Video card off brand 9800 pro ??

[MeatHead_NJ]

Hey all,
Long time no see nor hear,

Winters comming, time to warm up by the glow of a CRT in the basement playing BF1942/V.

I'm Thinking of making a new budget box for home, you know the whole passdown thing, (letting sPeedy tWeety use something with more then 64mg video when he comes over)

Anyways my old box has an ATI 9600pro 128 (and was very happy with it at the end of my last season of fun, for those who care i dropped off shortly after HoT came to town, got my rear spanked one to many times),

I was looking at some off bran 9800pros as part of my upgrade/passdowns (saphire, rosewill @ $180). Anyone used or seen reviews of the ATI built vs. ATI Powered.

Everything else ive planned in has me under $400
Asus board (deluxe, same as i have but with the 400mhz bus)
AMD XP3000 barton (Currently XP 1500)
NEC DvD +-
Sata WD 7200.

So as you see im not going to launch a bunch of $'s into this.
In my world i feel better about constant upgrades on the low end then Dropping my wadd on the High end. Besides gives me something to do.

Anythoughts, Opinions?

Oh, anyone suggest any "reputable" vendors mine is no longer just a blank web page for the last 6 months.
(essenucompu) guess im not breaking any rules by posting a vendor that is no longer. Anyone ever deal with Newegg or BZboyz, if you dealt with anyone closer to NJ id love to hear.

[LordShard]

I would goto http://www.pricewatch.com and look for a 9800pro/9800 XT for the cheapest price possible, then check on http://www.resellerratings.com to see if that seller is legit (anything lower than a 7.5 your taking a HUGE chance, I try to stick around 8.0+ personally). If they are legit, congratulations on your new vid card.

I just did a search for a 9800 pro/xt, they ar eonly doing searches for 256MB XTs so I looked at the 128MB pro.

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=10006&ad=pwatch

I have dealt with allstarshop.com, their rating is 8.25 and when I dealt with them, they sent it quickly, in fact, I got my mobo before my processor from newegg.com.

And whne I had to RMA my mobo a few months ago, they replied very fast for a copy of my receipt.
----------------------

Sapphire RADEON 9800 SE ADVANTAGE 128MB DDR AGP 8X DVI/TVO (OEM)
By Sapphire Technology Limited
Powered by ATI 9800SE GPU
Microsoft® DirectX® 9 support
128MB DDR RAM
Our Price: $127.00

Dirt cheap for a great card. Lowest price on pricewatch for a 9800.

[LordShard]

I read some reviews from the resseller ratings and many people complain for long RMA times, when they shouldn't send the RMA product to them, but to the manufacturer. o_O
Odd.

[Agent-Commando]

Originally posted by LordShard
I would goto http://www.pricewatch.com and look for a 9800pro/9800 XT for the cheapest price possible, then check on http://www.resellerratings.com to see if that seller is legit (anything lower than a 7.5 your taking a HUGE chance, I try to stick around 8.0+ personally). If they are legit, congratulations on your new vid card.

I just did a search for a 9800 pro/xt, they ar eonly doing searches for 256MB XTs so I looked at the 128MB pro.

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=10006&ad=pwatch

I have dealt with allstarshop.com, their rating is 8.25 and when I dealt with them, they sent it quickly, in fact, I got my mobo before my processor from newegg.com.

And whne I had to RMA my mobo a few months ago, they replied very fast for a copy of my receipt.
----------------------


Dirt cheap for a great card. Lowest price on pricewatch for a 9800.

Er, stay away from any video card with SE (Special Edition) in it, those are the worst in their lineup... Not worth it.

[Sayntfuu Profile]

I recently built a budget box myself. I shopped exclusively on newegg for my cpu, ram, case, and hd. My gpu came from a friend but I am looking at a 9800 pro 256bit 256meg for $265 right now.

I always have good service with newegg and they are pretty easy to deal with in my experience. As far as tier-2 card makers go rosewill and saphiore are good bargains IMHO.

fuu

[Wally[EGG]]

ive got the celestica brand radeon 9800 pro 256mb / 256 bit and its pretty damn good, works great for hl-2, cs source and battlefield vietnam. also got it from newegg

[PhantomEagle]

Ecost.com, pricegrabber.com, bizrate.com, I personally got my 9800 pro, 256 mg, for $249, from Ecost.com, also if ya need DVD+R's, they have a 100-pack Ridata brand, for $40, and atm, there is a $10 rebate, which is cheapest I ve found, cya.

[SkiloDog2000 Profile WebsiteYIM]

im still runnin my 128mb geforce4 mx440. need new card
thinkin about goin a step below the 6800 in a 256mb model

[LordShard]

Well the SE is allot cheaper then the next runner up which is a 256 9800 Pro.

[shockwave203 Profile]

Meathead, it doesn't really matter which brand of card you buy. built by ATI and sapphire are the same exact card, powercolor, MSI, ASUS are all good.

just read the card description and make sure it's 256 bit, not 128 bit. (not the same thing as 128 MB of ram)

some brands use RAM that can't be overclocked as high as some of the others (for example, my powercolor 9700np used ram that could't overclock as high as a BBATI 9700np) but if you're not a hardcore overclocker it really doesn't matter because they all perform the same.

[SkiloDog2000 Profile WebsiteYIM]

i was thinkin about the 256mb 6600.
heres the spec sheet http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?Part_Number=256-P2-N369-TX&tab=specs
any thoughts, good/bad, im clueless as ive only had 2 cards
one thing that puzzles me is the need for a pci express client, pci express is a new kind or ram right. how do i find out if i got the components needed

[LordShard]

PCI-E is not ram. It's a new kind of PCI slot. It's a bus architecure like normal PCI, but has it where cards that need more bandwitdh can take what they need to run.

In the form of 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x or soemthing like that

I think 1x or 2x is normal PCI speed, then 4x would be 2 times faster or something. 8x WOuld the equivilent of 16xAGP? I dunno. But I think it goes up to 32x or something.

[Sayntfuu Profile]

The x16 or x8 on PCI-E cards denotes the number of pipes used to move data to and from the GPU. You will need a pci-e mobo to use it, it is a different slot than AGp or PCI.

PCI-E SLI is something else to think about, although building machines based on it right now is problamatic as the mobo's are not really avilable yet at decent prices and it is only supported by special Nvidia Geforce cards. It does allow you to run to cards of the same type and chipset to run together interleaving frames between the 2 gpu. anandtech.com has a good article talking about SLI.

fuu

[MeatHead_NJ]

Originally posted by Sayntfuu
I recently built a budget box myself. I shopped exclusively on newegg for my cpu, ram, case, and hd. My gpu came from a friend but I am looking at a 9800 pro 256bit 256meg for $265 right now.

I always have good service with newegg and they are pretty easy to deal with in my experience. As far as tier-2 card makers go rosewill and saphiore are good bargains IMHO.

fuu

Thanks for the feedback.

I wound up going to neweggs, even with the NJ tax. WOW.

First of all i ordered just afternoon Thursday, (eastern) and used the saver shipping, i got the stuff on Saturday (even thou it wasn't schedualed for delivery till monday and estimated to be delivered on the 21st, and thats with the christmas rush)

I got ordered the Saphire 9800 256 ram oem, and got a 9800 Pro, im not going to complain (I dont know how you can tell the dif without the box but everything tests it as a Pro chipset) I guess they grabbed the wrong card :-) .

i also went for a full upgrade alum case/chipset/Sata and all. so much for budget. Kept the overall cost under 800 Including shipping and tax. i could have saved another 180 if i could have kept myself away from the case and powersupply.