I really don't have a whole lot of money and can't think to spend 400 dollars on a video card. What should I do my computer can handle all of them just upgraded but what are the benefits and how do they do on FPS if people can tell me. Where can I find the cheapest price in USA.I have p4 3 gig 1024 or so [email protected]

Obviously the 9800P tops in at number one. If you can afford it, get it, you won't be sorry.Then the 9600P, same chipset as the 9800, and newer than the 9700.Then the 9700P, we have seen tons of pics of this card in FS, and is really does a good job! I will be honest, I have not seen the 9600 or 9800 pics of FS yet.All of this is IMHO of course ;-)

To be perfectly honest with you, I really have not seen a $400 improvement in FS2K2 since I traded up from a GeForce 3 ti 200 to a 9800 Pro. That being said I can run FSAA and water refelections, but I'm not sure that's worth $400. Who can say how much better this card will be with FS2004.I would probably go for the 9600, if the computer is used mainly for flight simming (like mine is) then you'd probably do well with that.Why'd I get a 9800Pro? Had to take the GeForce 2MX out of one computer and when I transfered my GeF3 I decided to upgrade and the 9800 was sitting on the shelf at BestBuy, the 9700 shelf was empty. Me, being the impatient person I am, went ahead and bought the bullet and paid for the 9800. We'll see if it was worth it in the end.Lobaeux

get the 9700 Pro, 9600 is kinda crappy, its like, barley above entry level graphics. go for the 9700 pro, you might find it for $250 if you look hard enough.

Do yourself a favor..Under $200 Go with the 9500Pro. Between 2 and 400 Go with the 9700..Money no object..9800Pro but wait for the 256 Meg version..BobbyP.S. British, I don't know where your getting your info frombut a 9600 is most certainly not an entry level card..It is a die shrunk, slower clocked 9700 that performs at or just below 95-9700 Specs. Just thought I'd straighten that out :)

ya know what, i am sick of you acting like i dont know what the hell i am talking about! in my opinion the 9600 pro is perfect for the average user who cant afford a 9800 pro, but it is still about the same level as a 9500 pro, just like the 9700 pro is about the same level performance as the 9800 pro, both have their strengths and weaknesses, in a few select tests, the 9700 pro has beat the 9800 pro by 1 or 2 fps. and the 9600 pro is not a die shrink. the MOBILITY 9600 is its a 0.13 micron process. but the 9600 pro has the same core, the R350, as the 9800 pro, except slower clocked, and with less pixel pipelines.a direct quote from ati.com: "the RADEON 9600 PRO allows performance mainstream users to access the world

Whoa! Calm down there British. What he said doesn't warrent that kind of response! :-roll

when he tells me i dont know what im talking about in 3 seperate threads... sorry, just my 2 cents on budget video cards.

>when he tells me i dont know what im talking about in 3>seperate threads... sorry, just my 2 cents on budget video>cards.Does it help that I agree with you? :) After all, I consider myself a pretty intelligent guy ;-) :-lol

Too much caffeine there Brit or you just PO'd that I'm trying to weed out the BS from the helpful Info? I've had it done to me when I posted something wrong or BS so why shouldn't you? Your ticked that I correct you, and thats fine. But what about the poor guy you give bad info to?. For Example..You instruct someone to install PC2700 Memory in their machine for a performance boost. You do realize they will see no improvement unless they overclock their 266FSB CPU?. Money out the window.Or perhaps this helpful little gem...*cough*video card sucks*cough*get 9700 pro*cough*Oh and maybe this one...dont make the same stupid mistake that i did, BUY AMD!!! and ATi. ATi all the way, intel...sucks. i dont care if i get flamed for that, but they do, wait for a barton XP3200+ and the Nforce2 v2 chipset, it will OWN!and to answer your original question, 800FSB doesnt give you more than a 3-5% increase in real-world benchmarks (Way more than 3-5% as more and more benchmarks roll in)One more to prove my point...ive heard stories of ATI cards hosing peoples hard drives and they have to reformat to get it to work properly (Actually they had to redo their hard drives becuase of either bad Bios's or incorrect removal of old drivers causing conflicts)You took my corrections as a flame. They were not meant that way but if people are looking for info they should be given the correct info. It's funny becuase if you do a search you'll find I haven't corrected all of your posts, just the ones that are incorrect or detrimental to someone working on their system. Sorry if you don't like that.And this is just to clear things up.......The biggest news behind ATI's RV350 graphics chip is, perhaops, the 0.13-micron process technology being used to fabricate the chip. The move to a 0.13-micron process allows ATI to fit more chips on a silicon wafer, which should make the RV350 a more profitable chip than its predecessors if yields are good. Moving to a 0.13-micron process also decreases the RV350's power requirements, so cards built using the chip won't need auxiliary power connectors and should run cooler than equivalent chips built using 0.15-micron technology. Apart from the process technology used in its fabrication, the RV350 is very similar to ATI's R300 chip, which powers the Radeon 9500 and 9700 lines. The RV350 has full support for DirectX 9, pixel and vertex shader versions 2.0, and floating point data types for pixels and texture. However, the 9600 incorporates some performance tweaks from ATI's new R350 GPU (used in the Radeon 9800 Pro). There are a few key differences between the old R300 and the new RV350 worth noting. Try as it might, ATI hasn't topped the Radeon 9500 Pro's performance with the Radeon 9600 Pro, but maybe they don't need to. The Radeon 9600 Pro is impressively efficient and a poster child for 0.13-micron graphics chips done right. What's more, it's consistently faster than the GeForce4 Ti 4200 8X, and should stack up well against NVIDIA's 4x1-pipe GeForce FX 5600s when they eventually materialize. In the end, there's really no need to go out and buy a Radeon 9600 Pro today. The Radeon 9500 Pro is faster and available now, though stocks will dwindle over the next couple of months as ATI phases out the card. If you do miss the Radeon 9500 Pro boat, don't worry. The Radeon 9600 Pro is a pretty snazzy substitute.This is taken directly from Tech-Reports.com. Oh and by the way..Above you stated that the Mobile version is the .13 micron. Well so is the desktop version. Yes it's based on the 9800. On that your right. And yes it does have fewer pipelines. Actually has less than even the 9500. But were you are wrong is it's actually clocked Faster than the 9800 at 400Mhz. Not slower as you state..Again, didn't mean to #### you off for correcting you. Maybe I should just get nasty like you but than what would that solve..Bobby @-@

Fred,Your usually of sound mind and body. Well I don't know about the body and don't care LoL but if you've paid attention to some of the mentioned threads was I honestly out of line?.Bobby

But, if you like AF and FSAA at 1600x1200x32, there is a substantial difference between the two cards you mentioned. For me, that would be worth what you paid. Like you mentioned, however, I hope that the differences between two two cards becomes more substantial with the release of FS2004.

Robbie,I agree. I was just trying to clear up the statement that the 9600 was an entry level card. Granted it is by no means ATI's best but it is certainly not a crappy card.BobbyP.S. Anybody seen Brit....:)

>P.S. Anybody seen Brit....:)I think he has gone out the back door ;-)

wel, here i am and i think ill just stick to the forums i am already and established member in. no hard feelings i agree, i was wrong in saying the 9600 pro was crappy, it is a card that offers some of the best graphics on the mainstream/budget level, at a meek $199US its a steal. but i will just leave you guys to give advice to people in this forum, i dont quite "fit in" here you might say. but i think you have all the right info and i regret saying what i id about the 9600 pro after reading up on it in particular it seems i was very wrong, my greatest apologies.British