I recently was in a position to influence a decision of which card a friend was going to upgrade to. (Max price: $150)
I warned him against a refurbed 9800se for about $100 at Newegg (as they are more than likely 9800SE's that didn't softmod/were 128-bit) and I leaned towards a 9600 Regular 256MB for $70. Reason being, it will be enough for him to play HL2/Doom3 at decent settings - why he is upgrading. Plus, it is a BUNCH cheaper.
He is somewhat restricted by his CPU (1.3ghz) and pretty much anything would be an upgrade from his current card (GeForce 2). I pointed at a 128-bit 9600 as the very least as that would have Pixel Shaders 2.0. I thought getting a 9800Pro was a bit expensive for his situation ($180 at very least) - plus at $70, he can always just *buy another card* later once prices fall with the money he saved. The 256MB in the 9600 Regular I pointed him at should help him with the larger textures in Doom3 and HL2. I am aware that most applications don't approach needing that much, but Doom3/Hl2 are not "most applications".
*I have seen some benchmarks on Guru3d and Rage3d and apparently the extra memory adds nothing with pre-DX9 games. I can't find any that cite Doom3 or HL2
One of his complaints was that in FarCry he was deprived of seeing "all the nice blood effects you get from shooting someone in the face". FarCry was bloated however, and even with my 9800Pro it was taxing. Is there much headroom to overclock a 9600 with TSOP memory chips? I figured the 9800SE would be too much of a risk.
*Apparently the TSOP chips are 5ns and restricted to overclocks below 250MHZ. If I can use hacked drivers and get it overclocked at all it would be nice. If I can crank the core/mem speeds to Pro, it would be a decent card.
I am wondering for real-world, budget-limited computing if this was the right recommendation - or if the 9800SE would have been better ($100), despite being $30 more and having 128mb less memory than the 9600, plus *risking* a refurb & softmod.
*Seems the 9800SE for $91, as long as it worked, might have been the right choice. Even if it couldn't softmod, it would still give performance greater than that of a 9600np
If you have esperience with either cards, I would appreciate a post. Any input is appreciated, if you personally have hit the CPU-barrier, or soforth.
I warned him against a refurbed 9800se for about $100 at Newegg (as they are more than likely 9800SE's that didn't softmod/were 128-bit) and I leaned towards a 9600 Regular 256MB for $70. Reason being, it will be enough for him to play HL2/Doom3 at decent settings - why he is upgrading. Plus, it is a BUNCH cheaper.
He is somewhat restricted by his CPU (1.3ghz) and pretty much anything would be an upgrade from his current card (GeForce 2). I pointed at a 128-bit 9600 as the very least as that would have Pixel Shaders 2.0. I thought getting a 9800Pro was a bit expensive for his situation ($180 at very least) - plus at $70, he can always just *buy another card* later once prices fall with the money he saved. The 256MB in the 9600 Regular I pointed him at should help him with the larger textures in Doom3 and HL2. I am aware that most applications don't approach needing that much, but Doom3/Hl2 are not "most applications".
*I have seen some benchmarks on Guru3d and Rage3d and apparently the extra memory adds nothing with pre-DX9 games. I can't find any that cite Doom3 or HL2
One of his complaints was that in FarCry he was deprived of seeing "all the nice blood effects you get from shooting someone in the face". FarCry was bloated however, and even with my 9800Pro it was taxing. Is there much headroom to overclock a 9600 with TSOP memory chips? I figured the 9800SE would be too much of a risk.
*Apparently the TSOP chips are 5ns and restricted to overclocks below 250MHZ. If I can use hacked drivers and get it overclocked at all it would be nice. If I can crank the core/mem speeds to Pro, it would be a decent card.
I am wondering for real-world, budget-limited computing if this was the right recommendation - or if the 9800SE would have been better ($100), despite being $30 more and having 128mb less memory than the 9600, plus *risking* a refurb & softmod.
*Seems the 9800SE for $91, as long as it worked, might have been the right choice. Even if it couldn't softmod, it would still give performance greater than that of a 9600np
If you have esperience with either cards, I would appreciate a post. Any input is appreciated, if you personally have hit the CPU-barrier, or soforth.