Will 9500 pro be okay for now?

[jschickel]

I have a P4 1.3 gHz with 128 RDRAM. I know its not the greatest system...but I just ordered a 9500 pro and I want to know if my games, Tribes 2, Warcraft 3, and Americas Army, will run smoothly on the default video settings.

Im not looking for maxed out 1600x1200 graphics here. I am going to be upgrading my RAM to 512 in a month or so, but I just want to know if I will still be able to play my games smoothly on the DEFAULT settings.

Tanks:grinthumb

 

[LNCPapa]

You should have no probs at all running ALL those games at default or even slightly higher resolutions. Warcraft 3 may even run well at 1600x1200 on that setup. Tribes 2 will be the only game I'm unsure about as I haven't installed it in quite some time and I never had the performance problems everyone else had - even though I had a lesser machine than many at that time. The only probs I had with Tribes 2 was the busted sound for SMP machines (I was running it on a dual 733@810)

LNCPapa

 

[jschickel]

wow..thanks! thats not the answer i got on other forums. Some people told me that I would barely be able to play saying that 256 RAM would be the ABSOLUTE minimum that I would need. But if you think so.....GREAT!!!!

Just out of curiosity....your saying that it will run great on 128 ram...right? your not saying the great setup will be 512..right?

 

[negroplasty]

jschickel,
Here are some tests Hot Hardware ran on both the Radeon 9500 PRO and GeForce 4 Ti4600. As you can see, the 9500 PRO is not far behind the TI4600 at all, in fact, the 9500 PRO beats the TI4600 with antialiasing enabled; sometimes even at higher levels . The card you are buying is far from dead, yet far from the $399 range, but who cares about that?

I think most games will run reasonably well as LNCPapa said, but with 128MB RAM, I would expect a few stutters every now and then. If I were in your situation, I would get a memory upgrade before I got a 9500 PRO as your memory will be holding the video card back. 512MB should do just fine; even 256MB would be an improvement that you could see. Nevertheless, I see no reasons why the games you listed shouldn't run perfectly on your machine, after all; your machine is far above the recommended system requirements for them.

My point being, the TI4600 (my video card) can handle anything I throw at it these days without a blink of an eye, therefore your video card should be able to perform roughly the same if not better. My processor speed may help me to receive good performance, but 1.3GHz is still perfectly capable to achieve maximum performance out of a 9500PRO - you would obviously see a slight improvement with a faster processor, but as I said, yours is just fine! Good luck with your new card :grinthumb !

 

[jschickel]

okay cool! i can deal with a few blips now and then (i hope that is what you mean). I realize that more memory will be a great help and I am 100%T sure I am upgrading to 512 within the next month or so...so thanks! :grinthumb

 

[negroplasty]

Glad we could help! Be sure to introduce yourself here, TechSpot is a very friendly place with a lot of knowledgeable members; I hope you stick around !

 

[Rick]

The 9500 Radeon is more than enough for your system.

You may want to look into getting more memory as well.

 

[Nick]

Definately should run well, smooth fps in pretty much all games i would suspect. Definately might want to upgrade the memory though.

 

[Strakian]

There's something to be said for the 9500 Pro for sure. Check out my system, it's pretty budget but effective none the less... the PC cost me around 700 to build. Not bad when you're looking at the specs from an AMD perspective.

I did extensive research on "budget" and "pricey" videocards. I found from both the benchmark comparisons, and having used the card myself for about 3 months, that it's a stellar card for the measley ~$150 to get one. Mine is a Sapphire Radeon, recommended by all means!

The other guys are def right about more memory etc. IMO, any new or upgraded PC looking to last awhile or be efficient needs a MINIMUM 512 MB DDR/RAMBUS/RDRAM. With XP and other fancy programs, (games included), this is a must. I'm sure my fellow enthusiats would agree with me on that one!

(PS I'm a new member )

Another note on my system though if you're interested, I recently discovered i probably should have purchased an nforce2 chipset doh! the VIA still works though, the KT400 not being terribly stable at 400Mhx bus, but very stable at 333Mhz.

Good luck with your upgrade!

 

[young&wild]

After te 512 RDRAM upgrafe don't forget about a cpu upgrade to boost your performance further!