Ati Radeon 9600XT or 9800SE?

3dmark03 is a crap, 01 isn't, because it scales well with whatever hardware you upgrade.

The 9800 SE has 2 different distinct varients, one of them has the Floppy Drive
power connecter toward the middle of the board this is the 128bit version, which
IS slower then a 9600XT. The Other 9800SE made
by Hercules, uses a Molex connector, at the stock 9700 position, this is the
256bit 9800SE, but as far as I know they are no longer in production.

No matter what the SE is only a 4 pipe card.

If you can luck out and find one of the SE's with the Molex type power
connector near the edge of the board u may be in luck, Rivatuner can
unlock the 4 pipelines and you have a poor mans 9800 Pro.

But using stock settings, the 9600XT stomps the 9800SE hands
down.

hope this is of any help.

flux

ok let me re-iterate what i said last time. the 9600XT is technically faster than 9800se yes. but they are both crippled pipleine cards the only differnece that i know of is the ability to unlock the other pipelines in the 9800 therefore making it a pro of sorts. thus far though the best budget videocard on performace tests in the geforce fx 5700 if you dont beleieve me read real publications like maximum pc. The 9600Xt is good for the price but it all depends on the maufactuer supposedly the 9600XT is supposed to be on a 128bit memory bus and any 9800 is 256 the caveat is that the 9800 se is cripple clocked and pipelined but those problems can be remedied with software where as the 9600 cant. and about the 256MB thing ddr2 may have higher latency but much higher bandwith making it perform better saying ddr is a better performer than ddr2 isnt correct and i will stand by that one. thats like saying SDRAM is faster than rambus because it has lower latency times...it just isnt true. bandwith and clockspeed is king. latency is important dont get me wrong but if you have fast RAM with lots of bandwith a few extra microseconds of latency wont hurt ya a whole lot. ill take speeed and bandwith over fast response anyday. ram is supposed to hold and push info period. how fast it responds to command queues is important but negligible at those speeds. unless were talking cas 1 compared to cas 4 or higher. but hey if ya like the 9600XT go buy it...but id recommend 5700 fx right now. unless you have nvidia in that case save your pennies and buy a 128MB 9800 Pro its worth the extra 75-100 bucks.

Originally posted by interman@Feb 20 2004, 06:59 PM
3dmark03 is a crap, 01 isn't, because it scales well with whatever hardware you upgrade.

i hate futuremark because its kinda like a dyno test...it tells ya how much horsepower and torque you have but can in no way provide info of a cars true performace due to gearing and tranny performace and vehicle weight vs drag. 3dmark is much the same. if you really wanna cruch your 3d card and see what you cpu base has got as far as balls download the halo demo and do a FPS test. so far alot of pubs has found this and aqaumark to be the best tests around because they provide real-world performace so to speak beacuse Halo is a real game and aquamark is an updated version of aquanox gameplay with pixel shader 2 stuff. so give then two a try...hell Halo even makes my computer choke at 1600x1200 as does aquamark with 4x AA and 16X anisotropic filtering. oh yeah and i hear aquamark takes advantage of hyperthreading for ya dual cpu and HT nuts out there

well...I guess I got that for 9800 pro
the price diff is like 80bucks so I guess it worths it
but I went to a store and they told me they could gimme the fx5900ultra 1100 xp 128mb with same price...so I dunno, the 5900ultra seem to have very nice details...

the problem with the halo benchmark is that it's all mainly cinematic footage, and very little run-and-gun. The average framerate you end up with would be more accurate if you actually did what a player would do.

I think 9800se is good as to 9600tx.
9800se + little sofmod=9800pro ;)
its my 9800se bench score
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7580145
think about it! :thumbup: