9500 Pro is a full DX9 card and has full feature of 9700 Pro (currently the
best) apart from half of the redering line disabled by ATi (can be enabled
by software).  Ti4600 is only a DX8 card.  Under standard benchmark, 9500
Pro either pair or beat any Geforce4 card, when FSAA is in use, 9500 Pro is
50% to 100% faster than GF4.  New card from ATi to replace 9500 Pro is "9600
Pro" which is SLOWER than 9500 Pro (about 93% of performance by benchmark).

The same story also goes with nVidia, the new 5600 Pro is slower than old
good 4200 in almost all benchmarks, only in few FASS tests, it can beat
4200, but all time slower than ATi card.

So, get 9500 Pro while you can (MUST be Pro, none Pro version is not worth
the money), ATi will surely stop all of them becasue they are too good, that
even hurt ATi itself on high-end sales (software mod can change 9500 Pro to
9700 Pro)

If you so care about 3Dmark03 result, none of current nVidia card will get
good result, as it requires DX9 card to run properly.  But if you can find a
cheap good nVidia 4200 128Mb card (with fast memory is a must), then it is
not a bad deal either, consider you can overclock it to the level of 4600.
at the moment, 4200 is the only card worth to buy from nVidia.

Still I'd strongly suggest to consider ATi 9500 Pro, and if you need more
power, get 9700 Pro (when its price dropped, new 9800 Pro is about to come
out).

Jun Qian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Moderately Serious Graphics card?


> Jun, thanks for that.
> How do you reckon it stacks against the Sparkle SP7200T6-PT, which is
> powered by a GeForce4 Ti4600?
>

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