Conclusion
With the Radeon 9000Pro selling for circa £100, the 9700Pro for circa £250 we have seen these on the market with prices in the region of £150. This puts it below the price of the Ti4600 and more in line with the top of the range Ti4200's with video in capability.
The Radeon 9500 Pro's performance is closest matched to the GeForce Ti4600 but produces improved image quality. The 9700 captured the performance crown from nVidia during the summer, it would now seem that the 9500 will match their best but at a cheaper price. Since the launch of the GeForce FX, it seemed that NVIDIA could fight back against the current ATI stance on the market. Currently ATI have the winning hand across the range of video output cards.
All in all if you are looking for a very good, high performance graphics card for a reasonable price this may well be suited to your needs. If you want the fastest performance and price is not an issue then the 9700 is still the best graphics card available.
The 9500 has the same fantastic image quality as the 9700 but can not process the information as quickly making it measurably slower. Gaming is really where the 9500 will find it's niche and for anyone looking for a high performance card, the R9500 Pro is second only to it's big, more expensive, brother.
Pros
- Excellent image quality
- Good performance
- Good value for money
- AGP 8X
- Very good overclocking ability
- Great DVD Playback performance
Cons
- Annoying additional power connector
- For overclocking - needs RAM heatsinks
You can grab one of these cards at The [OCS] for a mere £146.86 including VAT and Delivery.
