9600 Pro best card for 100 bucks ?

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My brother wants to upgrade a little to be able to play the new games coming this summer, D3, HL2, Thief 3. He is using an xp1700 with my old Geforce 1 DDR. He is poor and not a major computer geek. Is the 109 dollar 9600 Pro from atacom http://www.atacom.com/program/print...RCH_ALL&Item_code=VIDA_ATIX_96_PR&USER_ID=www the best bet for his system/budget ? I tried talking him into a 9800 Pro with the idea of some future proofing, for when he inherits my xp2700, but he doesn't want to spend that much.
 
Well if you are looking to play HL2 this summer, I think your best bet is zoom player or windows media player to run watch them demos, I doubt they are even getting close w/ that one, but i would expect Doom3 soon. And i would second the 9700 pro, those cards are super nice.
 
9600 Pro and OC for all it's worth, 9700 Pro and OC for all it's worth, 9800 Pro..well I guess you see where I'm going. :) :LOL:
I doubt that you'll be able to get decent FPS with the (now normal) IQ settings in HL2 (Valve you bastards!) but if D3 will run fine on a 5200FX then you should be getting some good gaming with that. I feel that STALKER is going to be one of those games that completely rapes your system as well. Maybe Sith Lords will be more forgiving. What games is he planning on playing?
 
Wow that is a nice deal for the refurb 9700 pro. Do those come with any type of warranty ?
 
CrimandEvil said:
What games is he planning on playing?
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He's not a really big gamer per se. Right now he plays Call of Duty, NFSU, Civilization 3 and he is really looking forward to Doom 3. Mostly old games I give him. But I got Thief DS last week and it wouldn't run without pixel shaders. So he is at the point where he must upgrade to even play. That is really the driving force, he isn't big on graphics. Just so long as it will play some newer games decently at 800X600 with low/medium details. He beat Far Cry on veteran with a gf 1. I can't even stand to play anything on his system as it is now. But with this video card update and another 256 meg of ram he should hopefully be okay for another year or 2. I was planning on gifting him my gf 4 but I'm not upgrading for another few months probably. Waiting for some of the 6800/x800 cards to come out and drop in price a little.
 
That should give him enough oomph to run just about anything out, or on the horizon.
 
A 9700/ 9800 series should last him a year or two then, anything less and he'll have to upgrade to play the newer stuff.
 
I dont see the 9600 becoming what an average person would call unplayable for another 2 years.

I define playable as 800x600 with decent ingame settings.

Im going by past trends.
 
that 9600pro iwll come with 3.3ns memory (300mhz, 600mhz ddr) spec max.

so I'd guess you'd overclock it to 470gpu/310mem, I'd wait and get the new x300 or x600 when they come out in naother month.
 
There's a $10-$15 off coupon for that Atacom 9600 Pro, search google for it.

I hear it's a FIC, BTW.
 
Thanks I will look for the coupon. Yeah, a 9600pro should last a while. He has been using a gf 1 for the past year and a half. So you can see he is not picky about graphics.
 
Wixard said:
I dont see the 9600 becoming what an average person would call unplayable for another 2 years.

I define playable as 800x600 with decent ingame settings.

Im going by past trends.
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Ehhhh! :eek: If it's under 1280x960 why bother?
1600X1200 baby! I allways try and keep the game that I'm playing most often running in 1600x1200, upgrading vid card when nessasary. Rite now it's morrowind, so my 9600pro does the job just fine.
 
I don't agree with the whole 1600x1200 thing. Honestly in some games I Can't even tell the difference. Like UT2004 I can't tell a real difference between 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. But I can tell a huge difference between 1280x1024 and 1024x768. I guess it depends on what the game was really optimized and designed for.

As far as everything else goes I don't mind dropping the resolution some as long as I can get full texture details and max shadows and decals and all that good stuff. That's where you'll see the biggest differences. Not so much the resolution as the detail levels.

Far Cry isn't what I would call playable on a 9600Pro. Not with all the details on max, even at 800x600 it didn't play to well.
 
If what you say is true I will look into a new vid card before Doom3. I want to be able to have all the goodies on and atleast 1024x768. I like 1600x1200 because you see more area in the game. My system has enuf prossesor to support almost anything. I just have a hard time buying a vid card that sells for 3 times what I spent on my prossesor. It's been a while since i've been paying a true FPS since HL. I might have to check out far cry too, seem to be getting a warm reviews.
 
For games like Painkiller, Farcry, and Half-Life 2 and Doom III you can use however much power you've got. I can make Farcry run slower than crap on a X800Pro with a 3.4GHz processor if you want to crank up the AA and AF.

Even those cards can't handle all of that. Farcry is simply the most visually stunning game on the market today.

Also you can enable the special water effects in the custom menu outside the game under the configure Farcry option. Also you can do this via command line.

For anyone running a really fast machine with a X800Pro or XT when they come out you really should turn those options on. You'll see everything reflect in the water and all the water will be truly transparent. It's actually quite breathtaking in spots. And the performance hit was minimal. Which shocked me the most.
 
Kendrak said:
Ehhhh! :eek: If it's under 1280x960 why bother?
1600X1200 baby! I allways try and keep the game that I'm playing most often running in 1600x1200, upgrading vid card when nessasary. Rite now it's morrowind, so my 9600pro does the job just fine.
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Of course youll turn it up however high it will go, to an extent.

On lower end machines, generally youll have a 15/17 inch monitor, on many games its simply to small to run at 1600. It depends on the game of course. But monitors are also important. And since we're talkin about low end hardware its a valid factor. It does no good to have 1600x1200 with 16xaf and 8xaa if everything is to damn small.
 
Wixard said:
Of course youll turn it up however high it will go, to an extent.

On lower end machines, generally youll have a 15/17 inch monitor, on many games its simply to small to run at 1600. It depends on the game of course. But monitors are also important. And since we're talkin about low end hardware its a valid factor. It does no good to have 1600x1200 with 16xaf and 8xaa if everything is to damn small.
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hehe, the AA might shade the pixel that makes up the "enemy" on the 15" screen :p
 
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