Should I Buy Ati Radeon 9600se?

[Smoke Eater 0]

The price is right at Bestbuy (119.95-20.00 mail rebate) but is the SE version likely to cause me issues? I am told the SE versions are a little less speedy but still very effective. Is there anyone out there with this particular card or with suggestions on a better one in the price range? My accountant (wife) lol... is giving me hell about MORE money at Christmastime on "gadgets", Ya know???

Thanks Y'all!

HP 1.6 Gb P4 256Mb RAM 40GB HD

[Indy_BIA 0]

I use to have a Radeon 8500 SE and it worked fine. It was a bit slower but worked great. However, check out

www.pricewatch.com Click on Video Cards

You can find a Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB for $126 You have to order it online but I use it a lot. It's just a price compare site. I'm sure there are others but I use this one myself.

[Boltz 0]

Hey Smoke Eater, don't know much about Radeons in general, but I have a 9800 Pro I picked up from a friend for $100 who owed me anyway and it works great. Till now I've just had Nvidias, but sounds like Indy_BIA is onto a good deal at pricewatch for the Radeon 9600 Pro for $126. Just be careful ordering online. It's easy to get burned. Make sure they are a reputable company with a good track record. Good luck in your hunt.

[Cretin 0]

For what it's worth...

 

I have a 9800. I would suggest waiting until you can get at least a 128 mb 9800. You can get a good deal on one if you take some time and keep your eyes open. The card I have is "powered by ATI", as opposed to "made by" or "built by ATI", meaning that the VPU is ATI and the board is made by someone else. Less expensive but it works just fine. You can usually tell which is which by the the color and design of the ATI logo on the box. The ATI site has details.

 

Also... I got a plain vanilla 9800 as opposed to a 9800 Pro. However, I removed SMARTGART and my puter recognizes it as a 9800 Pro. Hmmm.... I guess I'll never know for certain. :-)

 

One final point: A new card is not a new puter. If you have a bottleneck somewhere other than your vid card you may not see a difference in frame rate. The QUALITY will be there but the frame rate might not go up. There ARE retail stores that will allow you to return a vid card within 15 days for a full cash refund. Nothing like trying before buying!

 

Good luck!

[Scythe 0]

If you are worried about buying online from companies unknown, this site is pretty useful:

 

Reseller Ratings

 

Basically lets you know what kind of service to expect. I normally use the higher ranking sellers.

[Smoke Eater 0]

Thanks for the advice Indy BIA, I got a Radeon 9600XT 128Mb built by Sapphire. The Pricewatch site is superb! I got it for 159.00 through ZipZoomFly.com with free 3 day shipping. The Sapphire cards are superior according to my research, and ATI recognizes them as a reputable builder. My comparison showed that for the price range, this card delivered the most in performance. I could have gotten the 256 Mb for a little more, but the clock speeds were slower anyway. Now I can't wait to install it and play! As it stands, I can see the cockpit and planes, but the world around me is grey stripes and colored dots.

Anyway, ThanksAgain all...

"Smoke Eater"

[Indy_BIA 0]

Sweet. Those Sapphire cards are really good. Hope you have fun. If you want to play for fun you can join me online sometime. Just go to the forums here to get a hold of me

http://www.bia-sims.com/bia/index.php

[Cretin 0]

I'm glad that you got yourself a new card, Smoke Eater. You were having some pretty serious graphics problems!!! How is the new card working for you? It HAS to be better. :)

[Smoke Eater 0]

Well, I just installed the card and everything was fine until I got to the options screen and every time, the computer completely freezes-up after 3 seconds on the options screen. I have to do a hard reboot every time.

I knew this wouldn't be a flawless install?!

Any Ideas?

[MadJeff 3]

Check to makie sure you have AGP Fast Writes enabled in bios AND in the Catalyst driver control panel. When I was doing the LOMAC preview and they sent me the early beta, I had the same problem. The thing that fixed it for me was that I had AGP Fast Writes disabled in Bios and Enabled in the driver.

[Smoke Eater 0]

Hey, I'm not familiar with how to check it in the BIOS. How would I do that? It's enabled in the control settings...

[Cretin 0]

LMAO!!! Don't let MadJeff off the hook, Smoke Eater. The only thing I know about BIOS is that you can't show it in the workplace.

[Indy_BIA 0]

Your BIOS is there when you start up. When it tells you how much RAM and stuff you have. You should see something that says Hit DEL for setup, hit F2 for..... It's right when you boot your computer

[Cretin 0]

Wow! Nice job, Indy_BIA! It's pretty tough trying to get into BIOS explanations long distance. That's why I was laughing. It's a real can of worms starting from scratch!

 

Be careful what you change in there, Smoke Eater. Until you know more about BIOS you had better stick to PRECISELY what MadJeff said and leave everything else alone. Change the wrong thing in there and UFO's will start landing on your roof. :ph34r:

[Smoke Eater 0]

Now THAT'S funny! Then I'll be out of this forum and into the MUFON sightings pages LOL!!!

Looking at the UbiSoft LOMAC forums I can see that many radeon users have similar freezing issues after install. I've E-Mailed Sapphire for info. I also downloaded the latest driver.

I'll let y'all know what happens. And i'm not touching my BIOS,LOL!!!

I tend to be a very unBIOSed person anyway.

Unless I'm abducted by the UFO's I'll let ya know how it turns out.

"Smoke Eater"

[MadJeff 3]

oh come on guys, if you're too scared to mess with the BIOS, then why own a PC in the first place?! ;)

[visible structural damage 0]

I have an ATI 9600 pro, I've had it for a couple of weeks and I think it's a good card. It's capable of running IL2 FB with the following settings quite well.

Landscape lighting FULL

Object Detail MAX

Visibility Distance MEDIUM

Overall Detail HIGH (I don't use the perfect setting, what's the point of having a tree swaying in the wind when I'm 1000 ft above it shooting Jerry ?)

 

The card runs them settings without stutter, I also have 1024mb of ddr ram on my pc.

[MadJeff 3]

Seriously though, there are some great guides out there on the net for learning about/tweaking your system BIOS. The undisputed king of the BIOS tweaking guides is Adrian's:

 

Rojak Pot's Bios Optimization Guide

 

This will tell you about every setting in all the different BIOS versions currently available. What they do, recommended settings, etc. Don't be afraid to try them out, but a few tips when working with BIOS settings:

• Only change one setting at a time., then reboot, test and benchmark
  
• Make notes on what you are changing so you can set things back if you screw up
  

Most motherboards do not come to you tuned for performance, but this is where you can get the biggest gains if you take things slow and one step at a time.

[Indy_BIA 0]

Yeah don't worry too much about messing something up in your BIOS. I guess it depends on the motherboard really. The worse thing I had with a wrong BIOS setting was a computer crash. Read that guide MadJeff posted. It'll help you out a lot. I had to learn the hard way.

[Cretin 0]

The guys are right, Smoke Eater. We all started out knowing nothing about BIOS. We've played around with it and we are still here. It is one of the ways to get the most out of your system. So, don't let BIOS scare you. The approach the guys are suggesting is a very good one. Read first. One tweak at a time. Test. I've never crashed my machine tweaking BIOS. I DID crash it one time messing with other stuff... but that's another story.

[Smoke Eater 0]

Thanks for the advice. I finally got to play the game. I reduced my hardware acceleration by one level. Now my cursor blinks, but the game is awesome. I saw alot of people in other forums having the exact same problem with these ATI cards, and the 9600XT in particular. I have the newest drivers (released yesterday) but it seems like there should be another fix other than reducing my acceleration. That seems like a "get by" to me. Well, ATI has my report and I await there reply. At least now I can play this awesome game. The graphics and detail are like nothing I have ever seen!

By the way, is Falcon as good as this (or similar?)?

Thanks again!

[Cretin 0]

I have an ATI Radeon 9800, 128 mb and I have had no problems with it at all. There are a million things that can affect system performance. Read some of the tweaking guides and try stuff. Look at Windows tweaks, BIOS tweaks, etc.. One time I even discovered that my joystick was causing a slow down!

 

With ATI you need to remove the old driver and control panel before you install the new one. There is a utility at the ATI site which will remove ALL ATI files on your system. I usually run that before I install a new driver and matching control panel. They also advise to install the new drivers before you install the new control panel. Just thought I'd mention that as driver installation is an opportunity to mess things up. :)

 

Falcon 4.0 plus all of the patches, mods, addons, is kewl. Don't expect the scenery and terrain to look quite as nifty as LOMAC. If you like realism in a jet sim you would probably like it. It's a classic. You would have to spend some time reading the manual for the version you are running. Gotta do your homework with that one!

 

Later, Dude.