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Antarius · 03-09-2005, 02:22 AM

I ran a 9500 Overclocked from 275 core 270 memory - to 380 core - 330 memory(flashed bios and using rage3d tweak for the overclock), for 2 whole years, from when I bought it in February of 03 for $150.

That card lasted me a long long ass time, longer than I had owned any other video card, and was a great steal at the price. Got me through doom 3 and Half-Life 2, Even at the 1280x1024 resolutions I need for my native resolution on my LCD.

I'm a big fan of what ATI did with the 9500, but you can't say the entire 9xxx line was without it's faults.

The 9200 was just a repackaged 8500 card, It doesn't even support DirectX9. The 9600 came out a good 6-8 months AFTER the 9500, and is actually a step DOWN in performance from the discontinued 9500s.

I wasn't planning on replacing my video card any time soon actually, but I couldn't pass up on the new 90nm Athlon 64 cores.

Now I'm running a 1.8 ghz processor (athlon 64 3000+) overclocked to 2.4 ghz completely stable, I am very impressed with my processor upgrade coming from an Athlon xp 2200.

So to choose a new video card, I had to pick the best "price/performance" mix out there, and I went with a 6800 (vanilla/u/base model whatever you want to call it).

Normally restricted to just the 12 pixel pipelines compared to the GTs 16, easily enabled them no problems via rivatuner, wasn't impressed, tried overclocking it, was able to get up to 360 (from 325) very stable playing wow for hours upon hours, but the card was hot, and I knew it could do better, so I splurged on a $30 aftermarket cooler, and now I've been playing the last week at a 395 core clock.

But what does this translate down into results, My Aquamark 3d score rose from 22,000 (not bad for a 2 year old computer) up to 63,000, and I went from playing Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024 with no features turned on to 8x filtering and 4x antialiasing with a much smoother framerates improving from general 25ish fps to a very smooth 50 frames per second generally.

And WoW is so much nicer, improving from at most 25 frames/sec on a raid with all 39 other people on the screen or 15fps in Orgrimmar to around 45 on a raid AFTER forcing on AA through the driver and turning on the Anisotropic filtering in game. I didn't notice the improved texture filtering in game so much as the AA, which in Warcraft I think was a big problem, alot of really dark and really light art elements contrasted against on another, like all the hills jutting up against the sky.

I have an older 19" Flat Panel, with a "25ms" refresh rate. Sure it's pretty fast as far as LCDs are concerned, I don't notice motion blur in movies or anything, but I can't much tell the difference between 40 and 60 fps. So for me the most important thing is being able to play the games I want with all the features turned on at the resolution I want to play at. And I had to get there on a budget. The Government doesn't pay me enough to splurge as much as I'd like oftentimes.

03-09-2005, 02:22 AM	#7 (permalink)
Antarius Banned Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 972 +0 Internets	I ran a 9500 Overclocked from 275 core 270 memory - to 380 core - 330 memory(flashed bios and using rage3d tweak for the overclock), for 2 whole years, from when I bought it in February of 03 for $150. That card lasted me a long long ass time, longer than I had owned any other video card, and was a great steal at the price. Got me through doom 3 and Half-Life 2, Even at the 1280x1024 resolutions I need for my native resolution on my LCD. I'm a big fan of what ATI did with the 9500, but you can't say the entire 9xxx line was without it's faults. The 9200 was just a repackaged 8500 card, It doesn't even support DirectX9. The 9600 came out a good 6-8 months AFTER the 9500, and is actually a step DOWN in performance from the discontinued 9500s. I wasn't planning on replacing my video card any time soon actually, but I couldn't pass up on the new 90nm Athlon 64 cores. Now I'm running a 1.8 ghz processor (athlon 64 3000+) overclocked to 2.4 ghz completely stable, I am very impressed with my processor upgrade coming from an Athlon xp 2200. So to choose a new video card, I had to pick the best "price/performance" mix out there, and I went with a 6800 (vanilla/u/base model whatever you want to call it). Normally restricted to just the 12 pixel pipelines compared to the GTs 16, easily enabled them no problems via rivatuner, wasn't impressed, tried overclocking it, was able to get up to 360 (from 325) very stable playing wow for hours upon hours, but the card was hot, and I knew it could do better, so I splurged on a $30 aftermarket cooler, and now I've been playing the last week at a 395 core clock. But what does this translate down into results, My Aquamark 3d score rose from 22,000 (not bad for a 2 year old computer) up to 63,000, and I went from playing Half-Life 2 at 1280x1024 with no features turned on to 8x filtering and 4x antialiasing with a much smoother framerates improving from general 25ish fps to a very smooth 50 frames per second generally. And WoW is so much nicer, improving from at most 25 frames/sec on a raid with all 39 other people on the screen or 15fps in Orgrimmar to around 45 on a raid AFTER forcing on AA through the driver and turning on the Anisotropic filtering in game. I didn't notice the improved texture filtering in game so much as the AA, which in Warcraft I think was a big problem, alot of really dark and really light art elements contrasted against on another, like all the hills jutting up against the sky. I have an older 19" Flat Panel, with a "25ms" refresh rate. Sure it's pretty fast as far as LCDs are concerned, I don't notice motion blur in movies or anything, but I can't much tell the difference between 40 and 60 fps. So for me the most important thing is being able to play the games I want with all the features turned on at the resolution I want to play at. And I had to get there on a budget. The Government doesn't pay me enough to splurge as much as I'd like oftentimes.