help !

[tufreeh]

heyz there ..

am planning to build a gaming system on my own and the one thing that is really bugging me is what 3d card to buy ..

i definately will be going for a radeon but need help on deciding which one to buy .. have narrowed it down to 3 choices ..

1. Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MB

2. Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB

3. Radeon 9800 non-Pro

they all pretty much fall within the same pricing range so the preferred card should be among these .. budget is about 175 i think ..

any1 have suggestions ?? ..

 

[Shakie]

Man, that is a tough choice. They will all do what you need, but I would have to say the 9800, there is a tweak you can use to make it the "Pro" board -- and it is 100% DX9 compatible. I think the other ones are too, but I am not positive.

 

[Cherubimon_3.20]

yeah go for the9800 pro - top notch

 

[djr7284]

I have the Radeon 9800 non-pro and its awesome

 

[Jorsoft]

If I'm not mistaken, the 9700 is DX8 based (came out before the others to compete w/ GeForce 4) and the 9600+9800 are DX9 based. I think it comes down to this (from my quick research)
[9600 256 MB]- slower clocks+GPU, but has 256 MB of texture memory. That much mem won't matter until Doom3 and Half Life 2 come out, and maybe not even then!
[9700 pro]- "Mid" GPU and clock speeds. Bad fan, so you can't overclock it!
[9800]- Probably a faster GPU than the other 2, but definently slower clock speeds (not a pro). You could overclock it, though.
Really, there are all pros and cons. You won't be disappointed with any of these cards. I would recommend the 9800, however, because it is DX9 Hardware Based and will render pixel and vertex shading because of that.