Graphics Some Help on What card pls :)

Just now I have got a gforce 2 mx so an upgrade is well over due tbh.
I don't want to spent much more than £200. And I don't know a great deal about graphics cards so some help would be much appreciated.
Just now im considering the:

Creative GeForce 4 Ti4800SE 128MB DDR + TV out + DVI 8x AGP Retail
Price: £137.00 (£160.98 Inc VAT)

and

Hercules ATI 128MB DDR Rad 9500 Pro 3D Prophet 8x AGP TV-out DVI AGP Retail
Price: £142.50 (£167.44 Inc VAT)

Are there better cards in my price range? Is it worth paying extra
for the 128MB?
Is it worth getting 128mb over 64mb, would 64mb cards be able to handle most games in the near future? Half Life 2 for instance.

All im after is a card that can smoothly run more recent games ... I get serious fps lag atm with my current card.
Any recomendations or suggestions would be very helpful.
thanks folks.

[ 1.7GHz P4, 256MB Rambus RDRAM ]

 

For HL2 you'll probably wish you'd gone with a 9800 or waited till the next cards (depending on the current AA situations... anyone know if there's confirmation that ATI is gonna fix the problem in the next drivers?)
But I'd definitely go with a 9500 or 9700 over the ti4800 (unfortunately </nvidia-fanboy> )

Edit: and definitely go 128 at least. 64m just don't cut it for new stuff.

 

definately get the 9500 pro over ti4200 anyday! The 9500 pros are pretty damn fast and fewer people stock them so get in quick. Also you could do with another 256meg RD in your board.

 

It was actually the Ti4800SE that he was thinking of, Bindi, which is more like a Ti4400 I believe.



You can get a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9700 128MB DDR DVI/TV - Retail for £185. It's not the Pro though. This is weird, the 9500 pro seems faster than the 9700 normal.

9500 Pro = 275MHz core / 275MHz ram
Normal 9700 = 275Mhz core / 270Mhz ram
Pro 9700 = 325MHz core / 310MHz ram

 

Between the 9500 pro and the 9700 I personally would go with the 9700 series card, if pricing permits, as both have 8 redering pipelines enabled and clock speeds are almost matched the 9700 has a few arbitrary features enabled on it the 9500pro does not such as the Smartshader 2.0 which is the second generation of ATI's programmable vertex/pixel shader.

However if pricing doesnt permit I would highly recomend the 9500 as well. As far as running half life 2 all of the afor mentioned cards should handle it quite well if not with anti-aliasing cranked up to the max at least moderate to high eye candy enabled.

*edit* also for upcoming games (eg half life 2 doom III, the later still up for lots of speculation as far as system requirements) I would definatly recomend 128 mb of video ram, the performance gain in games which contain very large and detailed textures will more than justify the price, just make sure you have the system memory to back up your video card.

 

so is the 9500 better than the 9600?

 

from the reviews i have been reading, the 9600 pro is slightly worse than the 9500 pro, due to less pixel pipelines, but... the 9600p has about 125 Mhz on the 9500 p...

i Just bought my card, and i actually went with the 9600 pro, by Tyan... due to pricing, and availability...

9500 pros run for about 200-220
9600 pros run for about 140-160

do a search for "9600 pro vs 9500 pro" in google and like 3 or 4 good reviews come up...

or check out
hardocp.com

 

Sparkus got the 9700 non-pro last week. I installed it for him and overclocked it to 9700 pro speeds. It runs well I hear, not bad for under £200.

 

9600 Pro. Great value IMHO.