New 3D card....any suggestions....[Resolved]

No, you were being steered away from a 9800SE which is a crippled 9800Pro....the 9600XT is actually the "best-o-breed" 9600 and a good gaming card.

Don't get me wrong, the 9800 Pro is much better...but the 9600 Pro has proven itself to be more than adequate to me in most games and I figured it's worth mentioning.

If you can afford to get the 9800 Pro, I'd highly recomend it over the 9600 XT. The 9800 pro will be much more "future-proof" than the 9600, (although I think I have to go and slam my fingers in a car door for typing the term "future-proof" as I HATE that term ), but I find the 9600 pro to be enough for now.

Far Cry is the first game that I can tell a noticeable performance difference 'tween my 9700 Pro & 9600 Pro, so if you're looking for something to run upcoming titles well I'd get the 9800 Pro.

 

Yeah, if you're planning to get serious and use the card I'd definately recomend the 9800 pro.

Technically the 9800 XT is the best card available right now, but again it's by such a small margin to the 9800 pro that it really ain't worth the money.

 

Since you're not a big a gamer you might consider a retail ATI 9600XT. According to Viperlair the 2D quality of the 9600XT was better overall than even the renowned Matrox… 1 2

I just bought one and the quality of this card amazes me. Low power consumption, very cool running, quiet hsf setup, excellent display quality and decent gaming performance. It even came with a free HL2 voucher as a bonus. The ATI 9600XT is a little more expensive than most of the other 9600XT's but is worth it just for the quality factors alone.

If you are a demanding gamer then the 9800 would be more suitable.

 

wait for next gen cards you'll be waiting at least 2 months for the flagship and mid range makes an appearance around a month after. your talking 3 months at least and I doubt ati will make their mid range card like 9500 pro again. Their not going to make the same mistake of a mid range low profit high performance card. Also you'd be paying top dolla too . That is if everything gets released in 2 months as rumers seem to suggest.

 

Also if your a developer why are you buying gamer cards you'll probably go farther with a firegl care even if its low end.

 

yea some of them are but some are relatively the same price. From what I hear you posting it seems that your only into developing and if so its probably better for you to get a workstation graphics card. Even if it doesnt match 9800 pro with 9800 pro specs.

I just thought that if your only a developer and not a gamer you might want to get a workstation graphics card which even thou more expensive would most likely offer you more benefits to what ever enviroment program or graphical architectures that you might be interested heres a small paragraph telling you about the key differences


When you compare ATI’s workstation products to a high-end 3D game card the requirements and differences are substantial. For example, workstation boards are used to create the models/environments you see in your games while gaming boards are designed to play the game.

While game requirements are focused on high frame rates in one window - “Play-Itâ€￾ - the workstation product needs to address the problems of working with very advanced & complex applications that simultaneously run in wire-frame and shaded mode with numerous windows and menus being opened or closed - “Create-Itâ€￾. Workstation products are also designed to handle much larger files that are in millions of polygons compared to the average game that is approx 50 thousand polygons