Video Issues - Radeon

Howdy...

Ok, 2 questions:

1. I have a Radeon Card I pulled out of an old system... it has no 100/102 number and only says "Radeon LE" on the card. The chip is covered with a back heatsink (which I don't want to try ripping off). It is AGP and has 4 Samsung memory chips on it (ID'ed as 6ns DDR RAM). I've tried googling every number on the card, but nothing. The closest I got was a site listing it as a "generic" Radeon (no number), btu I didn't know they made those... thought they started at like 7000 series or something. Anyway, if anyone has any clues about what this card might exactly be, I would appreciate it.

2. Opinions (unbiased please)... which is better for gaming:

Radeon 9250
or
GFX5200

Both are AGP 8X and 128MB. GFX is $10 more.

Thanks!

 

What is your budget? Are you looking at online prices or retail?

 

There is one thing you can try in order to find out what chip the video card has is to put it in your computer and install catalyst drivers after rebooting your computer right click on my computer then click on hardware, then device manager, display adapters and that should tell you what the card is.

 

Thanks for the replies...

1. My budget is nil... this card is for my Dad's computer. He usually doesn't play games, but he likes ST Elite Force (Q3 engine). The card that went kaput is a Radeon 9600XT. Also, I may be able to get ahold of a GF3Ti200 128MB (free). I'm simply buying a card from the local shop since my Dad lives in another city and is only visiting for Xmas.
The Radeon 9250 = $59CAN
The GFX 5200 = $70CAN

2. I know I could find out what card the Radeon LE is buy putting into a computer, but I'd rather not since all the computers I own use nVidia products. ATI drivers can be nasty to work with and I'd rather not go through the hassle of trying clean them out after I ID the card.

 

9250 and the 5200 are basically the same performance, dont bother with LE/SE, your already buying a low end card, getting an LE/SE will just hurt more. Bout the ATI driver comment, thats totaly untrue and unfounded anymore, and for about past 2 years.

 

Although the ATI unified drivers have come a long way, and are much better, from experience on several different computers, switching from ATI to nVidia on the same system can be a pain... even with a good Catalyst cleaner you can have DirectX issues, etc.

Besides, it's not worth the effort to start switching drivers just to ID an old card.

Thanks for the input though,

 

FYI... That old card turned out to be a Radeon 7200 32MB. Didn't even know they made those...