Cheapest card thats faster than a Ti4200?

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V0ltage

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 7, 2004
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I just got my dad medal of honor pacific assault and his preformance is nothing short of horrifying, even in 640X480 with no details. His specs are:
AthlonXp 1900+
512MB corsair 2100
ECS k7s5a
gainward geforce 4ti4200 64mb

He wants to be able to play MOH:pA, HL2, doom3, and future games such as brothers in arms. Would a 9600XT or this 9800SE: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-303&depa=0 be a good deal faster than his 4200 in these newer games? If not, what is the cheapest card that will be faster than a 4200.
 
If I was given the choice between a 9600XT and a 9800SE.. I'd probably pick the 9600XT. The 9800SE is a severly handicapped 9800 which was kicked down the stairs in its wheelchair and then run over by a truck at the bottom.
 
well it depends on how much higher you want to go in price...

on pricewatch, you can get a 9600XT 256mb for $129
or a Ti4800 for $82
or a 9500 nonpro (not sure if its SE) for $128..

but keep in mind you really should get a DX9 card... and maybe a new mobo too, i had the k7s5a and didn't enjoy it :)
 
TheGamerZ said:
If I was given the choice between a 9600XT and a 9800SE.. I'd probably pick the 9600XT. The 9800SE is a severly handicapped 9800 which was kicked down the stairs in its wheelchair and then run over by a truck at the bottom.
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LOL. True. Very true.
 
TheGamerZ said:
If I was given the choice between a 9600XT and a 9800SE.. I'd probably pick the 9600XT. The 9800SE is a severly handicapped 9800 which was kicked down the stairs in its wheelchair and then run over by a truck at the bottom.
Click to expand...

The 9800 SE I had from powercolor modded to a pro without a hitch, just gotta make sure you get the 256-bit ones
 
TheGamerZ said:
If I was given the choice between a 9600XT and a 9800SE.. I'd probably pick the 9600XT. The 9800SE is a severly handicapped 9800 which was kicked down the stairs in its wheelchair and then run over by a truck at the bottom.
Click to expand...

LOL, wow that made me cry with laughter, unfortunately, this statement is the truth. Any card ending with 'SE' or 'LE' should generally be avoided.
 
i would definetely get the 9800se (modding reason) ... it performs the same/little worst/little better than the 9600XT and has a very high chance of modding to a 9800pro...


but in the end..a stock 9600xt is faster than the 9800se in most situation...
If u get the 9800se than if it mods to 9800pro successfuly.. damn ur lucky, but if not, it's just as fast as the 9600xt and you probably won't notice the difference between the two cards, but if you get the 9600xt, you get a card that is a tiny bit faster at stock.. and the cores on those things overclock like a mutha.
 
The two cards are neck and neck basically. Either is a good choice. If you're up to modding get the 9800se.
 
I had this same choice many months ago. 9600xt or 9800se. I choose the 96xt, based on the fact that you know what you are getting. Do you want to take a risk of getting a slower card that "may" or may not softmod to a 9800pro. And even if it does, many studies show that the life of the card may dimish after exstensive use of softmodding.
 
independantvariable said:
I had this same choice many months ago. 9600xt or 9800se. I choose the 96xt, based on the fact that you know what you are getting. Do you want to take a risk of getting a slower card that "may" or may not softmod to a 9800pro. And even if it does, many studies show that the life of the card may dimish after exstensive use of softmodding.
Click to expand...


and many people usually don't even have the card anymore after 2 years when the card might die lol
 
What I am trying to stress here is the fact that you can either go with a stable card, or take your chance on the crapshoot with the se.
 
Well if was going to get the 9800SE, I would definetly soft mod, which i hear only has about a 40% success rate. I should go with the 9600XT, just because it will work perfect at stock, and I plan on upgrading the mobo to an nforce 2 sometime soon also.
 
TheGamerZ said:
I had a K7S5A... and I really enjoyed selling it to someone else :D
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did that too..and that person is still using it....weve fried 3 procs in that mobo and its still chugging...we cant kill it!! lol

ok....i would recomend getting a 9800pro.....youll be MUCH happier with the results...that game is very taxing....
 
btw...the old 9800SE with the 256bit memory i dont think they sell anymore...cause everyone was just flashing them...so flashing a now a days 9800se will end up a failure... im telling you Ebays got some 9800pros for like 150-170 great price for the performance...and dont expect to play Doom3 on a 9600XT..ive had one..
 
Warrior said:
btw...the old 9800SE with the 256bit memory i dont think they sell anymore...cause everyone was just flashing them...so flashing a now a days 9800se will end up a failure... im telling you Ebays got some 9800pros for like 150-170 great price for the performance...and dont expect to play Doom3 on a 9600XT..ive had one..
Click to expand...

LoL, I have one and it plays doom3 fine. I had a 4200ti, and it played the game just fine.800x600 high, with some AA. Do not expect all the highest settings, I mean it isnt a 6800 ultra people. But thanks for the ignorant post

"DOOM 3 ERROR: Can not launch game because you do not have a 300 dollar video card"
 
independantvariable said:
LoL, I have one and it plays doom3 fine. I had a 4200ti, and it played the game just fine.800x600 high, with some AA. Do not expect all the highest settings, I mean it isnt a 6800 ultra people. But thanks for the ignorant post

"DOOM 3 ERROR: Can not launch game because you do not have a 300 dollar video card"
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well it does play fine..but your not really getting a full "doom 3" experience if your playing at 800x600 everything low...
 
..anyone say OFF-TOPIC!!! The guy just wants his dad to play MOH, Hl2 Doom 3 ffs on a 9*** series, not a bunch of opinions :p :p on ATI's naming methods, which are a bit wierd but arent they all, though it's generally true anything with SE at the end is a crippled version, but some 'can' be real gems of cards if modded correctly :eek: ...however, I dont think the soft-modding or overclocking is his go, if it was he would have already overclocked the 4200 to max out the GF4 and get better MOH performance, though only having 64meg frame buffer may make overclocking a moot point..does the Q3 engine use large textures? oops, OFF-TOPIC!!!!! Sorry;)

As far as playing half-life 2 or doom 3 on a 9800pro or 9800xt yes, they will give you acceptable performance...a bit of patience could get you an even better a low end nvidia 6*** series or low end ATI 8** series cards, the Nvidias having SM3.0 support which is big deal to Nvidia but used only in Farcry so far if memory serves me right...

The card in your linkis as I said a crippled version, the 128bit mem to core bus indicates this, but the reviewers seem to love it...go figa?!! I have a 9800pro, which is now in my wifes rig, but I wouldnt play HL2 on it or Doom3 as accepltable framerates to me are 50+, not the lousy 30 or so some reviewers seem to think is ok..then again 30 or so is better than mid teens so it's all relative eh?

Another point - apart from your vid card, playing Doom 3 or hl2 (not to mention future games based on these.)with a 1900+ will get flaky, regardless of your vid card...the calculations needed to show the onscreen beauty are many and complex plus AI for the enemies adds to your system being bottlenecked on the cpu level, so a 9800se or 9600xt should be about your limit with this cpu...
finally..if it came to me picking one of these 2 cards...I'd go with the 9800se and learn about modding and overclocking!!!! Good luck!!!
 
MOH PA is a poorly coded game. It runs like crap on anything.
Don't upgrade just because of it.
If you are upgrading anyways, I would make a larger jump.
ti4200 to 9600 is not much of an upgrade.
 
Yeah i would go 9600 Pro...in my sig..I HAVE ONE!....i love this card..and its going to be tough giving it away...cause GTs in the mail :D
 
independantvariable said:
I had this same choice many months ago. 9600xt or 9800se. I choose the 96xt, based on the fact that you know what you are getting. Do you want to take a risk of getting a slower card that "may" or may not softmod to a 9800pro. And even if it does, many studies show that the life of the card may dimish after exstensive use of softmodding.
Click to expand...

many studies show extensive use of softmodding dimish life of the card? can i see one? anyways i too had the choice between a 9600xt and a 9800se but in the end i bought both =D the 9800se came with 256bit memory and i unlocked the 4 locked pipelines without a problem. my pc (2.7ghz athlon xp-m with 1024mb ram and 9600xt) gets ok frame rates in doom3 and half life2 so i wouldnt recommend you get that card for your dad's 1900+. the 6600GT would be nice and could possibly make up for your dad's pc specs.
 
yeah the 1900+ is killing your frames really..go get a 2200+ ( im assuming your on a older board) and then oc it a bit and get a 9600pro...cause i dont think they sell the good 9800SEs any more....
 
Ocean said:
a refurbished 9700 pro.
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Yep, or get one here on the forums...

I went from a 9600xt to a 9800Pro. I couldn't believe the jump in preformance...
 
I know tons about overclocking, and overclocking a 64MB ti4200 won't do much for newer games. And to all the people suggesting I get a 9800pro or 6600GT, he really doesnt want to spend much over $100-120. Im pretty sure im gonna have him get a 9600XT unless I can find a used 9500Pro or 9700pro.
 
If you do know about overclocking I would deffinately look at upgrading to a Barton or mobile CPU and giving her a little O/C. That is going to be your biggest performance upgrade in the long run. Your video card is only going to give you so much(as was already stated) because of the CPU bottleneck. Your Ti4200 is one of the best cards for being able to adapt out there. After my upgrade to a Barton I was able to go from teens to 30+ in FS2004. You also say that you are going to upgrade to a NF2 board soon, I would look around on the B/S/T forum and get a NF7-S for around $50-60 and a 2500M XP or a 2600 XP Barton for around $50-60. You will be amaized at the performance increase.
 
heero884 said:
many studies show extensive use of softmodding dimish life of the card? can i see one? anyways i too had the choice between a 9600xt and a 9800se but in the end i bought both =D the 9800se came with 256bit memory and i unlocked the 4 locked pipelines without a problem. my pc (2.7ghz athlon xp-m with 1024mb ram and 9600xt) gets ok frame rates in doom3 and half life2 so i wouldnt recommend you get that card for your dad's 1900+. the 6600GT would be nice and could possibly make up for your dad's pc specs.
Click to expand...


It is listed most legal disclaimers. Your modifying something outside the normal parameters of the way the equipment was designed to function. Not saying all cases proven. But odds are that it will not perform as long as one that is running at the specifications created for. Though, probally longer than any of us would use said card. More information if you search guru3d, or contact a manufacturer.

The 6600gt would not make up for the PC's specs because I imagine a 9600xt-9800pro would still be a bottleneck on that system.
 
6600 or greater (about $215) <-- MY VOTE sm3.0 = more futureproof
or
9800 or greater (about $200)

9600 or less is only about equivalent and not worth "upgrading" to

fx5_00 series were fairly crappy, even though an old 5900XT would be faster it wouldnt be worth it.
 
Mojo3k70 said:
LOL, wow that made me cry with laughter, unfortunately, this statement is the truth. Any card ending with 'SE' or 'LE' should generally be avoided.
Click to expand...

Kinda off-topic but :)
Not entirelly true, i remember my R8500LE 128MB BBA BGA that kicked some seriously ass at it's time with a way high overclock for the normal in those days. But as u pointed GENERALLY this is correct.
But at that time LE or SE meaned only a small fall in clock, now it means pipelines and stuff like that :(
 
independantvariable said:
It is listed most legal disclaimers. Your modifying something outside the normal parameters of the way the equipment was designed to function. Not saying all cases proven. But odds are that it will not perform as long as one that is running at the specifications created for. Though, probally longer than any of us would use said card. More information if you search guru3d, or contact a manufacturer.

The 6600gt would not make up for the PC's specs because I imagine a 9600xt-9800pro would still be a bottleneck on that system.
Click to expand...

im confused? i searched guru3d for said studies and found none. i searched yahoo for said studies and found none. where are you getting these studies?

here are some prices courtesy of newegg
9600xt 134
9800pro 180
6600gt 214

the 9600xt is faster than the ti4200 but its hardly a upgrade (it is faster ill acknowledge that). i have a 9600xt and i get crappy frame rates in HL2 and doom3 (this is at 800x600, which is hardly high res, i want to upgrade my card already but i havent had the card long enough to justify to my wallet that i should get a upgrade >.<). the 9800pro would be a nice upgrade but for $30 more you could get a much better card so why not get the 6600gt?? the 6600gt would be bottlenecked by the cpu but that doesnt mean he wont see a performance gain in the games in play. my friend has a duron overclocked to 1.2ghz and he stuck in a 6800 for kicks and got 6k in 3dmark2k3 which is impressive IMO (i get 4600). 3dmark is synthetic but it is showing that the raw gpu power is definately there. and if he decides to upgrade the cpu and mobo in the near future he will still have a good video card for current games vs if he decided to get a 9600xt.
 
Beware of the cheap 9800 Pros on Newegg.com, they are crappy 128-bit versions from Sapphire and Powercolor. The "good" (i.e. ATI-spec 256 bit) 9800 Pros cost as much as a 6600 GT... about $220. And the 6600 GT is superior to the 9800 Pro in every way, so there is no reason to not just get a Leadtek 6600 GT and be done with it.

You can find good deals on 9800 Pros, however, but for some reason the 9800 Pro prices are HIGHER than they were a few months ago, on average. Go figure.

A 9600 XT is ALOT better than a Geforce 4 Ti4200, and you can get them for about $140 on Newegg.com if $200+ is too much money for you.

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-05.html

Twice the frames per second, and the 9600 XT is supporting all the DX 9.0 features, while the 4200 is only running in DX 8.1 mode, which places less load on the graphics card.
 
it should be noted that a stock rosewill 9600xt runs at core500/mem600 and my 9600xt runs at core580/mem740.
 
CastleBravo said:
A 9600 XT is ALOT better than a Geforce 4 Ti4200, and you can get them for about $140 on Newegg.com if $200+ is too much money for you.

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-05.html

Twice the frames per second, and the 9600 XT is supporting all the DX 9.0 features, while the 4200 is only running in DX 8.1 mode, which places less load on the graphics card.
Click to expand...

aquamark3 is one synthetic benchmark and i cant believe you linked that page. he will NOT get twice the fps in his games by upgrading his video card card to a 9600xt. also notice the benchmark was ran at 1024x768 with 4xAF which does not favor the ti4200. the ti4200 performs badly in general at high resolutions with AA or AF. most newer cards handle this better

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/images/image010.gif since people like graphs so much i decided to grab one to illustrate a point. the difference between the ti4200 and 9600xt in this chart is only 4fps. also note the ti4600 beats the 9600xt by 8fps in the link i provided which should mean he should get that instead of the 9600xt, IF you believe in graphs so much.

the 9600xt is faster but its not so much faster that its worth $130.
 
Here's the Doom3 (since it was mentioned) benches from here at HardOCP. They didn't test the 4200, but they did test the 4600 vs. 9600XT @ 800x600 (Medium Quality Textures):

4600

Average: ~47fps

9600XT

Average: ~48 fps

While the 9600XT is running DX9 vs. the DX8 of the 4600, which improves the visuals, it does not in this example provide a better gaming experience in terms of average frames a second.

Looking at Tom's Hardware's above-mentioned VGA Roundup IV, in the FarCry benchmark, the 4200 is behind the 9600XT by 2.3 frames a second. Another example of the 9600XT providing DX9 features, but very little performance over the 4XXX cards.

So yes, the 9600XT is therefore faster. But is the small performance gain worth $100? Not in my opinion.
 
Read Doom 3 the benches closer: The minimum FPS on the 9600 XT is almost 50% higher than the minimum FPS on the 4200 (16 vs. 22 FPS), and of course the max is capped at 60. That's quite a difference if you are actually playing the game. And of course that is with better visuals to boot. You could always disable some DX9 features (or their OpenGL equivalents in Doom 3's case) and watch the 9600 XT whomp the Ti4200 in framerate at equal visual quality, too.

aquamark3 is one synthetic benchmark and i cant believe you linked that page. he will NOT get twice the fps in his games by upgrading his video card card to a 9600xt. also notice the benchmark was ran at 1024x768 with 4xAF which does not favor the ti4200. the ti4200 performs badly in general at high resolutions with AA or AF. most newer cards handle this better
Click to expand...

Why shouldn't I link to that page? It was just a table of Aquamark 3 scores.

I was saying that it got twice the frames per second in the BENCHMARK I had just linked to, which it DID, tough guy. And the fact that the ti4200 sucks at higher resolutions and AA/AF compared to the 9600 XT is, of course, a reason why the 9600 XT is better. Duh. :p
 
in my honest opinion if ur goin to get a 9800 pro 256 bit... might as well go for the 6800 NU... it'll last u at least 1-2 years while bein able to play all the new games. unless if u get a used 9800 pro for like 140 ruffly. then get it. but if ur gonna try to get a new one... its best if u just go for a 6800 NU as the price range is not far off.
 
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