9500,worth the wait compared to 9700...?

[Randell]

A proof to what I said!

what -

'8x1 - nah, not a chance'

 

[demalion]

Found an intresting tidbit about R9500:

There will be two cards, one R9500 and the other R9500pro, the clockspeeds on both variants will be the same (275/275), both will have 128bit bus, but the Pro version will have 8pipelines, while the regular one 4 pipelines!

If that's true they need to call the Pro the 9500 and the non-Pro 9300... Vastly different architectures should have different names.

Well, as alexsok looks to be correct, I sort of agreed with you on first blush, but upon consideration disagreed. The featureset should be identical, so "vastly different architectures" is not a valid description I believe. I think the 9500 "non-Pro" are confirmation of the binning of cores with only one effective set of 4 x 1 pipelines that was discussed here earlier, and as long is it is only performance that is lost by this the name is suitable. I mean, they do have the same clock speeds.

Otherwise why not just call them 9700? I mean 4 pipes instead of 8 pipes is just as big a difference as 128 bit memory interface instead of 256 bit interface.

Is it? Not with my current understanding that the result of the pipeline change is simply less pixels processed per clock....

They will both be choking a bit, back to Ti 4600 levels I think, atleast for the Pro, on the limited bandwidth. I do wonder, looking at the 9000 Pro, what exactly are the reasons to think that outside of the lower SmoothVision performance hit that the 9500 "non-Pro" will perform any differently? To my mind the enhanced crossbar memory controller, and enhanced HyperZ, seem likely to allow it to significantlyclose the gap between the 9000 Pro and the Ti 4200, even when its enhanced geometry processing power isn't helping it in relation to the Ti 4200. What other features would come into play?

On the other hand, I hope it's true because I plan on going "pro".

Just look at it as getting 4 more pipelines than we (or, atleast, I) expected in the 9500 Pro.

 

[Randell]

indeed the 9500Pro looks potentially what the Gf4Ti4200 was - a killer perfromaing product for the price.

Those of us using lower rez's may even fing the 9500 non-pro very attractive as well.

hmm October 23rd is along way away.

 

[GetStuff]

indeed the 9500Pro looks potentially what the Gf4Ti4200 was - a killer perfromaing product for the price.

Do we even know what the price is???

 

[alexsok]

Do we even know what the price is???

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1033004236

Remember that the RADEON 9500 PRO based graphics cards will cost approximately $219, while the RADEON 9500 – about $179. Manufacturers are free to decide about the graphics memory size: either to install 64 or 128MB of DDR SDRAM.

 

[Randell]

according to so many sources ~ $179 for the 9500 and ~$219 for the 9500Pro

 

[GetStuff]

Sounds cool.

 

[sabeehali]

Thus far, the 9500 sounds like a board I hope that lots of people buy, but which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Popularizing the PS2.0/VS2.0 feature set is a wonderful thing. Developers will be encouraged to start (or continue) working on DX9 games.

In the meantime, however, the 9500 will be beaten by the 8500 and 4200 in current (multitexturing) games. With aniso+FSAA it will be competitive or superior, but probably not fast enough to be usable with those features at >=1280x1024 in most games.

I think you are missing out one thing "Early z detect" the feature that makes gf4 series better than 8500 so i think 9500 would be the sweet spot in gaming i.e. The one offering the best bang for buck.

All the new architectural changes should make it run faster than 8500 for sure. 9000 pro is only a little bit slower than 8500 at the same core speed and it doesn't have the new feaures included in the 9700 like the cross bar memory controller.