ATI Radeon 9600SE or 8500?

[andrea]

Hi all,
in one of my PCs I still have my glorious 8500, which at the time I bought
it, costed me a lot of money (read: many many days of hard work).
Now I have a chance to swap it (for free) with a 9600SE, that as far as I
understood is the least performing card of the 9600 family. It has a 64bit
data bus, to be more clear.
I'd wish to ask you if you suggest me to do this swap, or to keep my old
8500 instead.

Pro the 9600SE there are a couple of points:

1) memory (128MB against the 64MB of my 8500)
2) modernity (it supports DX9 effects that my 8500 doesn't support)

in favour of keeping my 8500 instead there is:
1) 128bit data bus, against the 64bit of the 9600SE

What about performance? Is there any case where the 8500 is still superior?

I always and almost exclusively use the 1024x768 resolution, for gaming.

What do you advice me to do?

Thanks a lot,
Andrea

 

[Louise]

Hi all,
in one of my PCs I still have my glorious 8500, which at the time I bought
it, costed me a lot of money (read: many many days of hard work).
Now I have a chance to swap it (for free) with a 9600SE, that as far as I
understood is the least performing card of the 9600 family. It has a 64bit
data bus, to be more clear.
I'd wish to ask you if you suggest me to do this swap, or to keep my old
8500 instead.

Pro the 9600SE there are a couple of points:

1) memory (128MB against the 64MB of my 8500)
2) modernity (it supports DX9 effects that my 8500 doesn't support)

in favour of keeping my 8500 instead there is:
1) 128bit data bus, against the 64bit of the 9600SE

What about performance? Is there any case where the 8500 is still superior?

I always and almost exclusively use the 1024x768 resolution, for gaming.

What do you advice me to do?

Thanks a lot,
Andrea

I can't answer directly, but I can tell you a story:

I too purchased the 8500, 128, quite some time ago and have always
loved it. When the fan died I sent it back to ATI and although it took
almost a month, they did replace it. It's fast, clear and crisp.

I bought a new system which came with the ATI 7200. It didn't compare
to the 8500 at all! It was slower and noticeably less crisp.

So I returned the 7200 and got the other option offered to me with the
new system: an ATI 9600 Pro. This beats the 8500 only slightly - speed
seems quite similar, but it is a little more crisp.

I guess I'm saying the 8500 is a good card -

Louise

 

[somebody]

Hi all,
in one of my PCs I still have my glorious 8500, which at the time I bought
it, costed me a lot of money (read: many many days of hard work).
Now I have a chance to swap it (for free) with a 9600SE, that as far as I
understood is the least performing card of the 9600 family. It has a 64bit
data bus, to be more clear.
I'd wish to ask you if you suggest me to do this swap, or to keep my old
8500 instead.

Pro the 9600SE there are a couple of points:

1) memory (128MB against the 64MB of my 8500)
2) modernity (it supports DX9 effects that my 8500 doesn't support)

in favour of keeping my 8500 instead there is:
1) 128bit data bus, against the 64bit of the 9600SE

What about performance? Is there any case where the 8500 is still superior?

I always and almost exclusively use the 1024x768 resolution, for gaming.

What do you advice me to do?

Thanks a lot,
Andrea

Don't buy _any_ ATI 'SE'-chipset cards. The full versions or 'pro'
versions doesn't cost much more and performs much better.
It's not a general difference. On some benchmarks the SE may hold
their own, but on others they often fail dramatically. The lowdown is
that they're bad choices. It's been frequently stated that SE cards
are lower clocked, but that wouldn't have been such a disaster, and I
think the actual case is that they have narrower data paths.

As for comparisions with the 8500. That chipset was a success.
As long as a game doesn't ask for more eyecandy than the 8500 can
deliver, it should do fairly well. I would expect a significant
difference between it and the DX9 capable 9600 on very new graphics
intensive games though, at least in effects.

But I would estimate you're in much the same position, though lower
down, as many GF4 Ti owners. As long as their gaming still don't
really demand it, there's not much point in switching to any of the
newer medium level graphics cards.
To get an improvement, the targets need to be R9800 and FX59x or
FX6800 chipsets.
Since both ATI and nVidia are introducing new chipset generations, I'd
expect a price drop on FX5900 and R9800 technology.

ancra