[Hammer]

Help me make a decision on an upgrade here, guys.

Radeon 9500 Pro performs like a GF4 Ti4600, and will cost me $300 Cdn.

Radeon 9700 (OEM) will likely cost around $500 Cdn.

Should I go for a mixed upgrade (CPU and vid card), or just drop the cash on the better vid card? I've read X-bit labs CPU scaling review of the 9700, it that seems to suggest that I should move up from my XP 1700+.

Current rig: XP 1700+ , Radeon 8500LE 64MB, 512MB RAM.

[WIDOWMAKER99]

hey hammer i voted for the 9500 but really your cpu should handle it .. and give you a performance boost

from what i have read the 9500 blows away the geforce 4 ti 4600 series as far as full scene antialising

it takes little (well ok some but not near as much ) of a performance hit like the nvidia cards do ..ATI is acually a generation ahead of nvidia at this point ..whatever the nv30 holds .. will be behind ..ATI has snuck up stole the crown and made ..well a better card and GPU

and i have to say it once again ..

i LOVE MY RADEON 8500 !

read the reveiws bro ..the 9500 acually performs as well as a geforce ti 4600 in miost applications ..and better in games ..especially if you wanna enable fsaa and ansotriopic filtering and make your games look better

new drivers from ati work ..no longer are they any issie

[Hellwalker]

I would go with the cpu/video card upgrade. You'll be more impressed with overall performance.

[BubbaJudge]

i would say that if you are going for straight graphics bench scores, go with the 9700. ive found that the vidcard makes far more difference than a cpu. i think the 9700 would gain far more points than the 9500+cpu

now if you are looking for an all around improvement, i agree with Hellwalker, you will find more satisfaction from the 9500+cpu.