Radeon 9500 Pro

[Shifty Shellshock]

Hey im wondering if the radeon cards have alot of drivers problems coz ive got to choose between a GF4 ti 4200 OC to 4400 or a Radeon 9500 pro

[mike breck]

I think the ATI driver situation is now much improved on what it used to be. The CATALYST 3.0 and CATALYST 3.1 have shown good performance and stabilty in most games.

However, you will always find some games which don't like particular drivers from both ATI and NVidia; so the answer is to try another set of drivers.

I prefer NVidia, but I would say you could choose either and be satisfied.

HTH

[crjdriver]

I am using a 9500 pro, and I love it. No problems whatsoever in ut2003, rtcw, serious sam.

[dackerman]

I am thinking about getting a 9500 Pro.

Is the price difference really worth it, or should I just cash in and get the 9700/9800 Pro?

Dave

[sleepypost]

The 9500 PRO is recommended highly not necessarily for just budget gamers who want a pretty high end card but also for people who all of the goodies of the big boys at a much lower price. Here's a comparison:

RADEON 9500PRO:

128 mb
8X AGP
275 mhz/ 270
HIGH BANDWITH
Supports DX9
Pretty reasonable, plus you OC to Big Boy speeds.

THE BIG BOYS:

128 mb or 256 mb (depends on which one)
8X AGP
300 + mhz/ 300+
VERY HIGH BANDWITH
Supports DX9
Pretty expensive

[dackerman]

Thanks, is there a difference between the Saphire cards and the normal retail ATi cards?

Dave

[sleepypost]

yea, if you go pro i would get the ATi. the manufacturer always makes a slightly different card in terms of clock speed, heating and overall quality. ATi never makes faulty cards. for the nonpro id get the sapphire though as it is the only one that can be modded into a 9700.

[glc]

Don't generalize - actually Sapphire makes a lot of the ATI-branded cards for ATI.

[sleepypost]

how does hercules compare to them? i know sapphire made a bunch of the standard "red" ATi cards for ATi and the only way to tell was by a small digit code. I think my Rdeon 9500PRO, wich i consider "pure" ATi is actually manufactured by Sapphire. But, i still consider it ATi. Mybe im confused.

[Shifty Shellshock]

is there a better make out of sapphire and hercules?

[sleepypost]

i dont think so. i always thought that Sapphire and ATi made pretty quality cards. I know there is also an Atlantis one but i dont know about quality. I DO know that the Atlantis card and some others are clocked slightly slower than the ATi one. (i think the hercules one is slower)

[whargoul]

The OEM's stopped making lower clocked cards after the 8500LE's. AFAIK.

[pam123]

I've got a 9500pro, built by ATI.
Since I've only got a 1.4 GHz t-bird and 512mb sdram we're talking scaled down here.
So I'm getting great performance in 2 demos, Freelancer and Unreal 2. For the 3 months I had it, Earth&Beyond ran perfectly, as did the beta for Eve.
All the older games are running great at 4X AA.
Later this year I'll be upgrading but from what I'm reading the card will make my present system able to play SWG and Halflife2 with all the stuff at max. In fact, I should have no problem with Doom3, should I choose to play it.
I'd really like a 256mb 9800 ( like my wallet could survive this ) but the 9500pro is great and I can afford to eat at the same time.
Oh, there are reviews and benchmarks at Anandtech, the Geforce 4400 card is not competition.

[Blakhart]

Generaly, the ati has far better image quality than any nvid cards. Even my rage128s look better than my gf4ti does. The 9500 pro beat my gf4ti4200 in every bench by a good margine. Better image quality and faster too? How can you beat that?
There are cs issues that are to be sorted out by a driver release sometime soon. That's about it, no other probs to mention.

Now as to the 9500 to 9700 trick, if your 9500 has all its mem chips in a straight line, like an I, not on two sides of the gpu core, like an L shape, you will not be able to pull it off, your card does not have the 256bit wide mem pipes.

[sleepypost]

Yea, any 9500 Pro cannot be modded into a 9700. Only a specific type of the basic 9500 can be. The 9500 Pro can only be overclocked. Which is nice.

[Captn]

I just installed a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(Retail) and no problems with drivers here

[sleepypost]

wait till you play a ton of games Captn... even with the newest catalyst drivers people have experienced myriad problems. Still i think the Radeons are the best on the market.

[Captn]

Thats all i do is Game.....

[crjdriver]

I play UT2003, UT, RTCW, Serious Sam II, Half Life, with no problems whatsoever.
9500 Pro; latest drivers
Epox 8k5a2+
2000+ XP
Win2k sp3