Blaze a trail into the outer rim of performance with the power and flexibility offered by SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600XT ATLANTIS. Encapsulating all of your cinematic and gaming desires is... more...mission critical!
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As the last time I posted the same review for the same product, albeit being listed seperately, I got a ticking off from Trampus, I'll write a seperate one.
In case you haven't realised by the amount of different manufacturers offering Radeon branded cards, the graphics chips are made by ATI and then sold onto other manufacturers to actually make the cards that feature the graphics chips. This allows for brands to carve a niche for themselves as either performance brands, budget brands, or or just good value brands.
Sapphire is a performance brand that also offers good value. If you are considering buying a Sapphire card look carefully as for a while they were sold with a voucher that will get you Half Life 2 for free when released. Due to the delay in Half Life the offer was extended to a full Steam account. That means Half Life, Counter Strike and all the other mods as well.
The ATI range works that the higher the number then the faster the card. As such, the 9600 series is the mid range series just now, being faster than the budget 9200 series, yet slower than the premium 9800 series. It is also slower than the now discontinued and former premium range 9700 series.
Then for each series, there are several variations, the standard chip, the Pro chip which is faster, the SE chip which is slower and cheaper and finally the most powerful version, the extreme XT.
This particular card being a 9600 XT is simply the most powerful mid range card available just now. And it is backed up with 256 MB of dedicated VRAM so all games currently available and due out in the next few years should run well on this card.
Only down side is that in the past few months the card has become less good value for money. The reason for that is price cuts on the premium range, the 9800. A 9800 Pro is now available for only £140 or so, meaning twice the power for £20 more. I'd go for one of them now, over one of these. Still, this is a great card and if you find it cheap then a worthy upgrade for any system.
More details
Ease of use
Very easy
Instruction manual
Very useful
Memory / capacity
Excellent
Manufacturer Support
Excellent
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