The 9500 Pro should go down in history as the most value card evar!

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Gawd
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Jan 25, 2004
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I got a Ati 9500 Pro when they came out - a DX9 card with 8 pipelines for 200 bucks was the deal of the year. Or the deal of 3 years. I just tried the BF 2 demo and with dynamic shadows turned off and lighting on low and most other settings to medium I can play the game on 1024 X 768 no problem, card OC'ed to 310/310.

I've had almost 3 years of great gaming out of this vid card and I dont know of any other card that could hang so well over that time. I think the 9500 Pro is probably the best bang for the buck in hardware I've ever had in 25+ years of computing, and it's freaking amazing I can play the BF 2 demo at all. :cool:
 
I will disagree (though the 9500 Pro is a fantastic value), and throw in the GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB. A little overclocking (mixed in with luck) and you had Ti4600 speeds for much less money. The Ti4200s will run even the more recent games, but with some of the quality settings reduced.
 
Let's just say that both cards, the Ti4200 and the entire 9500 series, should be on this list. The 9800 doesn't really count because it was never intended as a "value" offering.
 
9500 Pro here, as well. Had it for almost 2.5 years. I felt so sorry for a friend of mine that bought a TI 4600 after I bought this. He paid much more for his card, and it didn't perform nearly as well in new games as they've came out. Geforce4 was decent at one time, but it has nowhere the power in new games compared to the 9500 Pro.

Even with this card still going fairly strong (plays the BF2 demo beautifully), I'm feeling the upgrade bug and pondering an AGP X850 XT. I think this long without needing an upgrade deserves a splurge on a top end card. ;)
 
sharakkhal said:
9500 Pro here, as well. Had it for almost 2.5 years. I felt so sorry for a friend of mine that bought a TI 4600 after I bought this. He paid much more for his card, and it didn't perform nearly as well in new games as they've came out. Geforce4 was decent at one time, but it has nowhere the power in new games compared to the 9500 Pro.

Even with this card still going fairly strong (plays the BF2 demo beautifully), I'm feeling the upgrade bug and pondering an AGP X850 XT. I think this long without needing an upgrade deserves a splurge on a top end card. ;)
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If the card is holding on so well I would definitely wait and splurge on a top end NEXT gen card. Be it ATi or Nvidia, either will be much faster than an x850xt....and yes I know there is always new hardware coming out....but next gen is literally less than a month away in the case of g70, maybe a few months for Ati. There is a point where it is worth waiting and I'd wager you dont get much closer than this.


Also...my 9600pro can only play the game on low settings at 800x600 though tbh I haven't tweaked anything...only changed the main slider from low to medium. I thought that while the 9500 was better due to being able to mod it to 9700, that the 9500 and 9600 had similar performance.
 
Erasmus354 said:
If the card is holding on so well I would definitely wait and splurge on a top end NEXT gen card. Be it ATi or Nvidia, either will be much faster than an x850xt....and yes I know there is always new hardware coming out....but next gen is literally less than a month away in the case of g70, maybe a few months for Ati. There is a point where it is worth waiting and I'd wager you dont get much closer than this.


Also...my 9600pro can only play the game on low settings at 800x600 though tbh I haven't tweaked anything...only changed the main slider from low to medium. I thought that while the 9500 was better due to being able to mod it to 9700, that the 9500 and 9600 had similar performance.
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I could be wrong, but ATI seemed to have realized what they had done by unleashing the 9500 Pro onto the market (an 8 pixel pipeline mid-range card). I'm pretty sure the 9600s went back to being 4 pixel pipelines. ;)

I've actually thought about waiting for R520, but I'm jonesing for a fix. I can swing a video card upgrade, but I wouldn't be able to swing a full system build for a while. Not to mention, that if you just keep waiting on new hardware before buying, it becomes a ruthless cycle. :(

Oh, and I've been playing many games at 1280x1024, without AA. NFSU2 and Half-Life2/CS:S among them. I played Doom3 at 1024x768 on medium for the hour or so that it took to realize how much it sucked. I've even been using a target switch to play BF2 at 1280x1024 after first setting the video options to high and 1024x768, and seeing that it ran very well. I don't run FRAPS or anything to keep track of FPS when playing games, but I very, very rarely notice a slowdown. It's pretty safe to say that many die-hard gamers that can tell the differenece between 50 and 60 fps wouldn't like playing with my system at my settings, but I can't really tell the difference, personally. :) The upgrade isn't really needed, it's just one of those.. "I want it" kind of things. :)
 
I would have to say that the 9700 Pro was the best Value. Sure, when it came out it was a top end expensive card. But Their are still many machines running happy today with one. If you can go 2.5 Years with one card for 300$ then you are good to go!
 
sharakkhal said:
I could be wrong, but ATI seemed to have realized what they had done by unleashing the 9500 Pro onto the market (an 8 pixel pipeline mid-range card). I'm pretty sure the 9600s went back to being 4 pixel pipelines. ;)
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Well, I think as nvidia has shown, and as ATi has now realized with the x800xl that it is actually a great thing to have a mid- midhigh range card that has the same # of pixel pipelines as the top end model but a lower clock.


And yes the 9600pro has 4 pipelines to the 9500pro 8, but the 9600 is clocked significantly higher.
 
I think the 9800se is prolly the best because it was cheap and could easily be turned into an XT.
 
taking away the chances that you had to take from buying a 9800se or 9500 np, the 9500 pro was the best bang for the buck when it came out. No doubt about it. Loved mines. I actually tried upgrading to 9700 np with 256 bit mem bandwidth and same clockspeed, and it didn't make much of a difference. The 9500 pro rocked, bottom line.
 
Yeah I like the 6600 gt I bought one 6months ago instead of the 6800 any flavor due to price came from 5200 geforce fx I have been very pleased I had the money to buy what I wanted but deceided I didn't game enough to do it. I just play uru and such games.
Overclocked to 560/1160 running good on stock cooling [my limiting factor I know].
This is a great card for 200 bucks like I said i'm well pleased.
 
no way best value/performance ratio and longest reining video card champ is definetly the

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB

no card can beat its price/performance
 
Actually, I beg to differ. I purchased the 9800 non pro, (which is a 9800 pro only clocked at 324/290). The card was 299 instead of 399 for a pro when I bought it. I was able to overclock the card easily to the pro speeds, and even a little higher. So, would that not seem a better deal? And sure, the card started literally on fire one day due to a psu mishap, but ATI replaced it for me for free. They were also as nice as to give me a 9800 pro but they only clocked the speeds to a non pro (hoping I wouldnt be a tweaker) :p
 
I agree with the thread tittle my brother still plays games on his 9100(i know its not the same card) he dont complain cos it dont lagg of course hes never seen anything better so he has no reason to complain but yeah....
 
aldy402 said:
no way best value/performance ratio and longest reining video card champ is definetly the

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB

no card can beat its price/performance
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9800 pro prices may be cheap today, but in the days when the 9700 pro was king at 399 msrp, the 199 9500 pro was cheaper than a retail ti 4600 at the time, and rocked. I think, this is what the OP is thinking about.
 
A modded 6200 is about the same thing now. <$100, can be modded to the full 8 pipes and it isn't uncommon to put a 75-100% overclock on the core.
 
digiram said:
9800 pro prices may be cheap today, but in the days when the 9700 pro was king at 399 msrp, the 199 9500 pro was cheaper than a retail ti 4600 at the time, and rocked. I think, this is what the OP is thinking about.
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QFT

All these people are coming in here talking about newer cards that perform better than a 9500, what they are failing to realise is that the thread is talking about a card that is a good value when it first came out. The 9800pro simply does not fall into that category, nor would any card that was at one time the flagship GPU imo.
 
I'm gonna throw out the 8500le. I bought that thing 3 yrs ago for $100 new. The card was already about a year old too. Just last week I upgrated to a 6800, and to be honest I can't say that I am in awe of the difference. I notice it, I can play hl2 with all the details maxed out, and I can see all the reflections and small details that the 8500le couldn't produce. BUT I could still play hl2 at 1024x768 with most settings at medium, and the game still looked impressive and was very playable. Bang-for-the-buck....great card.
 
Paully's5.0 said:
I'm gonna throw out the 8500le. I bought that thing 3 yrs ago for $100 new. The card was already about a year old too. Just last week I upgrated to a 6800, and to be honest I can't say that I am in awe of the difference. I notice it, I can play hl2 with all the details maxed out, and I can see all the reflections and small details that the 8500le couldn't produce. BUT I could still play hl2 at 1024x768 with most settings at medium, and the game still looked impressive and was very playable. Bang-for-the-buck....great card.
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You will notice a bigger difference in a game like doom 3. HL2 is not a very GPU intensive game, and does an excellent job at producing great visuals on even the lowest spec systems.
 
I almost completely agree with the first post as i owned a 9500pro......until i got a 9500 with the I memory configuration which whooped up on it.....still own it and use it today (i'm not a pc gamer mostly due to lacking internet at home...)
 
Erasmus354 said:
You will notice a bigger difference in a game like doom 3. HL2 is not a very GPU intensive game, and does an excellent job at producing great visuals on even the lowest spec systems.
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So basically the valve programmers got an A in programming while the guys programming Doom 3 got by with a C?
 
Geforce 2 GTS

That card lasted forever, and heck it still play a lot of games on low quality settings.
 
VooDoo II's for longevity not price......proof

Price i would have to give it to the GeForce 3......still ticking away.
 
going onto my 3rd year of using my TI 4200. which i paid something like 90 dollars for from NEWEGG. good deal at the time.

surprisingly enough this card overclocked very well , and that is the reason i still use it...

its a 64 mb version but supposedly the memory was faster on the 64 mb version than the 128.

can someone tell me if this is a good overclock of this card?

my core is at 279
my memory is at 649

that is like 2 mhz on each setting below the point where I see artifacting in games.

I THINK that is a very good overclock for a ti 4200, but i never really asked anyone... anyone want to inform me?

I really dont see the reason to buy a brand new video card thats going to lose its value in probably less than 2 years, I buy 1 generation behind the newest :) usually :)

Im budget minded with my computer, but with my cars.. thats different :)
 
I did my TI-4200 at 315//650 (128 meg), but I was scared I'd fry something (there were no artifacts) so i put it back down to 250/513... Now i use a softmodded 9500 -> 9700 i got for $50.

Honestly the 6200 was (if it can still be unlocked, make that IS) the super bargian of the century. Especially the PCI-E's where you could get one for like $75. I had an AGP one i paid $100 for, and I pushed the memory to 695 and the core to 450, which was the max rivatuner would let me set it had and that card was FLYING. Thats near 6600GT specs for a lot less.

But the fact that people still can play games very well today on the 9500/4200 means that they were great cards

EDIT: now the BFG 5800 Ultra that they had on woot.com for $100 was a good deal, too bad it sold out in freaking 5 minutes, I would have pulled the trigger on that baby.
 
The 9500, 9700, and 9800 cards should all down in history as possibly the longest lasting cards ever.

When are card a few years old is still relevent and often a consumer choice then you have to look at it and be amazed. And the truth is that those cards still have the power to stay in the game still. There's hardly anything that can be said that is negative about those cards.
 
I still have a 9500 pro running strong, ive owned two of them actually. Even 3 HSF's later this one is still playing all the games my lil bro does.
 
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