ti4200 v. 9600 non pro....and other ?'s

[shawshank62]

I am currently running a ti4200 128mb 295/545. On black friday i saw that BB is having a 9600 non pro on sale for 70 bucks. Basically, would this be a good improvememtn over what i have now? I like to run games in 1024x768, but in games like Battlefield 1942, i can definetly see my card struggling, would the radeon be able to do it?

Also, i have heard stuff that with catalyst drivers you cant overclock...true or false?
I have heard there are third party drivers are better than the catylst and allow you to overclock......what is the deal with this?

What is the stock speed on the 9600's? And what is the average/decent oc' on it?

thx for the help

shaw

[Juan Sanchez]

70 bucks!?!?!?!? Im so there, upgrading a Geforce TI 500 to one of those would be an upgrade for the system I'll be putting it in and considering the Ti500 and the Ti4200 performed close to begin with, I'd say yes, but you did OC your card, and the 9600np you can only OC the Core to say 350Mhz and the ram to prolly 225Mhz (450 DDR) so, if you think thats good and want DX9 then yes, but make sure it's not an SE card, that would be a sad "upgrade" like getting a 5200Ultra

[Aaron_J]

The ti4200 that you currently have is a faster card than a non-pro 9600 in virtually any benchmark.

I couldn't find a review that had both the non-pro 9600 and the ti4200 for comparision (didn't bother looking very long). But I did find this review that has the pro version and the ti4200 in it.

Notice that the pro version of the 9600 barely beat a stock ti4200 in some of the tests. In other tests the ti4200 came out on top. .