To coincide with the latest DX9 games I need to update my old gfx card for something that can make HL2 look half-decent.

After a lot of research and considering my budget I 'm going to get an ATI 9600 pro. However there are quite a few models to choose from. I need one with at least 128mb ram and 8x. I'm trying to decide between the following.

Tyan Tachyon G9600 pro
Sapphire Atlantis 9600 pro
Gigabyte 9600 pro

Does anyone know which is the best performer, if there is any difference between them?
Plus I want to OC it but keep the stock cooling.

Thanks:grinthumb

PC Zone have just done a round up of 16 of the current crop of accelerators from ati and nvidia.
I could'nt find anything regarding the Tyan Tachyon but the gigabyte and sapphire offer virtually identical benchmark figures but the gigabyte was voted pc zones 'editors choice' and garnered a score of 90 as opposed to sapphires score of 85.
The gigabyte got the higher score due to it being priced at £122 as opposed to sapphires £145 making it the better value buy.

Get the cheapest one. They all perform the same.

They all perform the same, however I recon Sapphire will be your best bet for quailty, and OCing.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=51440

Tyan Tachyon 9600Pro for £117.49 and they are supposed to be one of the better ones, due to the hardware monitoring features, that allow it to throttle the GPU down if it gets too hot when oveclocked.

Yeah I'ma PCZone subscriber so I saw the gfx cards round up, but I can't find the gigabyte any cheaper then the sapphire where I have looked, and people do say the Sapphire OC's way better.
The only thing that worries me about the Tyan is the pretty poor Ram that it has, and the Ram on it is infact OC'd out of the box so it matched the speeds of the other 9600 pro's while cutting costs.

So I'm really drawn towards the Sapphire at the moment, but the Gigabyte could also be good.

Think I'll see which I can get for the cheapest and get that.

Remember to look at what is included in the bundles. Maybe you'll find a game that you like :=).

gigabyte 9600 pro

Hey guys.

I also am about to buy a 9600pro graphics card.
After reading many reviews in the last couple of months (including that pc zone review) i have decided to buy the gigabyte version.
The thing is, it is supposed to be 122 pounds but after a long,long search, the cheapest i can find it is 133 pounds delivered.
Can anyone help?

ps. I found a powercolor 9600pro locally for 105 pounds. Does anyone know how this measures up. i cannot find a group review with this card and the gigabyte version.

davros

sapphire makes built by ati cards i believe

All 9600 Pros are the same in the chip it uses. I would for the cheapest and you really won't noticed the performance difference between different card manufacturers.