Dev-Picayune

After my troubles with my Chaintech Nvidia 6200 AGP card and receiving almost no help or concern from the Chaintech support staff, I finally decided to return the card to ZipZoomFly (most likely incurring their stupid 15% stocking fee despite the fact that the product seems to be defective). The same day I applied for an RMA from ZipZoomFly I ordered a Rosewill ATI 9600XT video card from Newegg. And appropriately enough, the day that ZipZoomFly finally got around to approving my RMA, the new card from Newegg actually arrived.

Just to clarify my above experiences. I will not be buying another Chaintech product or buying from ZipZoomFly again. The two companies seem to go hand-in-hand. As for Newegg and Rosewill, major thumbs up! The Rosewill 9600XT card rocks! I did benchmark tests using AquaMark3. Obviously, it isn’t completely fair to compare cards on just one benchmark but that’s all I had time for and AquaMark3 certainly does a thorough job of attempting to test DirectX functionality and speed. For all the tests the same computer was used (Pentium4 Celeron D 2.8 on an ABit AT7 MotherBoard, 1GB Dual Channel DDR (3200) memory running Windows XP Pro SP2).

Asus Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB 8xAGP - Aquamark Score = 16,263
Chaintech Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB AGP - Aquamark Score = 22,442
Rosewill ATI 9600XT 128MB AGP - Aquamark Score = 30,001

For the exact same price, the Rosewill card is definitely the best performance for the money. I personally was rather surprised it was that significant of a difference between the 6200 and the 9600XT. The only slightly negative thing I can say is that the Rosewill didn’t come with the copper heatsink, it came with aluminum. However, just checking for heat, it’s apparent it’s working just fine. Word on the Newegg site is that the card can also be overclocked rather simply. Personally, I am happy with the performance the way it is.

Although not nearly in the same performance category, I ordered a Rosewill Nvidia 5200 card for Becky’s new computer. I purposely bought the card without the fan to shoot for a quieter machine. It seems to have been a good decision. The Antec case I used for her machine is the most incredible case I have ever used. The power supply and large 120mm case fan are very effective and also very quiet. It’ll certainly be the quietest setup I have ever built. And of course, the Rosewill card works fine.