Question about ATI Radeon GPU???

Question

i just recently switched to ATI from nVidia, and when i go through the list of radeon GPU, i was confused.
see there are three current best card from ATI are X850 XT PE, X1950 XTX, and X9800 XT, but what are their differences??

Answer 1

Those are the top cards of the last 3 generations released by ATI. The newest generation is the best, so you want one in the x1000 series. In this case, if you can afford the x1950 xtx, that is the best. The x850 was in the previous generation, and the 9800 was the best one of 2 generations ago. there is no x in front of the 9800.

The next best to the x1950 would be the x1900, not the x850. You don't want a card a generation old if you can buy the latest technology.

Make sense?

Answer 2

the reason ATI is keeping a history of "best cards", each being from a different year or serie has a good reason; not everybody has the latest 800 X64 series MoBo x( >:P
a 9800 (XT or PRO) will run on nearly any AGP 2x or 4x MoBo
like my go'old GA-7DPXDW-P bi-CPU, up to 4 GB of ECC RAM, but nope, can't put a X1950XT PCI-E card in it, no way :-w
next, you have those who got some faster AGP ports or early PCI-E MoBos; they'll be (more then) happy w/ a X850XT.
and, finally, those who just bought the latest of the latest, can gladly go w/ a X1950XT.

even a X850XT PE will beat nearly everything else out there, from NV as well and the 1950 will literally pulverize it.

you know what you need >;)