Gigabyte v Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro

[mike_w]

I've heard that the gigabyte version of the radeon 9600 pro is better and cheaper, but i haven't found anywhere that it can be bought.

When i went to the gigabyte website there were two versions, with 400mhz and 500mhz core clock speeds. How much differnce would this make?

[shamus21]

don`t bother with gigabyte, had two cards from them in the past and they just don`t Overclock very well had to rip the gpu`s fan off and put a better one on.

[Austin]

The 500mhz core is that of a 9600XT, by far the most vital diff between the 9600PRO and the 9600XT. PRO=400/600, XT=500/600. The 25% faster core enables the 9600XT to put in perf close to the 9500PRO at long last, of course the 9500PRO's processing power is much higher esp when you o/c. Anyway since 9600PRO should o/c to around 500-550mhz it matters little, XT tend to o/c to around 580-600mhz (from what little we know). If it uses the PRO core then all they are doing is giving you a little o/c you could do yourself ... good if you don't want to o/c as you get XT perf from your PRO.

Giga should be good but Sapphire are widely regarded as the best 3rd party Radeon manu.

[SilentDeath]

havent heard much about built by ati cards, but i cant see them being much better than sapphire ones tbh

[Austin]

Apparently Sapphire actually build many of ATI's own cards, certainly well known for building ATI's official ATI branded OEM cards. They're certainly known to have a very close relationship with ATI. Since the days of the Rad8500 ended (when Radeons were stupidly priced compared to nVidia) ATI have virtually ceased selling their own brand outside of the US+C, that's why they are very rare in the UK.