Radeon 9600 Or Radeon 9600 Pro

[Timz]

Currently best buy is having a thxgiving sale (as meny of us now know), and after all the rebates the Radeon 9600 regular is only 70$ as opposed to its normal price of 169$.

The Radeon 9600 Pro is currently 182$ on amazon.

Is the Radeon regular much worse then the Radeon pro? Would i be able to run games like BF1942 and Splinter Cell under med or high graphics 1000+ resolution?
I am running a 1800g 512 meg ram comp.

Basically, should i buy the card now and take advantage of the price, but not get the pro? or should i hold off?

Radeon 9600 Comparison Chart According to this chart the 9600 reg has a much lower engine and memory clock rate, how much will this affect gameplay? Can the card be significantly overclocked?

PS if i buy this card now, i wont be able to get another one for at least a year, so will the 9600 regular be able to last that long (keep up with the most part of the games)??

The sale ends in about 24 hrs, so reply quickly plz

[Aaron_T]

I think the regular should be fine the Pro graphics cards obviously are slightly more powerful but mostly paying more is based on the fact that it says PRO on the box know what i mean, but id hate for you to take my advice and end up with the wrong one so id stick out and wait for more posts

[3RA1N1AC]

the PRO model should be better than the non-PRO. but it is possible that the two cards are physically identical and you may be able to buy a non-PRO and upgrade its firmware/BIOS and turn it into a PRO, which would increase its speed a little bit.

updating the BIOS is slightly risky though (you could damage the card or render it non-functional), and i think it voids the warranty. so you'd have to decide whether it's a risk you're willing to take. if you don't want to take the risk, you might just wanna buy the PRO which is guaranteed to run at a higher speed.

[Timz]

i have no doubts that the pro will run better, and i dont intend to do anything risky I jsut dont want to spend money on a card that will not perform well at all.

[3RA1N1AC]

either way, any 9600 should run splinter cell and bf1942 just fine. those games run well even on the previous generation of cards (8500 through 9200). i had no problem playing all the way through splinter cell with pretty smooth frame rates at 1024 x 768 on a 9000 Pro.

if you can get one for $100 or less, i'd say it's a good value and you'll be satisfied with it for at least a year or year-and-a-half, since most new games are designed to run on lower-to-middle end cards and the 9600 still ranks pretty near to the high-end.

[abu_has_the_power]

u can oc ur 9600 to a 9600 pro

[Timz]

i gess 9600 non-pro it is, im going to the store today, hopefully it'll be there, if not, then for chrsitmas im gonna have to go for the sales again, i'll keep it posted

[Kunal]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@29 November 2003 - 03:07
u can oc ur 9600 to a 9600 pro

i doubt a card will oc that far, if it did you would would the best cooling around

[racer II]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@29 November 2003 - 03:07
u can oc ur 9600 to a 9600 pro

Again abu, no you cant.
The non pro uses different kind of ram chips which cannot reach the pro specs.

[SciManAl]

hehehehehe , i got mine to oc pretty far, but not near pro... and the stock cooling is defintily not enough for it...