Video Card advice needed.....

[cr8250]

Hi all, with all the great price drops with AMD and the X2, I am going to get an X2 3800+. Since I will be upgrading to a new S939 board with PCI-e, what graphics cards would you recommend that will match my current Radeon 9600 256mb? I am really not happy about getting rid of my 9600, but I gues I don't have much choice. Any suggestions? ATI or nVidia is fine.

[equinoxe3d]

Many current lower-end cards will easily match or surpass a vanilla 9600. If you don't do gaming, then an X550 like this one could be a good choice. There's also a 256MB version for 3$ more if you really want it.

I'd stay away from the complete low-end (X300SE) since they usually have a 64-bit memory bus, not much an issue if you're not gaming but it's still half than your 9600 and would probably affect GUI performance if you ever upgrade to Vista.

[cr8250]

Ok, well although the 9600 agp isn't an awesome card, I have been quite happy with it. Which cards would match it in performance without spending a ton of money?

[equinoxe3d]

Well, in the ATI range, the X550 that I posted above is decently priced at $50 and pretty similar to the 9600 but a bit faster; I did a bit of research and on the same platform (A64 3200+, used only for comparison), it gave the following results in 3DMark 2003:

9600 256MB: 2843 points
X550 256MB: 3497 points
X300 non-SE 256MB : 2850 points

Keep in mind that an X300 non-SE is very hard to find.

[wrathchild_67]

About $15 more, but much better than an X550:

X1300 (gets you 1.5-2x the peformance of a 9600 plus AVIVO video enhancements)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125029

Geforce 6600 (faster than an X1300, but you get Purevideo enhancements with this one)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814122203]

Both cards have shader model 3.0 support.

[cr8250]

Thanks a bunch, guys. You have been a big help.