Well, since the Radeon 9800 is a gaming card, I chose to compare it on a gaming front, and since it is cheaper, yet both faster and with superior image quality to its FX counter-part, I have to say it is the superior card compared to what nVidia offer... but enough of that.

On a gaming front, as I said, there's simply no point paying for the extra 128MB RAM when, by the time its needed, the card is bottle-necked on other, more important and FPS hitting fronts.

In no way does my CPU brand have any effect (and nor should it) on my choice of graphics card.

Unless you're like me, that is. For me, as long as a program runs well enough to play, having it look good in the process is just gravy. That's why I took so long to upgrade from a 32MB TNT2 (2 weeks ago), and why I chose a 256MB FX5200 to replace it.

You chose a... well... no... I'll resist such tempting bait

Hey, it was 256MB for less than $150. When looking at longevity per dollar, that's the best deal I could find two or three times over.

No... stop... I'm trying to be strong...

Well if you know so damn much about video cards, then tell me a better card that meets the following criteria:

1) 256MB
2) DirectX 9
3) Less than $129.99
4) Available at the Knoxville Best Buy

Go ahead...I DARE you to name a card.

NewEgg.com sell a Radeon 9600 Pro for $129.00. That would be my reccomendation.

Now, to address your points:

1. The card isn't fast enough. If that kind of memory were ever required, the card would have bottlenecked long before, and thus the extra memory wouldn't help as memory isn't where the card will choke.

2. Again, firstly the card isn't fast enough to make use of DX9 features, this is just a marketing checkbbox by nVidia to make people like yourself buy the card. Secondly, developers actually treat the card as a DX8 card, and disable DX9 features from running when this card is in use (e.g. Farcry).

3. Radeon 9600 Pro.

4. If you're going to limit yourself to such a narrow range of places to buy, then you will never get value for money, nor the best card within your budget.

I'll assume Knoxville is a place, I don't know, I don't live in the States (which is my guess as to your location).

No need to get all het up about it.

The Radeon 9600 at Newegg costs $139. I had already had to settle for an Audigy (NOT Audigy 2) because I was short of funds.

1) I don't care about bottlenecks. If it meets the minimum system requirements, then I don't have to buy a new one.

2) If it meets the minimum system requirements, then I don't have to buy a new one. All I need it to do with DirectX 9 is run it, regardless of whether the features work or not.

3) The 128MB Radeon 9600 cost more money where I was shopping. The 256MB one was even more.

4) You're right. However, I had yet to find a better deal that I would be able to get within a month (due to various difficulties involving getting my mail, namely living 100mi away from it), and I would rather pay an extra few bucks than keep using that TNT2 for that long.

And yes, Knoxville is a city in Tennessee, USA.

The most important thing that I look at is MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS. My TNT2 lasted 3 years, and I need this one to make as good an effort as possible at the same. If three years from now, I'm trying to play games that require 256MB of video RAM, I'd rather play them in 640x480x16 at 30fps with all extras turned off than not at all.

*The* Radeon 9600? I saw a long list of 9600 Pros, one of which was $129. If that is too rich for your blood, then go with the 9600 or 9600 SE.

1. Then why use points like "Has 256MB memory" when that doesn't matter to you? If a game ever said it needed a card with this sort of memory, it doesn't matter that your card has it, it wouldn't be fast enough to be playable.

2. Again, it

a) Isn't fast enough to run any DX9 features, so it is no different to buying a DX8 card (and there aren't any games which require you to have a DX9 card... some need you to install DX9, but only a handful use the features, this is more to benefit QA than anything).

b) Developers won't let you use DX9 features anyway, they're all treating the FX5200 as a DX8 card, and downgrading DX9 effects to DX8 standards when it's detected.

3. You wouldn't want to bother with the 256MB version of the 9600 Pro either. The memory on 256MB cards tends to be slower anyway, and the speed of the memory (at 128MB) is far more important than the amount.

4) But all you've done is purchase a card that already needs to be upgraded, with features it can't use.

As long as you're happy with the card, that's all that matters, but there were better deals out there, and the extra memory is a waste of money.

P.S. 32bit colour tends to be faster these days than 16bit.

my 5c
some old motherboards do not supports AGP 8x cards properly. AFAIK the voltage is little bit higher then needed. As a result GPU is overheating during playing MA and the PC rebooting.
So any modern (Geforce5, Radeon 9xxx) card will reboot the PC, but any old (RivaTNT) will work fine

Any motherboard which supports AGP 4x should run an AGP 8x card, voltage difference or not. A reboot is far more likely due to your PSU not being up to the job of handling this new card.

the problem is that usual DirectX9 example (from DX SDK) which loads GPU hi, reboots the PC too

I agree with you on this point. I have done the research as you suggested and I surrender that ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 is a very good card. But I can also see the monetary point of view too. At the time when I built my PC, I had a budget of 456.00 that I could use toward the project.

I chose to go with an 11 bay Alluminum case, a 520w PS, and front audio/usb/firewire ports for ease of use with my camcorder and digital camera.

Next I needed a MB that would have minimum 3200 DDR slots and could handle upto a 3G processor as well as not having shared memory or onboard video. It also needed 4 to 5 PCI slots for other addons.

I then chose a CPU that if needed, could be OC significantly while retaining stability. At the time the AMD Athlon XP was most reputable for OC if or when I needed to add performance.

For Ram, I couldn't afford brand new Corsairs, so I settled for a used 512mb 3200 ddr corsair stick.

Next I needed Storage capacity as my older systems had always lacked that, so I went with 2 UATA 133mhz 120GB 7200rpm w/ 8M cache HDDs.

Lastly, I went with the nvidia based display card w/ 256 MB ram and multiple I/O jacks for video capturing/ tv tuning/ editing etc. and for future OC adjustments if needed. (for what I do including gaming, I don't need the 3.04Gpixel/sec FPS rate).

The final part of the budget went for a CDR, DVD-rom, Cooling and a .22dp 17" Monitor.

All in all, I ended up with a system that competes on a level that equals the P4 2.8GHz stock system (read as Dell/HP/Gateway/Etc.) and I haven't even played with OC yet. For my needs, this system should be able to handle most anything I need for many years to come yet, and I did it with $460.00 (yes I went over by $4.00) and a lot of part searching

There IS a difference between the FX5200 and a DirectX 8 card: when I tried to upgrade to DX9 on my TNT2, I almost lost the use of my computer for good because it screwed it up so badly. Pop in the FX5200, upgrade to DX9, and it booted right up without exploding or anything. Like I said: "as long as it runs".


From the Massive Assault box, which I happen to have right in front of me:
Minimum System Requirements:
32MB 3D Graphics Card
etc.

Nowhere in the list does it mention visual quality, vid card speed, etc. It mentions memory. Now, it'll look like crap if you play it with a 32MB card (and I should know...I did so for a while), but the fact is that no matter how 1337 a 128MB card is, it will still be unable to meet that requirement before a 256MB card is unable to. Sure, by that time I'll be back to running in 480x360x8 with no lights/shading/etc., but at least it'll be running.

Something I also should have mentioned earlier: I have, AT BEST, a 2x AGP slot. Even if I ended up picking a crappy card, my motherboard will choke performance before the card does

And I apologize for getting angry earlier. It just irritates me when people act like they know better than you but won't say how.

As to being happy with the card.......just let me know, and I'll upload a set of "before and after" screenshots and link you to 'em.

Doesn't matter. It's like processor speed, you're told you need a processor speed of X, but what it fails to mention is that this isn't true for AMD processor, that your processor will in fact only need a speed of Y if it's from AMD because Intel and AMD processors

All that spec tells you is that the game will load if you have 32MB memory on the card. It wouldn't be playable, but it would load. Your card has more memory than it can ever make use of. If you tried to fire up a game that demanded that sort of memory, you'd find your card choked long before it ever got to make use of all that space.

Like the "DX 9 support" the card touts, 256MB memory is simply a way to win customers away from alternative cards. Like the "DX 9 support", the extra memory is useless.



Not a problem, someone said they didn't want to discuss it, so I respect that, but I couldn't stop myself for suggesting my thoughts on the matter.