Gigabyte Radon 9200

Tea

Tea

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I have just aquired a Gigabyte Radon 9200 128MB video card. I'm not sure why. Or how. Something to do with buying a box of ten Gigabyte KT-400 motherboards and it being Friday, so they sent me a promotional video card as well.

Trouble is, I don't know what the damn thing is. How much do I sell it for, relative to (say) Albatron Gforce 4 Ti4280 and Ti4800? How well does it perform, relative to those same cardz?

Is it good? Bad? Indifferent?

Should I:

(a) sell it?

(b) Throw it at the cat?

(c) Give it to someone I don't like?

(d) Smother it with cream and eat it?

(e) Send it back and tell them I want my $AU 0.00 refunded?
 
You could always give it to me. I'll even pay the shipping. ;)

It's pretty close to your Ti4200 (my logic: the 8500 performs on-par to just a bit better than a GF3. The 9200 is an updated 8500). A reasonable shop would probably price it in the $85 to $100 range.
 
Merc's not usually that far off the planet, but this time I think he found the crack pipe.

The 9200 (shudder) is a slower 9000, not a 9100/8500. There's a review of very probably Tea's card over at Xbit Labs.

Their conclusion: Overall, Gigabyte Maya II R9200 proved up to our expectations: it performed comparably to GeForce4 MX440. Its memory is too slow to let it reach RADEON 8500/9000 PRO, so that even its higher size (128MB) wouldn?t help, as you see. The resume: a value card doesn?t need a lot of slow memory. It could be better if the card featured 64MB of faster memory.

So it's a card that get's its ass kicked in most games by an MX440. But what's that you say, "an MX440 wouldn't cost me AU$110, and I wouldn't have to sell it for AU$135-AU$140 inc GST?"

Welcome to the Radeon colored glasses world of ATI.

P.S. I see Ti4200 cards are down to US$100 here. I think Mercutio should wash his mouth out for comparing them to a 9200. :P
 
Well - lucky for me that I already sold it before I read Time's post!

I'd no sooner finished asking my question when a guy wandered in looking for an upgrade. I didn't really know what that video card was and sold it - mostly because I thought an MX440SE was a little on the light side for him, and I'd ordered more Albatron Ti2480s and Ti4800s but they weren't going to be here till Monday, so there wasn't anything else much. He had:

Duron 700, Epox KT-133A board, 128MB PC-133, 32MB TNT-2 M64

So I sold him:

XP 2600, Gigabyte KT-400 board, 512MB Legend PC-2700, 128MB Gigabyte Radon 9200.

I traded his stuff in (I know him, it will all be in good order) and charged him $600 swapover. I figure his old bits are worth $150.

Did I rip him off? Did he rip me off? Can I sleep tonight secure in the knowledge that, although I sold this guy a completely unknown video card, with entirely mysterious performance characteristics, at a totally made-up-out-of-thin-air price, that underneath it I am really a nice ape anyway?
 
Use it? Jan, we don't use these silly modern video cards, let alone ones with an ATI chip on them. Good Lord, what do you think Tannin and I are? Game players? We use Matrox G450s.

(Takes off silly voice, un-limpens wrist, starts to speak normally - well, as normally as an orangeutan with ADD and a speech impediment ever does.)

Alas, I'm not familiar with the Gforce FX range. They got such a bad rap from their original mega-decibell, twin-slot contribution to global warming that I haven't gone near the Gforce FX range yet. Nor do I know where it slots into the performance categories.

I am utterly unable to understand why they didn't call it the Gforce 5 - people would line up all night to buy a Geforce 5, while anything with "Gforce" and "FX" in its name they treat with deep suspicion.
 
[rant]I don't know what nVidia and ATI are doing. There has been no speed increase in a year, when I bought a Ti4200.

nVidia has the new FX line, but even Ti4200 beats FX 5600 easily if running non-Dx9 software. Haven't seen any comparison between Ti4200 and FX 5600 Ultra, but I think they should have the same performance (again non-Dx9 apps). Compare the prices... FX Ultra costs double the price of Ti4200, regular FX is bit cheaper (~10-15%) than Ultra.

ATI is no better. They replaced 9500 Pro with 9600 Pro, which is a bit slower than 9500 Pro. Luckily the price is lower too.

Bottom line? If I want faster 3D, I should look out for 9700/9800 Pro, or FX 5800 (Ultra if there is a non-Ultra). Too bad that they cost like $300 (at least here in EU), which is a bit too much for a GFX card. 9700 non-Pro could be one alternative (price-wise) but the performance increase from Ti4200 is too little to justify purchase. I think I'll be a happy Ti4200 user at least to next spring.[/rant]

Plus, I don't game so much nowadays. The performance of Ti4200 is enough for me.

Tea, You don't have to be a gamer to use an ATI. I wouldn't want to use ATI, but if the performance (and support) would be better than nVidia, I'd use them. Plus, it's a bit hard to get those G450s nowadays, and I've understood that Matrox has gone worse with the newer models. Haven't really read any reviews of the new P-series though.

BTW, I like your new avatar. Expresses your constant cries for help quite nicely... :wink: :lol:

Cheers,

Jan
 
(Excuse me, Tea, I think I better take over now. This is all getting a bit too rational for you to cope with, I think.)

(No problem, Tannin, I get confused when people come over all rational on me. You know, I think they do it deliberately.)

OK, this looks like the Gforce 2 & 3 to Gforce 4 changeover all over again, Jan. I think that's what you are saying.

Low-end FX (i.e., GF4MX equivalent) is outperformed by high-end old product (GF4Ti at present, equivalent to the old GF3).

So I can regard the FX 5600 as the "new GF4 MX-420", the FX-5900 Ultra as the "new GF 4 MX-440".

That seems to be telling me to carry on with the Ti4280 and Ti4800 as the "standard fast cards", on the grounds that the FX 5600s are too dear and offer little. Later on, the 5600s will drop to near-GF4 prices (just as GF4MX cards dropped to near GF2 prices a while back). At around the same time, DX9 might become more important than it is at present, so that should fall into place nicely.

Meanwhile, there is the question of what to sell people who want more than the Ti4800s can offer. FX 5900s are too dear and I have doubts about any card that needs to be that big to function - it smacks of fundamental design problems, and the FX 5800 fiasco only deepens the impression. On the other hand, I really don't like ATI's history of driver problems and general weirdness. With a Nvidia card, you load the dets and forget about it.

(I like forget-about-it!)

(Yes, Tea. So do I. Just go and play on the road a moment, like a good little ape.)

Maybe I'll just tell them to buy more RAM and a CPU upgrade and come back in 3 months when the water is not quite so muddy.

As for our own machines, the G450s are overkill, honestly. The old G400s and G200s were perfectly capable. I think I have one or two G450s lying around - they are getting traded in every now and then these days - so they should do me for quite a while yet. After that, I guess I'll use whatever gets traded in - a Gforce III would do it nicely. But in reality, the stuff I do runs just fine on a 4MB PCI card. I like fast hard drives, plenty of RAM and a whopping great CPU, the rest of it doesn't really matter.

BTW, I stuck a Barton XP 2500 in the office server the other day, replacing an XP 2200, and it really cooks along. An instantly noticable difference. Given my very positive experience with K6-IIIs, I have come to the conclusion that OS/2 doesn't much care about clock speed (though more is always better) but it loves big caches. I suspect that, if I wanted to go really stupid with the chequebook, one of those big Intel server chips with the ridiculously large caches would absolutely cook along. No matter - it's plenty fast enough, and the old G450 can stay a year or two longer.

Errr ... except that my picture quality is not quite what it was. Is it my old eyes? Or the 21 inch Mitsubishi showing its age? Or possibly the G450? Dunno.
 
Jan Kivar said:
[rant]I don't know what nVidia and ATI are doing. There has been no speed increase in a year, when I bought a Ti4200.

nVidia has the new FX line, but even Ti4200 beats FX 5600 easily if running non-Dx9 software. Haven't seen any comparison between Ti4200 and FX 5600 Ultra, but I think they should have the same performance (again non-Dx9 apps). Compare the prices... FX Ultra costs double the price of Ti4200, regular FX is bit cheaper (~10-15%) than Ultra.

ATI is no better. They replaced 9500 Pro with 9600 Pro, which is a bit slower than 9500 Pro. Luckily the price is lower too.

Bottom line? If I want faster 3D, I should look out for 9700/9800 Pro, or FX 5800 (Ultra if there is a non-Ultra). Too bad that they cost like $300 (at least here in EU), which is a bit too much for a GFX card. 9700 non-Pro could be one alternative (price-wise) but the performance increase from Ti4200 is too little to justify purchase. I think I'll be a happy Ti4200 user at least to next spring.[/rant]

Plus, I don't game so much nowadays. The performance of Ti4200 is enough for me.

Tea, You don't have to be a gamer to use an ATI. I wouldn't want to use ATI, but if the performance (and support) would be better than nVidia, I'd use them. Plus, it's a bit hard to get those G450s nowadays, and I've understood that Matrox has gone worse with the newer models. Haven't really read any reviews of the new P-series though.

BTW, I like your new avatar. Expresses your constant cries for help quite nicely... :wink: :lol:

Cheers,

Jan
Click to expand...
 
time - I was confusing the 9200 (updated 9000 core) for the 9100 (updated 8500 core). These things happen.

Altough I don't know how Tannin can claim wacky, crappy cheapo nvidia cards are better than generally-very-nice ATIs.
 
Although not the fastest cards in the bunch, I still like the 9000 64M and the Sapphire 9100 64M, especially for the price. High-end video cards are still too expensive.
 
Tannin said:
Low-end FX (i.e., GF4MX equivalent) is outperformed by high-end old product (GF4Ti at present, equivalent to the old GF3).

So I can regard the FX 5600 as the "new GF4 MX-420", the FX-5900 Ultra as the "new GF 4 MX-440".
Click to expand...

Maybe my rant was too drastic. I'd nominate FX 5600 as Ti4000, and FX 5600 Ultra as Ti4200. I'm sure You meant 5600 Ultra, as 5900 Ultra is fighting neck-to-neck with Radeon 9700/9800 Pro, both in performance and price. I did mean FX5900 in the rant, somehow I slipped 5800 there. 5800 is not an option, as there are only few cards ever released.

I didn't mention the slowest FX card, FX 5200 (Ultra) at all. Why? It's the new MX-card. Slow. Nice card though, if You want to make a reliable machine, as most 5200 cards are fanless.

Tannin said:
That seems to be telling me to carry on with the Ti4280 and Ti4800 as the "standard fast cards", on the grounds that the FX 5600s are too dear and offer little. Later on, the 5600s will drop to near-GF4 prices (just as GF4MX cards dropped to near GF2 prices a while back). At around the same time, DX9 might become more important than it is at present, so that should fall into place nicely.
Click to expand...

Yes. As there is no DX9-based games, the true difference in DX9 performance cannot be measured. 3DMark03 gives out wacky scores for cards that don't support DX9, as You well know. So, until the first DX9 game is released, we'll just have to guess.

There isn't really a "better than Ti4800 performance" out there. It's either problems with ATI drivers, or FX5900. Both options cost an arm and a leg, but for a true gamer, the sacrifice is necessary.

Cheers,

Jan
 
my system is pretty close to balls to the wall right now but i'm still using an abit siluro geforce4 ti4200 64mb (overclocked to ti4600 speeds) because i don't have any pressing video needs until halflife2 and/or doom 3 come out. when that happens, i'll buy something big.
 
Tannin said:
BTW, I stuck a Barton XP 2500 in the office server the other day, replacing an XP 2200, and it really cooks along. An instantly noticable difference. Given my very positive experience with K6-IIIs, I have come to the conclusion that OS/2 doesn't much care about clock speed (though more is always better) but it loves big caches. I suspect that, if I wanted to go really stupid with the chequebook, one of those big Intel server chips with the ridiculously large caches would absolutely cook along. No matter - it's plenty fast enough, and the old G450 can stay a year or two longer.
Click to expand...
Instead of getting stupid with the checkbook, why not try out an entry Opteron with 1MB cache?

- Fushigi
 
Tea said:
Did I rip him off? Did he rip me off? Can I sleep tonight secure in the knowledge that, although I sold this guy a completely unknown video card, with entirely mysterious performance characteristics, at a totally made-up-out-of-thin-air price, that underneath it I am really a nice ape anyway?
Click to expand...

Tea, the 9200 is a fine card. I ran a 9000 (which is just a 9200 without AGP 8X support) in my main box for months and had no trouble with it at all. Solid drivers, real DirectX 8 support, good signal quality, and reasonable 3D performance.

It got a 3DMark '01 score of about 7400 on an XP2600, compared with 10,000 or so for a Ti4200. I'd take one over an MX440 or FX5200 any day.

## Doc
 
Tea, are you pronouncing it Ray-Don (as in the gaz)?

I one knew a guy named Malaki (mal-uh-kigh) who pronounced it that way... although I always pronounced it Ray-Dee-On.


And then there's the Line-uhx vs lin-uhx and Bye-Ohs vs Bye-Ahs... computer names seem to be inconsistantly pronounced from regino to region.. probably because we encounter the names written more often than spoken.
 
I always used to say Ray-Dee-On, Blake, which sounds much better, but it doesn't seem to have an "e" in it so I've started trying to remember to say Ray-Don now. Some of the time, anyway. Mostly I just zay thoze bloody ATI thingz.

I alwayz say Lin-ix and I have no idea what a Bye-Ohs iz. Or a Bye-Ahs for that matter.

I have an otherwise inteligent customer who, no matter how times I try to correct him with a blunt implement about the head, insistz on saying "Celeron" (sell-err-on) as sell-EAR-ee-on. I have no idea why. And then there is the wonderful old chip called the Pent-Ni-um. Where they get the "n" from, I have no idea.
 
Dr Bomb, thankyou. I feel better now. I always thought I waz a nice ape, so I'm glad that I didn't rip my man off. Sounds like I charged him about the right amount. He's an occassional-to-moderate gamer and does a fair bit of other, general stuff. He hasn't brought it back and complained yet, so it muzt be OK. (Well, seeing it'z Saturday and he doesn't know where I live, maybe I better wait till Monday before saying that!) But it sounds as though the card will suit him perfectly. He's doing a clean install anyway, so driver issues should be minimised.

Fushigi, good idea! Opteron .... mmmmmm. :)

ZX, that was probably the chip I was thinking of, the Itanic thingie with the obseen amount of cache. Alas, they have incredible floating-point performance (which I don't need) and sucky integer performance (which is, for me, what it'z all about).
 
Tea said:
I always used to say Ray-Dee-On, Blake, which sounds much better, but it doesn't seem to have an "e" in it so I've started trying to remember to say Ray-Don now. Some of the time, anyway. Mostly I just zay thoze bloody ATI thingz.
Click to expand...

I've always pronounced it as 'Rad-e-on' with the 'Rad' as in 'Radical', and until the release of the GF4 I always said 'GeForce' as 'sucky lame-ass signal quality' :mrgrn:

## Doc
 
psst... Tea...
ATi Website said:
http://www.ati.com/online/showcase/headline4665.html

...
MARKHAM, Ontario – June 26, 2003 – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT) is proud to announce that its groundbreaking RADEON™ 9700 PRO graphics chip has been named by PC World magazine as its 2003 World Class Award winner in the Best Graphics Board category.
Click to expand...

There is an E in it...
 
In addition to the word Radeon, it seems like few can pronounce or spell my name correctly from memory.

I pronounce it Blake - er - ree... my Mother used to call me Blaker (my name is obviously Blake) and I had a girl friend who used to call me blaker - eee , but I liked it with the additional "R" sound, so I made it blaker-ree and spell it blakerwry.. dunno why, perhaps because it's not taken as a username by anyone else.
 
Sometimes I don't know how to pronounce my own screen name. I always think of it as han-drew-in.

I also pronounce it Raid-E-on.
 
Now where did that extra "r" come from? It never used to have an "r" in it.

I mean, I'm not really an obsolete type of ape, I only just got here. Not more than an undefined but small number of years ago.

THERE IZ NO "R" IN BLAKEWRY! (Apart from the one between the "w" and the "y", I mean.

Somebody changed it while I wasn't looking!
 
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