Arg, 9600SE

[Picture Dots]

Was looking to upgrade my computer somewhat over christmas for $150, its a
new PC and almost all of my PC purchased are pretty budgeted.

I decided to spend $41 on 256MB DDR ram, and the rest on a video card.

My current card was an ATI Radeon 7500 PCI, yes PCI.

So I went out to find myself a card, I spotted both the 9200 for $99 and the
9600SE for $120 with a $21 dollar rebate, so it comes out to $99.

I bought the ATI Radeon 9600SE and im having all kinds of problems with it,
I cant even run certain games, im having bugs that I never had before. Its
actually to the point that I believe my old ATI Radeon 7500 may have
preformed better than the 9600SE! Not purely in terms of speed but in
reliability.

I was expecting a halfway decent preformance upgrade with both of these
things, Im currently on a 2.4ghz and I only had 256 RAM(With the 256 im
purchased that makes it 512 ).

So what should I do? I dont believe I'll have any money coming into my
budget anytime soon so should I stick with the 9600 or try and take it back
replacing the 7500?

Btw- Anyone out there without an AGP slot, I highly recommend the 7500 PCI,
its preforms extremely well, and rarely has any bugs.. Its kind of sad
really I used to laugh a few years ago when all you people with top of the
line cards were constantly posting bugs and graphical glitches on tech
support forums while my 1.1ghz with 512SD RAM and an ATI Radeon 7500 PCI ran
everything -perfectly-

 

[J.Clarke]

Was looking to upgrade my computer somewhat over christmas for $150,
its a new PC and almost all of my PC purchased are pretty budgeted.

I decided to spend $41 on 256MB DDR ram, and the rest on a video card.

My current card was an ATI Radeon 7500 PCI, yes PCI.

So I went out to find myself a card, I spotted both the 9200 for $99
and the 9600SE for $120 with a $21 dollar rebate, so it comes out to
$99.

I bought the ATI Radeon 9600SE and im having all kinds of problems
with it, I cant even run certain games, im having bugs that I never
had before. Its actually to the point that I believe my old ATI Radeon
7500 may have preformed better than the 9600SE! Not purely in terms of
speed but in reliability.

I was expecting a halfway decent preformance upgrade with both of
these things, Im currently on a 2.4ghz and I only had 256 RAM(With the
256 im purchased that makes it 512 ).

So what should I do? I dont believe I'll have any money coming into my
budget anytime soon so should I stick with the 9600 or try and take it
back replacing the 7500?

Btw- Anyone out there without an AGP slot, I highly recommend the 7500
PCI, its preforms extremely well, and rarely has any bugs.. Its kind
of sad really I used to laugh a few years ago when all you people with
top of the line cards were constantly posting bugs and graphical
glitches on tech support forums while my 1.1ghz with 512SD RAM and an
ATI Radeon 7500 PCI ran everything -perfectly-

Have you installed the latest drivers?

 

[Picture Dots]

Thats another thing, the latest drivers always cause a problem with how
windows(not the OS, actually windows in uh windows) come up.

When I open a folder or something the outline appears then the insides seem
to paint downwards, its -extremely- annoying so I wont be using the latest
drivers.

Now that you mention it I had this same problem on both the 7500 and the
9600SE, the 7500 on two computers the 9600SE on one. Maybe its because im
upgrading from a certain driver version? My driver version in device manager
is listed as: 6.14.10.6387, the same my 7500 had - Now when I try to upgrade
to the latest I get the bug mentioned above.

Maybe it has something to do with upgrading from 6.14.10.6387 -> latest
drivers ?

 

[Darthy]

Was looking to upgrade my computer somewhat over christmas for $150, its a
new PC and almost all of my PC purchased are pretty budgeted.

I decided to spend $41 on 256MB DDR ram, and the rest on a video card.

My current card was an ATI Radeon 7500 PCI, yes PCI.

So I went out to find myself a card, I spotted both the 9200 for $99 and the
9600SE for $120 with a $21 dollar rebate, so it comes out to $99.

Fair price for a low-end card. Look for my post with the word
"anandtech" I posted it yesterday... or look it up on
www.anandtech.com

I bought the ATI Radeon 9600SE and im having all kinds of problems with it,
I cant even run certain games, im having bugs that I never had before. Its
actually to the point that I believe my old ATI Radeon 7500 may have
preformed better than the 9600SE! Not purely in terms of speed but in
reliability.

You need to TOTALLY remove all your OLD derivers from your computer.
OS version? I assume is XP. ATI 8500 and older are not driver
stable... in a sense.

I was expecting a halfway decent preformance upgrade with both of these
things, Im currently on a 2.4ghz and I only had 256 RAM(With the 256 im
purchased that makes it 512 ).

The 9600se is an upgrade over the 7000.... but $50 more would have
bought you more than double the performance.

Btw- Anyone out there without an AGP slot, I highly recommend the 7500 PCI,
its preforms extremely well, and rarely has any bugs.. Its kind of sad

Well... its a very old card, ATI is pretty much phasing it out for the
9000 series PCI cards... besides, the Nvidia5200PCI tends to do
better than ATI... I think. Neither are usable for modern gaming.

 

[Picture Dots]

Fair price for a low-end card. Look for my post with the word
"anandtech" I posted it yesterday... or look it up on
www.anandtech.com


You need to TOTALLY remove all your OLD derivers from your computer.
OS version? I assume is XP. ATI 8500 and older are not driver
stable... in a sense.


The 9600se is an upgrade over the 7000.... but $50 more would have
bought you more than double the performance.


Well... its a very old card, ATI is pretty much phasing it out for the
9000 series PCI cards... besides, the Nvidia5200PCI tends to do
better than ATI... I think. Neither are usable for modern gaming.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

I'll disagree with you there, I was able to play -every- modern game I
purchased with the 7500, warnings it no warnings.

 

[Darthy]

I'll disagree with you there, I was able to play -every- modern game I
purchased with the 7500, warnings it no warnings.

If that was true, then why the hell are people buying these spankin
new $200~500 video cards?

It's like this PD - Level of Quality Desired. (LOQD)

If you buy a NEW game and don't mind setting it to 640x480x16bit with
ALL details on Minimal and jerky frame rate - then I guess yes, you
can PLAY the game.

Go online against real players, they'll see you a mile away.

On a friends computer with a GF2mx (which is a bit better than the
R7500) - the game Unreal2 was UNPLAYABLE on his 1ghz system.
All settings were as low as they can go. FPS = 5 AVG... felt more
like 1fps.

Popping in the Ti4200 video card, medium details in 1024x768 is
possible... looks better, plays better. About 50fps.

On my 9800Pro, I get 100fps with AF/AA turned on in 1280x1024, and I
see the game as it was MEANT to be played.

I've seen HALO run on a GF2mx... IT WAS HORRIBLE. Graphics looked far
worse than Unreal. No details... Green ground, blue sky, grey shapes,
etc.

Standard Gaming Level for comparing products is 1024x768x32bit FULL
DETAILS.

Go here:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1933&p=20

The 9200SE is faster than the 7500... Not much of a game at 7fps, but
if you're using the AMD 64bit system, but a t ypical setup with sound
card - then make that about 4fps.... and slower still for 7500.

And here:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1933&p=12

Halo is under 10fps in the 9200SE again...Lower RES and details will
get it up to 20~30fps... with a FAST computer...

So what games do you play with the 7500? Res? FPS?