9600 Non Pro?

[swampdonkey]

I am almost sold on the Radeon 9600 non-pro, but I would like to hear some testimonials from people who actually own the card. I want to hear from real people, because benchmarks can only go so far. I started this thread because I want to hear about the 9600 non-pro only! Please dont post about your 9600Pro or XT!
I would like some information on how the card performs in games like Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, HALO, and KOTOR. Any newer game with steep requirements. I also would like to know how the card performs in brand spankin new DX9 enabled games such as FarCry.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
:D ~swampdonkey

[kram 2.0]

I must admit I don't own it myself, but it was one of the first ATI Radeon cards I've tried when I went to BestBuy to use the demo computer to play FarCry - I have to say it was just simply stunning. That's probably as far I can go - good graphics card, though.

kram

[swampdonkey]

So you are saying that FarCry ran well on a 9600? Sweet.

~swampdonkey

[trebor]

I am running prince of persia sands of time on that card. The graphics are very good. No blurring, of hicups. Not sure how it compares to farcry though.

[kram 2.0]

So you are saying that FarCry ran well on a 9600? Sweet.

~swampdonkey
Well, remember that my world before this Radeon 9600 demo was integrated graphics. It ran FarCry without many bumps or whatnot - it was very smooth for the 20 or so minutes I was there. The other card I tried was the GeForce FX5200...don't want to say much there, just go ATI Radeon 9600 :D.

kram

[swampdonkey]

Do you think FarCry will run on my system after I get the 9600? I don't really have the money to get more RAM though I need it.

I am running-
ASRock P4M266 (VIA Chipset)
Pentium 4 1.8 256k cache
256 MB PC2100
Sapphire Radeon 9600 <--once I get it.
NEC 32x CD-ROM

~swampdonkey

[kram 2.0]

Well, I'm sure that it will run, I'm not too certain it will run them at high settings. But I think you're safe there - you'll get good performance out of it as for FarCry.

kram

[OrionThunder]

I used to have a 9600 non pro (sapphire), but got a solid deal on a 9500 pro (which I overclocked to a 9700) about 6 months ago. I must say that the 9600 did not perform as well as I had hoped. In certain games- America's Army Ops for instance- I would get hit by a flashbang and my pc would freeze. In Call of Duty in certain sections of the game the card would suddenly falter and I would get an error message of a VPU critical recover. I thought that the card might be faulty, but after replacing it I suffered the same problems. In my opinion, the 9600 is not a very strong gaming card. And yes, I am sure the rest of my pc was not at fault, because as soon as I switched to a 9500 pro my difficulties disappeared.

[swampdonkey]

Thanks for the input!
I dont know if I should be starting another thread for this, but is the 9600 comparable to nVidia's 5700? If not, what is the 9600's direct competitor?

~swampdonkey

[OrionThunder]

I know the card I had was the 9600 non pro 128mb edition- It seems that the 256 version performs better for the slight 5 dollar increase in price.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-320&depa=0

[swampdonkey]

Which OS are you running OrionThunder?

[imbest123]

The 9600 is a nice card. It is known to easily overclock to 9600 XT speeds also.

[swampdonkey]

One last question....
Will gaming performance greatly decrease because I only have AGP 4x? I know it wont be as fast as 8x, but how much of a difference are we talking?

~swampdonkey

[kram 2.0]

One last question....
Will gaming performance greatly decrease because I only have AGP 4x? I know it wont be as fast as 8x, but how much of a difference are we talking?

~swampdonkey
The difference in performance is little.

kram