What's best for HL²: Radeon 9800 Pro (128 mb), X600XT (128 mb), X700 Pro (256 mb ram)

[Senny]

I'm planning to replace my Geforce TI 4200 for a new ATI video card because ATI is better for Half-Life² then Nvidia. My budget is between 200 and 300 € (euros)
What card should I buy ?
Thx

 

[Shamrock]

Well, The 9800 PRO is your best choice if your Motherboard does not have PCI-Express. Although, I still think the 9800 PRO is your best choice out of the 3.

 

[bryanf445]

300 euros = $366? if so save up a bit more and get a x800 pro

 

[5 0'ClockCharlie]

Yes, I would go for the x800pro, its a great card but otherwise...
go with the 9800 pro, you dont really need the 256 of ram but make sure you know the specs on the GPU, some of them that I have seen can range between 400 and 650 mhz, with not much of a price difference.

 

[Asus]

The 9800 Pro 128MB (256bit) is probably the best performance/price combination you can get for HL2 (besides the 9600). It will do higher resolutions and you can use AA/AF settings if you wish.

The X600/700 cards are only PCI-Exress right now. They aren't an option unless you have a brand new system that supports PCI-Express (they don't have AGP slots). An X700 card should be coming to AGP soon. Not sure which exact model though.

The X700XT is a faster card (128MB) while the X700 pro just has more memory (256MB). Again, both are still just PCI-Express.

 

[GPRT]

If you don't want to save up anymore for the x800 pro, I'd go for the nVidia 6800. While it's not ATi it will perform better than all those above cards in HL2 and you may be able to mod it to 16 pipes.

 

[Ecthe|ioN]

Do yourself a favour and save up for a X800 Pro. You definately won't regret it.

 

[Asus]

Yeah the X800pro would be a big improvment over both of these, especially in HL2.