Radeon 9600 XT Retro Review...was it that good?

[@Agoz8375]

Radeon 9600 Pro and XT was a good card to play alot of games at this time 2000-2007. The Direct X9 support was better than Nvidia GeForce FX cards.

[@911Salvage]

I fell victim to nVidia's marketing and went with their offering instead. 😂

[@Hudee1985]

@@911Salvage Me too. FX 5500... 😐

[@MidnightGeek99]

Nvidia really did us wrong with the FX series!

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

Halo was absolutely amazing on Xbox. It was the first console FPS with good controls and the dual stick controls have been standard ever since. I guess you had to be there. I played Halo so much again and again and again on Xbox back in the day. It was mind blowing compared to any console FPS that came before in graphics and gameplay and story as well.

[@JeffMeyers-zm2lh]

I have my old 9600XT still in red pcb with aftermarket cooling. Imagine if this would have had a 256 bit bus

[@SirotkaSlo]

then it would be a 9800 :D?

[@MidnightGeek99]

@slovenc88 exactly :))

[@MidnightGeek99]

It would have been to close to the 9800, and better than the 9700 Pro, I think

[@MJ-mk8jg]

Great video many thanks & the icing on the cake was KZbin played your geforce 6600 video straight after. I think that's my favourite video, 28 mins of goodness plus my favourite card is my club 6600gt so happy days

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks a lot :) The 6600 / GT were the amazing mainstream cards of 2004 :)

[@Chriva]

Built a Northwood system running one of those cards. Really decent little beast :)

[@Chriva]

On the subject of Halo 1. Something is clearly wrong there. Mine does Well over 30 even with high details at 1440 x 900. Slightly overclocked but nothing insane

[@MidnightGeek99]

Hmm, I thought so, but after trying 2 different drivers I had the same results, I think that I need to investigate further.

[@MidnightGeek99]

I had a build with an Athlon 64 :)

[@vanderlinde4you]

9600XT, Atitool, orb coolers, what a time that was. 9600XT was good value, a stripped down 9700 / 9800 pro, but still compete with mid cards perfectly fine.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yes, it was an amazing mainstream card.

[@fahima2879]

Another excellent video. Don’t worry you aren’t the only one who quit Spider-Man 2002 ;). Remember playing it back in 2002/2003 and quitting. I was surprised that you included GeForce MX 4000 which was the same video card I had back when the 9600 XT was released except it was called the GeForce 4 MX 420 64 MB DDR. I always wondered how bad my card was compared to mid-range GPUs like the 9600 XT. There wasn’t any reviews on the internet back then that showed the difference. The regular MX 420 didn’t have DDR memory. I can confirm with the frame rates for Halo as I was able to play it with descent frame rates minus the visual updates that you get with the 9600 XT. 9600 XT was great price/performance card.

[@terryttx]

I wanted so badly to get one in my childhood, I got the 9550 instead, it was good for me anyways. 😅Awesome vid and detailed as always! Keep it up!

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks a lot! I would have loved even a 9550 back then, I only had a GF2 MX.

[@BuckEtheAlien]

You had to be around to understand why motion blur was added to this and several other racing games at the time. It was the way to make the game feel faster and was essentially a "neat-o" feature. It was a short lived time in computer gaming history, but I remember it well and don't hate it even today. I can play with or without it.

[@Junkyard_Dawg]

But it also lowered frame rate.

[@BuckEtheAlien]

@@Junkyard_Dawg If you had the hardware to run it well, and I did, it was a treat.

[@sc337]

Many racing games introduce NOS around that time and motion blur intensify that boost feeling. Other than that motion blur simply sux

[@brawss]

NFS Carbon. The game defaults with motion blur on, distorts the image the higher the car speed. Disable it and you see how slow the car actually is.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Ok, but there were good and bad implementations of it, I'm not bashing motion blur all together, but too many games had a bad version. Underground 2 and Test Drive Unlimited had an ok implementation of Motion Blur.

[@drewnewby]

The exact model I picked up last, $30. It's not quite as nostalgic as the 9500 Pro I had, but for the price difference now, it's the winner.

[@MidnightGeek99]

That's right, an amazing card for our current retro delight :)

[@alensabanovic747]

It's really impressive how this card performs in Far Cry... Radeons back then were very good with that game... just as nVIDIA cards were better in Doom 3.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Exactly, even the FX cards were somewhat good in Doom 3 :))

[@lukasgroot]

Maybe in a couple generations I'll get the AMD 9600 XT.

[@dbzssj4678]

They'll probably skip the 8x00 and go directly to 9x00, they always do.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yeah, it sounds crazy :)

[@DadoSimicStudiostriver]

I`m using 9600 XT 256MB HIS version to be exact and it really is the best card i`ve tried so far for my Tualatin 1.4 Pentium 3 retro gaming project. I must say i`m amazed how it works with omega drivers. Of course the CPU bottleneck the card a lot, but still speed of the card really helps along with lots of options unabled to customize the games like no other previous model i`ve tried so far. Asus ATI 9250 256mb that i used previously was not bad, but it cant pull highes resolutions well. With 9600 XT i can play Wizardry 8 (one of my favorite games of all times) on literally 1920x1080 on big 40inch TV screen and look marvelous and works with 30fps in battle combats.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

I really enjoy your videos, and this one is no exception🎉

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks a lot my friend!

[@od1ez]

amazing content bro)

[@MidnightGeek99]

Thanks a lot :)

[@TechGamesAU]

From memory the MX4xx cards were rebranded GeForce 2 cards, I think the reason the graphics don’t look as good is because they lack pixel shading

[@dbzssj4678]

In 2003 I had an HP a210n, a pc that had pci only, so I ended up with a Radeon 9200 128mb pci. I swear it ran better than that in halo, except when my buddy tried to cloak himself my card rendered him as a solid texture, due to it not being completely dx9 capable. In 2006 I picked up a Radeon 9800 pro for a pc that ran an athlon 2800+, I played Crysis on it lol.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Maybe I had some issues, I need to redo the tests with halo, in another video.

[@sc337]

I have the Asus ATI 9600xt with its full packaging. I hope I got the chance to get the Asus AMD 9600xt in the near future so that I can take pictures of'em side by side

[@MidnightGeek99]

Amazing, I would love to have more 9600 XT, unfortunately they are not that common in Romania.

[@Redmage913]

I had a 9600 Pro, but traded it with a friend for a 9250. Friend did digital art work and needed the horsepower; I was just playing old games. Still miss that card, was great for my needs.

[@dbzssj4678]

you got scammed, in those days it was all on the cpu.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Did the 9600 Pro helped him? What software was he using?

[@fungo6631]

EA was just being lazy, as Doom 3 has the pixel shader lighting effects even on the GeForce 2 and 4MX using the NSR.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Interesting.

[@jskyg68]

I bought the 9800 pro it owned everything at the time.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yes, it was an amazing card, not that fast as the 9800 XT, but way cheaper, as far as I remember.

[@jskyg68]

@@MidnightGeek99 It overclocked as high as the xt but had only 256 megs vram vs 512. *Correction the XT has 256 and the pro had 128.

[@johnk7134]

what kind of omega do you use?

[@MidnightGeek99]

2.5.9 or something like this, I have to check for sure.

[@johnk7134]

@@MidnightGeek99 thank you.

[@mirific87]

cheapest alternative to ti4200 nowadays...

[@MidnightGeek99]

Indeed, but the Ti 4200 is also quite cheap, at least compared to the Ti 4600.

[@novacat415]

I still have the exact same card. And that halo benchmark was definitely not right since i remember running that with solid 60 fps maxed out on my 9600XT. Maybe it was fixed by enabling vsync? i dont remember.

[@bestopinion9257]

Is this better than Radeon 9550? And are you from Romania?

[@MidnightGeek99]

Yes, the 9600 XT is way better. I'm from Romania, yeah.

[@gaborkovacs1859]

ha a 9600 pro way back got me trough HL2.Far Cry, Doom 3 those were the days !

[@MidnightGeek99]

The 9600 Pro was a good card, and I don't know about the Doom 3 performance, but it was a nice card for hl2 and far cry.

[@retro4fun358]

I didn't notice that the fan was glowing blue. I have the same card from sapphire but 5 capacitors look the same to me

[@MidnightGeek99]

I found it weird that it had that blue led, maybe was added by someone? Don't know.

[@retro4fun358]

@@MidnightGeek99 i guess so but it looks cook:)

[@MidnightGeek99]

@@retro4fun358 it surely does :D

[@retro4fun358]

@@MidnightGeek99 sry I mean cool^^ typing error but cook is funny haha

[@kacperjestfajny]

Me: having Radeon 7900XT This guy: here's mine 9600XT

[@MidnightGeek99]

:))) Welcome to the old-stuff channel!

[@Tundreq]

I bought back then the 9700 pro thinking I could max out every game. That was a disappointing result but still realy enjoyed that card.

[@MidnightGeek99]

For 2002 gaming, 9700 Pro was very good, but it could still output good FPS in 2003 & 2004 games, especially compared to gf4 and FX series from Nvidia.

[@novacat415]

Okay there is definitely something wrong here. Back in the day i also played kotor and elite force 2 with this card paired with an Athlon 2200+ and it did not ran this badly.

[@MidnightGeek99]

The KOTOR performance is ok, in line with other systems, but the Elite Force 2 performance seems a little off.

[@TheVanillatech]

Well it was a good card, make no mistake! But one of the best ever made? Sheesh. I don't think so. A solid made range card, made to look better than it actually was due to the 5600 series performing bad in DX9 titles in comparison. But the 5600 (and even the GF4Ti series) more than matched it in DX7 + 8 and OpenGL titles. Plus the 9500Pro, although short lived, was better. The 9600 Pro and XT could do HalfLife 2 at decent resolution and settings though, which gave them massive props, compared to it's ill competition at that price range. And sure it embarassed the FX5600 in 3Dmark DX9 tests. But in reality, just a solid mid range card, like any other! Certainly not worthy of it's strange mythic status, imo. The best ATI mid range card of all time would be the HD4770, of course. PS. Halo just ran bad, plain and simple, no matter what! You needed 3x the minimum spec to even approach "smooth" gameply. But the game sucked, lets face it, in the realms of PC FPS. Sure it was a good "console" game, but consoles don't have "good" FPS games, when the PC is rocking Doom 3, Half Life 2, RTCW, Deus Ex, Call Of Duty, Tron 2.0, etc... I had an FX5900 Ultra and I only gave Halo an hour or two max, before uninstalling.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Clickbait :))

[@Buutenks]

I played crysis on ati 9500 pro hehe 10-15 fps or was it a 9600 pro, i know it had a passive cooler. So most likely 9500 pro, i assume.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Lol, crazy stuff!

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

I'm alwas turn off the motion blur.

[@MidnightGeek99]

Respect!

[@si4632]

i had a 9600 pro bought it for a athlon xp it wasnt that great lol

[@MidnightGeek99]

It was quite decent for upt to 2003 gaming

[@outtheredude]

I have a 256MB GDDR3 XFX 6600 GT AGP card (running at full PCIe version clock speeds) for my Athlon 64 X2 4800+ S939 Toledo XP build. The 6600 GT first came out in 2004 and basically fixed the performance issues of the FX series to bring it much closer to mid-high ATI offerings from 2003. It was also amongst the first to offer DX 9.0c support, especially with drivers from around 93.71 onwards.

[@MidnightGeek99]

The 6600 GT was amazing for sure, one of the best mainstream video cards...like ever.

[@deejagers716]

You know almost every word and gramaticaly correct but still your accent is totaly Romanian, how is this possible? Mostly people who know good English sounds English, and people dont know English have wrong accent.. Funny and strange, or you just joke with us,

[@MidnightGeek99]

I guess we might never know :). But, honest question, does the accent make the video worse?

[@deejagers716]

@@MidnightGeek99 no, that not, dont worry, is actualy positive, your videos are awesome but just i know some other people who have same situation and i wondering always how.. because by me is that totaly different. I try always to use accent of people who speaks that language like his mothertongue speak English like Americans and i speak Russian like Russians, even my English and Russian are not perfect gramaticaly .Dont worry your accent is simpa and is positive for video