Gonna buy a new video card... any advise?

[vince2100]

here are my comp specs:
1.2 ghz amd athlon
256 mb ddr pc2100 266mhz ram
creative soundblaster audigy gamer
40gb hard drive
windows xp pro
asus a7a266 ali magik1 ddr atx motherboard

i know my motherboard is quite ****..
i'm willing to spend around 250 canadian or around 160 us
i currently have an ati radeon 64mb ddr vivo
should i wait a while for prices to drop? don't wanna wait that long... maybe a month..
was thinking of getting a msi geforce 4 ti4200, but i also heard that the ati radeon 9500 was pretty good..
any recommendations?

[AllGamer]

yes in Comparison the 9500 is way faster than the 4200

and for the price yes you can get the 9500

[Terminator]

In my experience Asus make some of the best boards around.
As for the 9500 being 'way' faster , depends what you mean by way...looking at toms VGA list benchmarks you're only getting about 5% over the Ti4200 and thats comparing the PRO version!
Maybe driver advances have altered this.
I think either card will suit you as your rig and you'd see a huge increase in performance. Go for the best price/performace ratio. Either way your CPU will not be able to feed the video card faster than it can handle.
Here's toms charts :-

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...charts-05.html

T

[AlexGee]

I do believe with AA and AF enabled the 9500 pro beats the nvidia cards BAD. Go for the DX 9 card, get the 9500 pro!

[PacNW CE]

Based on your current card, I'd go 9500 pro. Dx9 makes all the difference in terms of card longevity. I have a 4400 and love it, but I wish I had waited a few months for a 9500pro.

[bassman]

My choice: Radeon 9500 Pro, definitely

[vince2100]

in addition to a new video card, should i upgrade any other aspect on my comp? more ram perhaps? should i get a new motherboard? or does that not make a difference.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

9500 definitley

--Jakk

[omega31]

9500. Also WinXP would gulp another 256mb of ram down. WinXP likes more memory.

[strat1]

I just bought the 9500 Pro and Like it!

I will try to Bench it this weekend!