08:35

Thanks for your input.

So is it better to go for a Radeon 9800pro with 128MB RAM, or a Radeon 9600pro with 256MB?

Is it better to go for the newer card, or the older one with more RAM?
How much of a factor is the extra RAM that the 9600pro has?

The 9800 pro with 128RAM is still a better faster card than the 9600pro 256, iv`e read that a new bunch of cards from both manufactuers are due out in the next couple of months, iv`e also seen reviews on a 9800xt 256RAM and depending on the tests was on average 10fps faster but this card is about £350-£400

This item was edited on Wednesday, 24th March 2004, 22:53

More RAM on a card isn`t necessarily better. It`s usually slower memory than on a 128MB version. As a result, the 128MB are usually just as good, or even a bit better performance wise.

The definitive benchmarking site: www.tomshardware.com

The latest benchmarks with all graphics cards...

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html

Assuming you steer clear of 256MB cards(a sensible choice methinks)...
Radeon 9800 is £123 including VAT at www.overclockers.co.uk. The pro version is £151 and includes more free software. In the end that is what I decided to get because I didn`t know how easy it would be to overclock the non-pro to pro levels.