Greetings,

I am shopping for a Radeon card too, and I ruled out the 9600SE because
several reviews suggest its slow. The 64-bit memory bus vs 128 on the 8500,
plus the memory speed is 400 DDR vs 550 on the 8500 (which might use the
faster SGRAM), all this yields about half the 3D graphics speed as a 9600
128 or 9600 Pro 128. I read one review on the 8500 cards which reported a
small performance advantage of the 128MB over 64.

Here are two reviews of the 9600SE (I saw others but couldn't find them just
now...
http://www.hardavenue.com/reviews/ati9600se4.shtml
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/9600se/index6.php

I plan to get a 9600 128MB card. ZipZoomFly and NewEgg have these in the
ATI-Partner/OEM version for under $100.

Some final points:
* The 8500/128 and 8500/64 are getting top prices on eBay. (The 8500LE
cards are not so popular.)
* ATI seems to be ashamed of the 9600SE---they don't even list it on their
web site anymore.

I hope this helps --- good luck!
Gene B



wrote in message
...
Hi all,
in one of my PCs I still have my glorious 8500, which at the time I bought
it, costed me a lot of money (read: many many days of hard work).
Now I have a chance to swap it (for free) with a 9600SE, that as far as I
understood is the least performing card of the 9600 family. It has a 64bit
data bus, to be more clear.
I'd wish to ask you if you suggest me to do this swap, or to keep my old
8500 instead.

Pro the 9600SE there are a couple of points:

1) memory (128MB against the 64MB of my 8500)
2) modernity (it supports DX9 effects that my 8500 doesn't support)

in favour of keeping my 8500 instead there is:
1) 128bit data bus, against the 64bit of the 9600SE

What about performance? Is there any case where the 8500 is still
superior?

I always and almost exclusively use the 1024x768 resolution, for gaming.

What do you advice me to do?

Thanks a lot,
Andrea