Radeon 9250

  • Thread starter Thread starter AberTech
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AberTech

How does the 9250 compare to the Radeon 9000 and in particular against the
Geforce FX5200 (what i have now)?

Any links to benchmark performances?
 
AberTech said:
How does the 9250 compare to the Radeon 9000 and in particular against the
Geforce FX5200 (what i have now)?
Click to expand...

The 9250 is simply a 9200 with DX9 support. It's slow, 240Mhz core/ 200Mhz
memory, 128bit and basically a low budget, low bandwidth card. The 9000 is
basically the same card, but with AGP4X and DX8 capability. The 9200 gives
AGP 8X support, and the 9250 gives AGP8X and DX9 support. Seeing as how even
a 9800XT or X800XT can't saturate the AGP8X bus, it's a moot point. Going
from a 9000 to a 9250 is a pointless "upgrade". A 128bit FX5200 is directly
comparable to a 9250 card in terms of bandwidth, DX9 and AGP8X support. If
you have a 128bit FX5200 Ultra, it's actually a downgrade to go to a 9250.
 
Augustus said:
The 9250 is simply a 9200 with DX9 support. It's slow, 240Mhz core/ 200Mhz
memory, 128bit and basically a low budget, low bandwidth card. The 9000 is
basically the same card, but with AGP4X and DX8 capability. The 9200 gives
AGP 8X support, and the 9250 gives AGP8X and DX9 support. Seeing as how
even a 9800XT or X800XT can't saturate the AGP8X bus, it's a moot point.
Going from a 9000 to a 9250 is a pointless "upgrade". A 128bit FX5200 is
directly comparable to a 9250 card in terms of bandwidth, DX9 and AGP8X
support. If you have a 128bit FX5200 Ultra, it's actually a downgrade to
go to a 9250.
Click to expand...

Hate to chime in some bad news but the 9250 is in fact a Dx 8.1 card. And a
slow one at that. You may be thinking about the 9550 because it IS a Dx 9
card and the cheapest one at that.

You are right about it being pointless though. For a budget system I would
go with a 9600 minimum for any system. A used 9500 is actually even faster
if he can find one.

FWIW AGP8x texture swapping doesn't do a thing so wouldn't even wory about.
99.99% of systems will never use the agp texture swapping and if they do
then your PC is most likely in trouble anyway so AGP4x and 8x is mostly
marketing hype and doesn't really do a thing for bandwith as that is not
what texture swapping is about.

He might consider doing what Im going to do and that is simply upgrade my
mainboard for PCIE with onboard ATi 9600 with option to either upgrade using
PCIE slot later or even adding a PCIE card later to run a second monitor.
i.e. onboard 9600 plus 9800 in PCIE slot etc.

Downside is that the ATi AMD express boards are not on market yet due to a
glitch. Should not be long though.
 
Augustus said:
Hate to chime in some bad news but the 9250 is in fact a Dx 8.1 card. And
a

Acccording to ATI and Sapphire's website, the 9250 is a DX9.0 compliant
card.
http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9250.asp
Click to expand...
Nope.

Read what it sez:...

"Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 8.1 and DX9 compliance and the latest
OpenGL® functionality"

Key word here is "compliant" i.e. compatible.

com·pli·ant [k?m pl??nt]
adj
1. ready to conform: ready to conform or agree to do something
2. conforming to requirements: made or done according to requirements
or instructions (often used in combination)
a.. compliant with the general statutes
a.. millennium-compliant


Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.

I have a 9200 myself and it is defenitely a DirX 8.1 card. But on my box it
sez "DirX 9 compatible".


All "compatible" means is that it will work with games designed for DirX 9.
But the cards will not use any of new DirX 9 features because the chipsets
were designed to use DirX 8. Even my now ancient Radeon SDR is DirX 9
"compatible" but it is most defenitely only a DirX 7 card and will not use
any of DirX 9's features.

If you fire up DirX 9 game using a DirX 7 or DirX 8 card it will essentially
run that game in DirX 7 / DirX 8 mode respectively. This is easy to see if
you own multiple machines with different capabilities running the same game.

This is just word play on the part of the retailors and I would say that
what Saphire is doing is very unethical if not outright false advertisement.
But they have the high priced lawyers, not us and wordplay is subject to
interpretation. Here are the facts though:

Go to ATi's own product web page here:

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/radeon9200/specs.html

quote:

a.. Full support for DirectX ® 8.1 programmable pixel and vertex shaders in
hardware

For the 9550 go to:

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9550/specs.html

quote:

a.. Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel
shaders in hardware
a.. DirectX® 9.0 Vertex Shaders
a.. Vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
a.. DirectX® 9.0 Pixel Shaders etc etc.

Sapphire is basically playing word games for marketing reasons.

On a side note, one must remember that you can have two different DirX 9
cards and one may support more of DirX 9's features than the other or may
even go beyond DirX 9 with proprietary features.

Best thing to do when shopping for a DirX 9 card is to research IF the card
supports ALL of DirX 9's features or not.
 
Sapphire is basically playing word games for marketing reasons.
Yes, it looks like you're right. A marketing ploy only. Found numerous
reference where it failed to give hardware support for DX9, one website
tested seven 128bit 9250's on a P4 3.06Ghz system and got an average of 6800
default benchmark on 3DMark01 SE. My old ATI 8500 128Mb used to get 11,000
on my Barton 3200 at default clockings, so it's bottom feeder for sure.
 
Augustus said:
Yes, it looks like you're right. A marketing ploy only. Found numerous
reference where it failed to give hardware support for DX9, one website
tested seven 128bit 9250's on a P4 3.06Ghz system and got an average of
6800 default benchmark on 3DMark01 SE. My old ATI 8500 128Mb used to get
11,000 on my Barton 3200 at default clockings, so it's bottom feeder for
sure.
Click to expand...

My AIW8500 64meg is noticibly faster than the 9200 128meg that I have in my
main machine but both play FarCry and HL2 fine and look really nice minus
the Dx9 stuff.

If he can find that a new or used 9500 or 9500 pro I mention earlier he
would get more than his money's worth but no Dx 9 eye candy. 9600 would be
his best bet there IMO.

Really sad how ATi and it's distributors are doing this.
ATi came up with a good honest idea for a naming scheem and then let the
marketing idiots ruin it with deception. Nvidia does the same thing.

I do miss the old days when we had five or six chipset makers to choose
from.
 
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