Ati 9800 Pro question

[Revol]

First off I know this is in the wrong forum but I put it in the hardware forum but it's kinda quiet over there so I've posted it here too.

I'm currently using a Sapphire 9600 Atlanis card but feel the time has come to upgrade a little.
I've found a Canyon Radeon 9800 pro 128mb for

[Chunkey]

Sapphire is one of the better manufacturers out there, and for the 9800 Pro, its probably the safest bet to go for.  I own a  Sapphire 9800 Pro myself and I love it.  With my 1GB of ram and A64 3000+ I can run FS9 at full settings and games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 at really high settings.  

As much as I recommend this card, going from a 9600 to 9800 doesn't seem like its worth your money.  

My suggestion would be to buy more ram (that is if you have less than 1gb)  and if you feel confident enough, overclock you video card.  100pounds is a lot of money to be dishing out for the amount of performance gain.  

If you do go for the card, check out ATi's trade in deal, where they give you 50$ (i think US) back if you give them your old card.  www.ati.com.


hope this helps

[JBaymore]

Check the specs on the 9600 versus the 9800 on Tom's Hardware... it is a significant change.  The 9600 really didn't do the job on fs9.  I had a 9600 which I kept for only a short while before going to a 9800XT.  

best,

...................john

[Revol]

Yeah,it was the graph that someone posted showing the frame rates between Ati and Nvidia cards that got me thinking about an upgrade.
I've got 512mb of ram at the moment but I'm probably going to get that up to 1gb too.The 9600 I've got can't be overclocked,not even a little.Plus the 9800 pro can be soft modded to nearly 9800 xt spec.
Was more worried about getting a card from a company I've neverheard of.Saying that,I've been watching the stock levels at the shop I saw the Canyon card for sale in and they sold 8 of them yesterday.