COPY AND PAST....
All right homies, this is for those guys, who consider to buy the 9600 SE. For sure, marketing people know how to catch people, by sticking the Half Life 2 sticker on the box. I Have a radeon 9600 Pro, what I recently purchased for $170, but I wanted to see, how the 9600 Se stands up against it, so I went and bought one, with the thoughts, that I will return it ( well, consider the 15% restocking fee as 2 movie tickets). Guys, do not scratch the Half Life 2 activation box, because, you won't be able to return the product ( this is for those, who decide to test the card as I did).
Since ATI said, there is a slight speed decrease at the processor speed from 400 to 325 and instead of a 298 MHZ memory they used a 198Mhz one, I took them for their words. Now, the Radeon 9600 SE sells for $130, about $40 difference between the Pro version. But if I tell you, that you only get half the performance, what will you think? That is right, I was outraged too, and run several test, including the 3d Mark 2003 a few times, with both cards....
Well, my current machine with the Athlon 2400 XP 1GB Ram ran the 3d mark with the Pro card at 3815, in average (only the graphics tested and the CPU). BUt with the 9600 SE, my marke never broke the 1715 barrier!
Also, I was experimenting with the possible overclocking potetntial of the chip set with 2 popular programs ( see above) but, not only I could not raise the 325 stock speed ( I thought I can get at least 400 Mhz out of it) but all the time the speeds reverted to the factory defaults, after closing the settings window. And I even went to modify the start up settings. So guys, I know, I would not buy the 9600 SE, no matter what ( I assume the 9800 Se is the same way).....for a free game ( you can get that for Christmas, just ask for it) and $40 less, you get 50% the performance. And believe me, it is noticable..........