Graphics Cards??????

[EfFeCt]

whoooaaaa....
i am looking ofr a new computer and this is what i came up with

AMD Athlon 3000+ CPU
Gigabyte GA-7N400 pro 2 socket A mother board
2X 512 DDR PC3200 RAm
120 GB HD
17" samsung syncmaster 752DXF
extreme A28K case
Audigy 2 ZS sound card
creative 6600 6.1 speakers
and the cd roms and stuff...........

but i aint sure wat graphics card to get........
i am tossing up between a GeCube Radeon 9600XT "EXTREME" 128
for about $250 (aussy dollars)

or a Radeon 9600XT Sapphire 256RAM
for about $300 (aussy dollars)

some one told me to get a GeCube "EXTREME"
but wouldnt a 256 MB 9600XT be better.......
thanx.....in adv

 

[Prozac]

I would go with the Radeon 9600XT ( And a 64bit amd athlon 3200 ^^ )

 

[EfFeCt]

umm yeah thats what i am doing they are both radeon 9600XT models except one is sapphire and one is gecube BUT the gecube is 128 and the sapphire is 256 but someone told me the radeon 9600XT "extreme" 128 gecube is just as good as the radeon 9600XT sapphire 256......

 

[Smith|]

A radeon 9600XT with 256 MB RAM is slower than one with 128 MB Ram because of higher latency. It will never fully utilize the 256 MB Ram, or if it ever does the core won't be able to process all of the data.

Get a 9800Pro for 220 on newegg =). It'll be much faster than the 9600XT due to 8 pixel pipelines and the 256Bit memory bus.

 

[Sunslayer]

ohhhhhh i want a radeon 9600 XT.... i've only got a 9500pro, but i'm pleased with its performance...

 

[Smith|]

If you switched from a 9500Pro to a 9600XT you'd probably see a decrease in performance.

It has 8 pixel pipelines and 4 geometry engines along with ~117 transistors compared to the 9600XT's 4 pixel pipelines and 2 geometry engines with ~75 transistors.

The 9600XT makes up for the performance loss with higher clock speeds and more memory bandwidth, ~9.6 GB compared to the 9500Pro's ~8.5GB.