ATI Radeon 9500/9600 PRO vs Sapphire 9500/9600 PRO.....

[MtX]

ATI Radeon 9500/9600 PRO vs Sapphire 9500/9600 PRO.....

When im upgrading my computer, i'm either getting a 9500 or 9600 Pro... 9500 Pro is better but the product's discontinued so Ill have to get a 9600 Pro if I cant find any 9500 Pros....

Anyways, which brand should i get, ATI or Sapphire? I dont know the difference between them, except Sapphire gives you nice games in the retail package and ATI I dont know.. Which one is more stable, reliable, and better for OC...ATI or Sapphire!??!

[ComPooTer]

Ati Radeon 9500/9500 Pro is retail and is very much faster than the sapphire radeon 9500/9500 pro

Sapphire 9500/9500 Pro the non pro clocks very well considering u get lucky and get a good model.

i hard the sapphire OCS really well but the ati ocs very well also.

if it were me id by the built by ati Radeon 9500 PRO
(most likely you can only get it online)

if you are going to look in stores you will have no luck, u can get the 9600 which requires no power source at all and supposedly runs cooler cuz of the .13 micron thinga majigger (i dont know what it is lol) but the radeon 9600 has 4 pipelines instead of the 8 in the 9500 series.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Go built by ATI over any third party card, they tend to be clocked faster at stock and tend to be made of altogether higher quality compnents, usually yieldign in better reliability and overclocking

Btw, out of the 9600 Pro and the 9500 Pro, the 9500's the one you want ;)

--Jakk:t

[Rugor]

The 9600 Pro is built on a smaller process than the 9500 Pro, this means the die is much smaller, and draws less current. It also overclocks higher.

As to Sapphire vs ATI on build quality, I think with the 9500 Pro and better they are probably about the same if not identical. I ordered two Sapphire 9500 Pro cards and while they came with the Sapphire driver CDs they were actually built by ATI not Sapphire. I ran a lot of probe utilities to determine that.

I also later built a system with a retail BBA ATI 9500 Pro and it was exactly the same card as the two Sapphires we have.

Go for either.

[MtX]

yeah, radeon 9500 pro is definitely better, majority of reviews have proven it.. but the bad thing is you cant OC it, you need to flash the bios or something, and the product is discontinued.. radeon 9600 pro i hear people overclocking the core to 500+ mhz and memory 700+ mhz, that's quite amazing..

so ATI and Sapphire dont have significant differences eh.. what about their retail packages, ati doesnt come with any games but sapphire comes with soldier of fortune 2???

[KODJFEI]

the Radeon 9500 is the one that needs to be flashed. Once flashed it will unlock all 8 pipelines, and then you just overclock from there. Of course this is risky and it is limited due to the fact that 9500 has 128 bit memory and the 9700 has 256 bit.

And also, The PCB of the Card (Radoen 9500) can't be black, it must be red. And have a L shaped layout for the ram. U need this to be able to Flash it.

The Radeon 9500 pro, i think just needs to have the proper overclocking program. Like the newly updated rivaturner which now supports the Radeon family of cards.

And the sapphire cards are like alot cheaper.