Video Card Question---Are you out there Howard?

[southpaw13]

So I wanted to update a few of my Nvidia video cards to ATI....
How does this look for $60...

SAPPHIRE Advantage 100562L-GN Radeon 9600PRO 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card

Thanks,
Southpaw

[Fozzy The Bear]

Not a bad price... The 9600Pro is a pretty fast card... Not quite as fast as a 9600XT but still a good card. Works well with Mame and directX games... Although it can't cut it with the very very current release games. It still produces a more than acceptable performance with most DirectX 9 Titles.   

I run two of those, although I've got 256Megs on them, not sure how much difference that will make to performance.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[southpaw13]

How about this for $80?

JetWay 96XT-AD-256C Radeon 9600XT 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card

[Fozzy The Bear]

JetWay 96XT-AD-256C Radeon 9600XT 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card

That's pretty much the same spec as the ones I use.  I get on fine with them, they've yet to complain about any resolution I've thrown at them.

I don't know the Jetway ones specifically, but they should be as good as any other 9600XT... They're nearly all based on the ATI reference board anyway.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[divemaster127]

I have a question on video cards im running a 7800gt but my 10 year old has a old gefore ti4200 64 meg what would be a descent video card to jump him up to without breaking the bank, it would have to be agp
thanks
dm

[Fozzy The Bear]

Without breaking the bank is a relative term really... depends how big your bank is....

It's also a matter of personal preference. I happen to like ATI cards because they've always caused me the least trouble.

The above spec 9600XT is pretty reasonable... It'd take you up to DirectX 9 functionality at a reasonable speed and relatively low cost. Basically go as fast as your budget can stand. Your next step after a 9600 is a 9800... After that, most of the ATI cards seem to be headding for being PCI Express rather than AGP.

That said, they have released the X800 on AGP as well, but I suspect that might fall into the breaking the bank catagory.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[SOAPboy]

Sapphire before jetway..

And frankly, id never buy another sapphire as long as i live..

[southpaw13]

I just thought that the video card specs was not that big of a deal.  Now I want to head to a ATI chipset and don't want to put a V8 Big Block in a Ford Focus....

Southpaw

[Fozzy The Bear]

I just thought that the video card specs was not that big of a deal.  Now I want to head to a ATI chipset and don't want to put a V8 Big Block in a Ford Focus....

Agreed... It depends what else you want to run apart from Mame....

I run a lot of other stuff. There are a lot of games that mame doesn't support (yet) but which have had PC releases. Things like 18 Wheeler, which even if Mame did support it would run pretty poorly under emulation. 

"Densha De Go" "Densha De Go 2" "Densha De Go 3" (Japanese arcade train driver simulation) is a another example of that situation.  All of which rely heavily on DirectX and graphics speed.

"House Of The Dead 1, 2, 3"  "Virtua Cop" etc etc again have the same problem. The PC releases are as close as we can get to the arcade versions right now.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[southpaw13]

Good point, but I am just using it for Mame.  So now what is the best ATI option?  The only thing I really need to do with it is rotate the screen without a big performance hit.  My geforce slowed down basic games like Tron when rotated...

Thanks,
Southpaw

[Fozzy The Bear]

Good point, but I am just using it for Mame. 

Either of the cards you listed will do a perfectly good job of it.
I have no idea what SOAPboy is on about... I have sapphire cards and they've never been any problem at all.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)