9600XT, it's clocked at 500/300 instead of 400/300. It also has an overdrive feature which we don'T know how good it works yet because there are no drivers supporting it right now. What it does is overclock the card during games depending on the temperature of the card. Plus it comes with HL2 (a coupon for it, of course)
Just know that HL2 is not included, but you do get a coupon for it so you can pick it up, whenever it comes out, and that's not until April of next year.
How much difference would +100Mhz have on a card? I mean Is there liek any noticable difference? And is that the only Difference between the cards besides the name? ~Temporal~
The hsf is different, there is a temp sensor, it has the overdrive feature (not yet supported, even though the cat 3.9 are out), and it comes with hl2. The 100 mhz increase makes a difference (not a huge one, but a noticeable one). If you add HL2 to that, I think it's worth the price, if the prices are anything like at my local shop. Of course HL2 won't be out for a while, so it may seem like a ripoff if you consider that. EDIT: Basically, the two best features of the card are unusable as we speak: HL2 and overdrive.
read: This its very detailed review of the 9600XT/Pro/9500 pro/ and nvidia fx 5600 - 5900 FC ultra i've just read it.. and in the bench mark comparisons for all games, the 9500 pro 128mb seems to perform the same or better than either the 9600pro or 9600XT considering the clock differences e.t.c i dont play alot of games, but i am a halflife fanatic and its still the only game that i think was worth spending money on. the 9500pro will not perform anywhere near as well in games that use: advanced pixel rendering and shading.. such as HL2.. so we are left with: 96/96pro/96XT/98pro/9800XT (considering i wont touch nvidia -- we have an ugly history) + the fact that.. i cant spend more than 550 on my machine and the spec that is in my signature.. costs 530. i dont mind upgrading later on.. but i dont want 2 have 2 buy a new grphx card after xmas as its not worth it.. maybe i should degrade to 256mb ram / a 40gb hhd IDE? and get a 9700 pro? and then after xmas in january sales get another 512mb ram and a 80 - 120gb sata hhd? i want 2 have all the non-upgradable parts in place for a good system to later upgrade upon.. mainly grphx / mobo and cpu..
Yes. The 9500 is faster, but ATi discontinued it because the chip was expensive to produce on the .15 micron process. You can always wait for something better, but as it stands ATi has a better DX9 implementation. For once, THG has it unbiased and correct. Yes, I don't like THG. Their content is poor for starters and up until recently have presented a very poor picture of AMD, among other things that just don't give a realistic view of the product.
