Discontinued 9500?

[Oki]

I was looking forward to buying a Radeon 9500 Pro but after a few minutes of searching, I realized I couldn't really find one. So, I went to ATI to see what they had to say about it, and I found out that the Radeon 9500 Pro is now discontinued.

http://www.ati.com/products/discontinued.html

What the hell am I gonna buy now?

[NDD]

R9600Pro is the one which replaces R9500Pro, although it can sometimes be slower then its predecessor (4 vs 8 pipelines).

[Oki]

Yeah, and see, I was willing to pay more money to buy the 9500, 'cause I want the extra speed it entails. Everyone here anyway says the 9500 Pro is the best.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Everyone here anyway says the 9500 Pro is the best.

Yes, but only marginally so, its not worth emptying the bank account over the performance difference

--Jakk:t

[gt_cmpe]

coincidence or fate? He happens to be selling one.

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145477

[ComPooTer]

i got the ati radeon 9600 pro, its silent and has low power consumption although if i had a chance to buy a 9500 pro i wouldve bought it, but im still really happy with my 9600 pro :D

[$1500-P4 gamer]

9600pro (non pro is slower) is of the R350 which is .13 fab and runs cooler entailing a higher mhz gain with less heat and power loss. The avg. 100-150mhz GPU oclock on avg proves this. The drop from 8-4 pipes was counterd with higher overall mhz mostly. THe dif is MOSTLY negligable and the 9600pro's gpu runs tons cooler. Ive seen software temp readings that are like 90F!!! WoW thats cool. The 9500pro is 8 pipes but runs hotter as the fab is larger-less mhz-more heat, and is of the abandon R300 core. The 9600 and 9800 series use the same gpu core. THey dont want to keep a old gpu fab running. Cpu co's dont so it-nor will ati. So slowed down 9800's it is for the lower mid price range segment now. Which means turning off half the pipes.(9600's):t

[Oki]

So...should I purchase a 9600 now that I will be hard pressed to find a 9500? I am kinda confused now...

[ComPooTer]

if u want a little better peformance over the 9500 pro go for it, radeon 9600 pros are good tho!!!!!!! pretty nice overclocking too and low heat.......................go with 9500 pro but if u cant find it get the 9600 Pro

[NDD]

Or consider getting R9700, the non-PRO version. Much better performance and you can find it for a good price.

[ConfusedAlien]

i cant believe it...ND posting in the SAME thread twice!!!!??? that only happened one other time about the voodoo5500 lol :eek: *shocked*

[$1500-P4 gamer]

9700 is still the r300 core (bigger fab=hotter). It too will be harder to find. Get the 9800 non pro (r350-.13fab) for just over $200 anyhow and easily flash it to pro. Then your king of the block!!!:t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Needs to be a Sapphire or card with Samsung 2.0/2.8/3.0/3.3ns RAM though for the flash to work

--Jakk:t

[Oki]

Sounds good...Radeon 9800 128 non Pro...If I get this, I will need help figuring out how to flash it eh!

Jakk, I liked the Tarentino avvy more...:r

[braamer]

Hi all. I recently registered and am thoroughly enjoying this forum.

Is this the correct graphics card for the pre-flash procedure? And how difficult is it to do the flash? Thanks.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?catalog=48&DEPA=1&submit=property&mfrcode=0&propertycode=&propertycodevalue=4884,3668

[NDD]

Originally posted by ConfusedAlien
i cant believe it...ND posting in the SAME thread twice!!!!??? that only happened one other time about the voodoo5500 lol :eek: *shocked*
It happens to me from time to time :)
I almost always getting back to the threads I've replied in, but in most cases my answer there is being given after a considerable amount of thinking, so I won't have to add much until subject is being changed to some other direction.

Since I began thinking of my next upgrade, with AMD Athlon 64 line of processors scheduled to be revealed in few weeks, choice of the videocard became my primary concern.
I became very disappointed with FX series of nVIDIA cards regarding their performance in DX9 games. Going with 4x2 architecture and half the shaders vs 8x1 opponent appears to be a very bad decision of nVIDIA's. Until DX9 generation of the cards it was exactly the opposite, raw power was always something nVIDIA had over all its rivals.
I'm waiting for more DX9 titles (Doom3 ? :r ) to appear, but I don't think situation will change much (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145390) :rolleyes:

Hence my raised interest ;)

[NDD]

Originally posted by braamer
Hi all. I recently registered and am thoroughly enjoying this forum.

Is this the correct graphics card for the pre-flash procedure? And how difficult is it to do the flash? Thanks.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?catalog=48&DEPA=1&submit=property&mfrcode=0&propertycode=&propertycodevalue=4884,3668

Welcome to SysOpt ! :)

It's generally better to open a new thread of your own if you have a personal question.

[braamer]

Originally posted by ND


Welcome to SysOpt ! :)

It's generally better to open a new thread of your own if you have a personal question.

Yeah, didn't intentionally hijack this thread. My question just fit in with the rest of the comments. I will try to avoid doing this in the future. :p

[NDD]

We all hope you will :t :p
And you better ask Jakk regarding this specific card of yours, I didn't see too many specs there ...

[Rugor]

A couple of points on the 9500 Pro vs 9600 Pro, and even the 9800 series.

Sorry Gamer, but the 9800s are fabbed on .15 too. It's only RV350 (the 9600 series) that has gone through the process migration to .13.

The 9600 Pro has a couple of advantages over the 9500 Pro, the 2D quality is considered better, and it has more bandwidth due to faster memory. However despited higher clocks it has signifticantly less raw power than the 9500 Pro due to fewer pipes. But if you clock it to 550MHz, as some have, you have the performance of a 9500 Pro with more bandwidth.

As to the GfFX series, I've looked into them and been very unimpressed by the performance.

I have a 9500 Pro, and a friend was using an FX5600 Ultra, and even 3DMark2001SE showed some of the weaknesses in the FX architecture. Both using AXP 1800+ CPUs and with him having a Gig of RAM to my 256MB I beat him by about 1600 3DMarks. The real surprise was the advanced shader test, where I pulled 2.5x his framerate.

ATI's current models are much stronger than Nvidia's. For this generation I can't reommend an NV3x based card over an equivalent R3xx based card. Next generation, who knows.

[NDD]

Originally posted by Rugor
The real surprise was the advanced shader test, where I pulled 2.5x his framerate.
Advanced Pixer Shader Test is a PS1.4 test. nVIDIA boards up to even the latest FX5900 do not handle well PS1.4 comparing to ATI cards beginning with Radeon 8500.
Apparently they don't do well PS2.0 either :rolleyes: :( :rolleyes:

[Rugor]

I knew they had issues in the Ti series that only support PS 1.3, but the poor 1.4 and 2.0 performance on the FX series suggests Nvidia really had problems with their shader team.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

And you better ask Jakk regarding this specific card of yours, I didn't see too many specs there ...

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145610

Tada!

--Jakk:t

[$1500-P4 gamer]

"Sorry Gamer, but the 9800s are fabbed on .15 too. It's only RV350 (the 9600 series) that has gone through the process migration to .13."

Yer right. I overlooked that. I assumed since the 9600 and 9800 showed up to replace the 9500 and 9700 respectively I thought they were the same core. I was wrong. thanks for pointing that out. after some more research it seems that the 9800 could very easily be moved to the new core. And yield lots higher mhz with less heat and power as a result. While still having all 8 pipes. ATI said that the core architecture was refined not redesigned. That it was a optimization thing nothing more. So that means easy transfer to .13 which makes sense to me. They started the transition in the midrange where the most $ from it would result. Good move. I guess a 9800 ultra or whatever should be expected when sales drop off or nvidia releases something worth a toss again. I heard rumors of ATI having a ace yet to pull-I think that might just be it. A 9800pro on .13 fab. Oh how scared Nvidia must be-the 3dfx killing sob's might just be in a bit of a pinch right now. Out done by those they boasted inferior! LOL.

:D