So I am thinking of making a foray into the ATI world and I'm a bit
uneducated as far as the various versions of the cards go... I was
looking at a 9600. now they have the XT, PRO, SE.
9600, 9600 Pro, and 9600SE are based on the same chip, the 9600 Pro is a
9600 with a higher clock speed and faster memory. The 9600SE is a
9600 with 64-bit instead of 128-bit memory--any ATI "SE" board is
crippled in some manner. The 9600 that is not a Pro, SE, or XT is
generally called the "9600 non-pro" or "9600NP" but that is not an
official designation.
9600XT is based on newer chip, not a major redesign but made by a
slighly different manufacturing process that allows higher clock speeds.
The ATI "XT" boards also have a temperature monitoring feature that is
used in conjunction with the latest ATI drivers to provide a variable
clock speed depending on temperature--if the chip is getting hot then
the driver will slow it down, if it's running cool then the driver will
speed it up within limits--this lets ATI run the boards at a higher
clock.
So, in order of performance, from best to worst, you have 9600XT, Pro,
regular or "non-pro", and SE.
The same relation applies to the 9800s. In general any 9600 will be
slower than a 9800, however the 9600XT may beat the 9800SE.
Now, you have the 9500 and 9700--these are older boards that were
replaced in the ATI line by the 9600 and 9800--the performance of a 9700
is about the same as the 9800 of the same model, but the 9500 is
generally a bit faster than the equivalent 9600. The 9500 and 9600
though came only in "Pro" and non-pro version, no SE or XT. Matters are
complicated a bit because the 9500 is based on the same chip as the
9700 and some of the 9500 boards can be soft-modded into full 9700s--not
all though so don't count on being able to do this.
The 9500 and higher all have full hardware acceleration for DirectX 9
(ignore the troll who keeps asserting otherwise).
Going down a notch you have the 8500, 9000, 9100, and 9200. Of these,
the 8500/9100 (they are the same for all practical purposes) is the best
of the bunch--it was the high end of ATI's line until the 9500/9700
shipped. Performance doesn't match the Geforce 4 Ti series but it's
still very decent. The 9000 and 9000 pro are based on a newer chip but
it's in the "RV" family aimed at budget priced boards and the
performance is not up to the same level as the 8500/9100. The 9200 is
the 9000 with AGP 8X support, which gains you practically nothing--it's
generally a poor performer and to be avoided.
These boards all have hardware acceleration for DirectX 8 but not for
DirectX 9--they'll still work with DirectX 9 but you'll probably have to
turn off some eye candy to get reasonable performance.
Going back farther than that, the 7500 and earlier, from the viewpoint
of contemporary applications it doesn't really make a whole lot of
difference which you go for.
