Graphics Card Question

[Larry_OHF]

This is what I've learned on these cards so far, though I doubt I will be getting one now. Still, I wanted to find out and if there's a chance to get one cheap off of ebay used or something,,,I'd consider it.

As was mentioned, Radeon kicks GeForce's ass in several cards with several benchmark tests. There were a few Geforce's that made it to higher than average status, but those are way too costly for me right now and I think they were also not workable on my little system...and if I could afford them, I'd go ahead and get the highest ranking Radeon instead for there were three Radeons that outperformed GeForce most of the time.

For the Radeon 9800, that was the best overall card, but my price range was looking at 9700, 9600, and 9500. From what two websites of benchmark tests indicate, the 9600pro is to be avoided because the 9500pro outperformed it almost all the time. Only the 9700pro was better in almost all cases. The cost of the 9700pro might still be steep for me at this time for the accident my wife had in the car, so I was actually leaning toward liking the 9500pro. However, I found out that there is a 9550 hanging out there but all I could learn about it was that it is actually a practice run for the 9600 so I suppose it should be avoided too. Of all the cards I am looking at, only the 9550 could be bought new from Amazon.com.

If I end up buying one, I think I'd start by trying to find a cheap used 9700pro and if that does not work out I'd be just as happy with a 9500pro.

Comments or suggestions?

[Larry_OHF]

Update on this adventure.

With some extra money from school, I have decided that I could afford a card for about $100.00. I searched for the recommended 9800pro, but the only "new" ones are on sell at e-bay for over $200.00. I do not want to buy a used one, nor trust many people on e-bay to sell a working used one. I looked around and finally re read this thread and noticed Albromor mentioned that the GeForce 6000 series were the first to start actually showing some worth in the NVidia title again after a long reign by ATI, so I looked into this and found a 6600 on newegg for $94.00. Looking at the specs on TomsHardware, I felt good about the buy, and took it. It should arrive by Friday.

I went with this for cost, availability, decent testing scores, and my own bias. After I get out of school and get a job again, I'll begin building a new machine that will utilize the neweer graphics cards on the market...but for right now this one will do me fine.

Thanks to Albromor for helping me decide on the 6600 and for all those that offered their opinions on the 9800Pro that I would have bought if I could have got it for the price I could have afforded.

Oh...forgot to mention...its the one made by PNY.

[ 08-26-2006, 03:38 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]