ATI Radeon 9500- Dead Technology or Discontinued Monster ?

[JimShady23]

My question is this....Why do they not manufacture the 9500 anymore ? I seen benchmarks on this card and it seems to slaughter any of the newer cards...and the older GF4 4600 wich was a screamer. Even outperforms cards as good at the 5700 ulta and 9600 Pro by a lot. Did they just want to push newer models and this chip was too costly or was there a flaw with it ? Cant find one anyplace on the net retail....Only e-bay and they are all used....I am looking for a low cost replacement for my BFG 5600 ultra wich is a fast card but the quality is total crap......Jagged edges on EVERYTHING !!!!!!

Whats your $0.02 ?

My thinking was I would be able to find this card for about $100 somplace. Making it a good cost effective replacment for my 5600 ultra....

 

[snowman]

try www.newegg.com or www.pricewatch.com. i dont know why they stopped or why they would have wanted to. maybe because it out performed the newer cards? i dont know if you will find one for $100. if you can find one i think they are as expensive as the 9600's.

 

[JimShady23]

Well

I found that they did discontinue the 9500.......and the reason it outperforms the 9600 Pro and XT is that it has basically the same architechture as the 9800XT 8 pipelines instead of 4 per clock cycle.....Figures leave it to marketing LoL......9800 XT's are probably just overclocked 9500's for all we know LoL

 

[iss]

the reason they stopped producing the 9500 pro was economics. it cost more to produce the mainstream 9500 pro because of the 8 pixel pipelines than it does to make the 4 pipeline 9600's.

 

[JimShady23]

As I guess with every product people somtimes like to give people the trash and keep quality in the closet.....Even if the 9600 was cheaper it is still junk compaired to the 9500 from tests I have seen.....Kinda like nividia labling there GF4 440MX a GF4 when indeed it was a GF2 hiding in fancy wrapping. God buisness sucks now a days....

 

[Nic]

You can always get a 9800SE (4 pipes, unlocks to 8 pipes if you're lucky) and softmod to 9800 Pro. That'll beat the 9500 Pro easily, and for less money too. Likewise for the 9800 non-pro (8 pipes), if you can find one, as ATI stopped manufacturing that card some time ago. It appears the ATI are getting rid of all the softmod options, and spinning out their product line into various price bands. Oh, and the 9600XT or Pro models are very good mid-range cards, with the 9600XT being pretty similar in performance (give or take a few fps) to the discontinued 9500 Pro.

 

[iss]

your best bet iis to go with a 9800 non pro board I think newegg still have some and circuit city still stock tem most places and usually have them on sale every couple of weeks for around 199.00. check the circuit city online ordering with express pick up ( at a store location near you)

 

[JimShady23]

Well

Thats the problem, I dont have $199.00 to blow...I blew $199.00 on this fricken POS 5600 Ultra no more than 2 months ago. I DONT KNOW WHY IT HAS THE JAGGED EDGES...MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE WORLD ON A GAME !!!!!! Maybe I should call BFG or even Nvidia and give them a talking to, maybe they can satisfy a disgruntled but usually faithful nvidia customer.

And with ATI it seems like they are just moving better products off the market to make way for cheaper more costly to the end user cards. It takes money to make money......But if they keep trying to stoop the customer then they wont be on top for long....after so many years trying to be #1 they shouldnt jeprodise being #1 by trying to make a cheap buck....

 

[Nic]

Re: Well

Originally posted by JimShady23
... I blew $199.00 on this fricken POS 5600 Ultra no more than 2 months ago. I DONT KNOW WHY IT HAS THE JAGGED EDGES...MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE WORLD ON A GAME !!!!!! ...

All graphics cards suffer from this effect, as its caused by the digitizing of images, and the resolution of your display. You just need to enable the Anti-Aliasing setting in your display properties for your adapter. That will fill in the jaggies with blended pixels (laymans terminology, as its actually a little more complex than that) and disguise the jaggies.