GeForce XT550 vs Radeon 9600Pro

[Prodigal]

Wonder if anyone could help please, very simple question, is the 550 better than the 9600Pro?

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

As far as I'm aware, Nvidia don't make a card called the XT550.

[Prodigal]

Sorry, typo(s), RADEON X550 256MB PCI-E

My wife caught me drooling over a 7950 card & I stupidly told her how it cost, so have had to knock that on the head for now. I found a PC kicking around with an X550 in it, but before I take out my 9600 I wanted to know if the 550 would be better or just much of a muchness.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Erm, well, it's more recent so you'll probably have some fancier DX9 features and better shader support, but I can't see you getting very much of an absolute performance increase out of it. Neither of the cards you mention are going to be really adequate for playing modern games.

What's the most you're able to spend? And are you sure you have a PCI-E mainboard?

[Prodigal]

Thanks King, that's pretty much what I was afraid of. Weird & wonderful thing in this country, you get 14 pay checks a year instead of 12, so next month I'll get double my monthly salary :beam: So in theory I could get a 8800, but as mentioned the other half doesn't share my priorities, I rekon I could get away with about 3-400€ without getting caught. I'm running an Asus P4 800, 2Gb Ram, with 320HD, the only thing raining on my parade is the stinky card :shame:

So any advice would be very much appreciated :yes:

[doc_bean]

Get something relatively cheap (200-300€) and upgrade again in a year or so when DX10 has matured somewhat ?

I have a GeForce 7950GT 512mb BTW, it's a very nice card, cost less than 300 I believe (I got it as part of my new system).

[Shaun]

If you have either the XT550 or the 9600Pro then its time to upgrade.

[R'as al Ghul]

Prodigal,

as BKS said you need to know if you've an AGP slot or a PCI-e on your mainboard.
If you have a PCI-e slot than you can have the ATI x1300 256MB for under 100 Euros. If you need a new board, CPU and Graphics card, you'll need to spend the 300-400 you're mentioning.

R'as

[DukeofSerbia]

X550 = 9600Pro

X550 is PCI-Express version of 9600Pro.

[screwtype]

Thanks King, that's pretty much what I was afraid of. Weird & wonderful thing in this country, you get 14 pay checks a year instead of 12, so next month I'll get double my monthly salary :beam: So in theory I could get a 8800, but as mentioned the other half doesn't share my priorities, I rekon I could get away with about 3-400€ without getting caught. I'm running an Asus P4 800, 2Gb Ram, with 320HD, the only thing raining on my parade is the stinky card :shame:

So any advice would be very much appreciated :yes:

There's a good comparison of currently available GFX cards over at tomshardware.com right now. Here's (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/31/the_best_video_cards_for_your_money/) a direct link.

The cards are compared by price bracket, so you should have little trouble finding one to suit your available budget.