If you can afford it, and you plan on getting half-life 2 whenever
they actually release it (have you seen the requirements/specs) then I
would go for it now. Plus I'm sure you will enjoy playing around with
the advanced features in your development projects. There's a big
price difference between the 9600xt and 9700, I was looking at the
9600xt.
Oops I just realized you currently have a 9600SE. That complicates
matters a little. If I were in that position I would get the most use
out of the SE and wait a little. Unless you are planning to move it to
a second PC therby making the upgrade more of an advantage. You will
probably be looking at purchasing the 9700.
I wish I had a tough choice like that to make.
Probably the reason you aren't getting too many responses.
Although the performance segment is exciting with cards such as the
9800XT and the GFFX 5950, for the average consumer it is the
mainstream segment that is the most relevant as it is hard to justify
spending 500$ on a videocard. In the past year, ATi has had a dominant
showing in the mainstream segment with the 9500 Pro and its successor,
the 9600 Pro. ATi continues the onslaught with their fall refresh
part, the 9600 XT, which has finally starting to appear on store
shelves roughly 6 weeks after it was announced. The differences
between the XT and the 9600 Pro are not overly drastic; the GPU core
gets a healthy 100 mhz bump up to 500 mhz while the memory speed stays
the same at 600 Mhz. Another change in the hardware is the inclusion
of a thermal diode. In the Catalyst 3.9 drivers, the Overdrive
function is exposed, a fancy name for a fancy function; dynamic
overclocking based on temperature. On the manufacturing side, the 9600
XT uses a low k dielectric process, which insulates the traces within
the chip and helps eliminate crosstalk. As clock frequencies rise, and
transistors become smaller, interference becomes a bigger issue. Low k
dielectric is in part the reason for the speed boost. The chip itself
is still a .13 micron part like the 9600 Pro before it.
9600 Pro 9600 XT 9500 Pro 9700 Pro
Pixel Pipelines 4 4 8 8
Clock Speeds 400 Mhz 500 Mhz 275 Mhz 325 Mhz
Fillrate (Gigapixels/s) 1.6 2.0 2.2 2.6
Memory Bus 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 256-bit
Memory Speed 600 Mhz 600 Mhz 540 620 mhz
Process 0.13 0.13 0.15 0.15
The major differences between the 9500 Pro /9600 XT and the 9700/9800s
is the memory bus being cut in half. The 9600 series also has the
added disadvantage of only having half the pixel pipelines. Despite
the big clock advantage that the 9600 Pro has over the 9500 Pro, it
cannot match its speed because of the raw processing power. The 9600
Pro lags behind the 9500 Pro significantly in terms of fillrate and
even the 9600 XT at default clockrates cannot match the fillrate of
the 9500 Pro. It remains to be seen how well it performs in benchmarks
considering the revised core and the improved memory bandwidth.
Layout
Like the 9600 Pro, the 9600 XT does not require an external power
source. The layout is pretty much the same as the 9600 Pro. Looking at
the reference sample we have compared to a Gigabyte 9600 Pro, the
layout of the memory and caps are almost identical. The board itself
is much shorter than a 5700 Ultra and has about 2 cm less than a 9800
Pro. The 9600 XT reference card does not have the flair that the 5700
Ultra does. Aesthetics may be important to those of you with fancy
windows and such in your case and if that's the case, you'll have to
look at some of the ATi partner cards.
