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Thread ID: 46987 2004-07-12 07:14:00 Video card comparison Mike (15) Press F1
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251653 2004-07-12 07:14:00 Would it be worth upgrading my GeForce4 MX440 to a Radeon 9600SE?

GeForce4 MX 440, NVidia NV17 chip, DirectX 7, Chip clock 270, MemoryClock 400, Bus width 128-bit, Pipes 2x2.

Radeon 9600 SE, ATI RV350 chip, DirectX 9, Chipclock 325, memoryclock 365, bus width 64-bit, pipes 4x1.

The Radeon has more memory, but a slower memory clock and 64bit bus width. Would it be an upgrade? Cost is irrelevant.

Cheers,
Mike.
Mike (15)
251654 2004-07-12 08:01:00 The radeon would possibly be 10x faster. But I wouldn't get any SE versions of Ati cards, get the Pro or XT in the 9600. kiki (762)
251655 2004-07-12 08:08:00 What does specs don't tell you is the power of the GPU.

The Radeon would be a hellofa an improvement - but it's not that great at all. Go for FX 5600, 5700 or a Radeon 9600 Pro like kiki suggested.

Also I suggest you wait a little while, the new nVidia cards will make these cards drop in price.
Growly (6)
251656 2004-07-12 08:14:00 > The radeon would possibly be 10x faster .

I find that unlikely - the couple of benchmarks I've seen put the two cards at pretty much the same level, except when it comes to DX9 compatibility (which the GF isn't) .

> But I wouldn't get any SE versions of Ati cards, get the
> Pro or XT in the 9600 .

That's not an option .

Mike .
Mike (15)
251657 2004-07-12 08:17:00 > What does specs don't tell you is the power of the
> GPU.
>
> The Radeon would be a hellofa an improvement - but
> it's not that great at all. Go for FX 5600, 5700 or a
> Radeon 9600 Pro like kiki suggested.
>
> Also I suggest you wait a little while, the new
> nVidia cards will make these cards drop in price.

I'm not buying the card, so waiting for something else isn't an option :) Just wanted a comparison mainly to help me decide which PC to put the card into, if any.

Cheers,
Mike.
Mike (15)
251658 2004-07-12 08:25:00 If cost is irrelevant why are you only looking at a 9600? Why not go for a 9800 if greater performance is your requirement. Sb0h (3744)
251659 2004-07-12 09:45:00 > If cost is irrelevant why are you only looking at a
> 9600? Why not go for a 9800 if greater performance
> is your requirement.

I was meaning that how much the cards cost etc. is irrelevant to the thread - I'm not buying either card, and am not looking to buy another card at the moment.

Mike.
Mike (15)
251660 2004-07-12 10:50:00 > I find that unlikely - the couple of benchmarks I've seen put the two cards at pretty much the same level, except when it comes to DX9 compatibility (which the GF isn't).

Yes the 9600SE is one of the cheaper, cards so you are probably right. They do nasty stuff like disabling pipelines (generally the manufactured card was faulty but they can still sell it if they disable the faulty pipelines), they use slower cheaper RAM, and deliberately underclock the RAM and GPU core.

Ok we'll use a poor example (graphics.tomshardware.com), you can see the 9600se is not really any better than a 5200, it's probably worse. Think of the mx440 performing like the 5200 minus about 5-10fps.

That's why it wouldn't really be an "upgrade" and I said to get a 9600pro or 9600xt as that would qualify as a real upgrade because they are about 10x better than the mx440 performance wise.

You can't really go comparing core and memory speeds etc with video cards from different designers (ati/nvidia) and price points (budget/mainstream/enthusiast). That's a bit like comparing apples to oranges. You really just want to know that its a DX9 card and then you want to go do some hunting for the relevant performance reviews in whatever application you will be using the card for.
kiki (762)
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