Customer Reviews

ATI Technologies Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB DDR Video Adapter

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have a 1.33GHz AMD DDR Athlon with 512Mb RAM. Slow by many standards. With my stock graphics card, playing online flight sims was a joke - even when I lowered the resolution to the 2nd-to-lowest position. So, I was flying a boxy plane and STILL couldn't get the frame rate to shoot anyone down.

Rather than look into a new computer, I gave this a try. Installation was a little tricky for someone as computer-illiterate as I am, but I did it all by myself (ie., if you know ANYTHING about these cards, then you're a step ahead of me).

Bottom line, I can now place my resolution settings to "High" and get ultra-smooth frame rates. If I bump it up to "Highest" the frame rate is a little slower, but still better than what I had with my stock card and "Low " settings before.

I was told that this card is the best for your buck and has a really nice clock speed compared to many other cards (even 256MB cards).

Get this one while the gettin's good.

rich

Wow, okay. There's just a little bad information going on here. :) First of all, the 9600XT is hands-down, without-a-doubt the best graphics card you can buy for the money right now. considering that the 9700Pro (what, a year ago now?) whipped the pants off the GF Ti4600, I think the reveiwer below might want to reconsider his installation steps (removed your old drivers? firmware updates? stop using synthetic benchmarks?) you obviously are missing something-- check benchmarks on any reputable online reviewer (*cough* hardocp.com *cough*). Surely you're not suggesting you run FarCry/UT2K4 on a Ti4600 with no problems? *smirk*

Really, I can't believe I saw this card with a 3 1/2 rating. It really does deserve better. No, it's not going to beat an X800XT (neither will anything else right now), but then again it doesn't cost $450-$500. Show me a better card in this price range. I guarantee you Nvidia doesn't make one. Maybe someday, but right now ATi owns the top and the middle of the market, and they deserve it.

I didn't really have a chance to shop around and had to choose between this, a X800, or a nVidia 6800GT, that was it. Given my income and rig (a P4 2.4) i didn't think bleeding edge was what the doctor ordered, so I said what the hell and ditched the old GF ti4600.

Well, ho-lee crap, what's that about an average 67fps in Half-Life 2 with all detail settings turned up, 4XAA, 8XAF @ 1024x768? MORE than happy with those numbers for the price. How about Doom3 at 800x600 detail medium-high at steady above 60fps? Not too bad for a 2 year old rig.

The Catalyst software suite is very nice, though since nVidia also makes great drivers these days it's kind of a moot point. One thing to note, using ATI's Overdrive utility I have experienced some system hangs, particularly in HL2. Switched to Powerstrip and now I've got it lethally Oc'd on factory cooling and stable as a coffeetable... go figure.

In short, this card will run any of the current gen of games well enough for 99.9% of gamers. With full DX9 compatability, it's even got a shot at next-gen titles. Highly overclockable, well-priced, and reliable as can be. Great buy!

I had this for about three months now, and all I can say is WOW! Best one I have ever had and its easy to use! I recommend this to all who need a new video card.

Great card, the best value card on the market, yet you get great performance and easy overclocking.

I just got this card today and I must say that it is a HUGE upgrade from my Nvidia geforce FX5200. I run Far Cry on high settings just a little lag here and there but I am very happy with what I received. The Cataclyst drivers were a little hard to find, but the card has nothing to do with that. Overall, this is a great card for the price! I would definetly recommend buying it if you're on a budget of $xx.

I'm retiring this trusty old Radeon as of November 2009 in favor of one of the more recent Radeons. They are such great cards!

This card is top notch. I've installed it in my system as well as those of two of my friends. It is a few years old, and there are newer cards that are better, of course.

But if you want to get a great card without spending a fortune, THIS is the one you want.

this card works great until i upgraded to a AMD 64 bit prossessor with a MSI motherboard. Now it constantly flickers and freezes everytime i start a game. I also bought a 9550 thinking that the 9600 went bad and to my amazement it wasnt the card being bad. I will never buy another ATI product EVER AGAIN!! their CATALIST messed up my 9600 and same for the 9550!!

I purchased this last December, harboring moderately high hopes of enjoying a decent middle-of-the-road graphics card. It proved to be faster than my previous card, but it fell rather short of its supposed capabilities. Moreover, after approximately three months of running the card with the default factory settings, it died, upon which only software rendering (extremely slow) was possible. I returned the card to ATI under the warranty, whereupon I received a replacement card with accompanying documentation indicating the other was defective.

Hmm...well it was brand new in the sealed box when I bought it, but I guess stuff happens. I've since come across a number of people and reviews who've had very similar problems with this card, and thus, the evidence seems to suggest an ATI quality control problem. ATI has seemingly allowed a great number of these cards to hit the market...which is somewhat disturbing, considering the purchase price. Perhaps I think in overly idealistic terms, but I'd expect a company to publicly own up to something like this rather than playing it off like it was a one-in-a-thousand fluke. But then I suppose that addressing each defective card one-by-one probably is more financially prudent for the company.

ATI's customer service definitely leaves much to be desired, and it's skimpy at best. They offer one lousy month of free telephone support on their products. Afterwards, it's either pay-per-minute, per-incident, or you're reduced to automated, often useless assistance via ATI's "Customer Care" center on their web site. They offer no individual e-mail support, at least none that is readily apparent, if even available at all. Their site provides forms for submitting preformulated questions and problems to which you will receive an auto-reply to via e-mail -- most of these answers can already be found on their site. Hence, their web-based support is not really support at all, but a mirage for those too stupid or lazy to find the solution on their own. If you have a specific question or problem about your card, don't expect it to get answered if its not already in their FAQs or common technical issues.

More importantly than the faulty card, ATI's customer service efforts, or rather, the lack thereof, are enough to make me go to the competition. Give me a company that lives up to the definition of customer service.

Good-bye A-T-I.