Which graphics card is better?

[Resonance]

Radeon 9600SE 128Mb or the Radeon 9550 Atlantis 256MB DDR AGP?
Thanks.

[superkully]

They're both based on the same core, SEs normally have half the pipelines of the their 'normal' brethren. So check the pipelines and the clocks speeds of the CPU and memory. Although No. of pipelines is much more important than a few Mhz here or there.

[Hohum]

the 9600SE has a 64-bit memory bus, whereas the 9550 has a 128-bit memory bus... so it'll have more memory bandwidth than the 9600SE. Don't know if the pipelines differ, I was under the impression they're both 4 pipes. Personally I'd go for the 9550 over the 9600SE, but if you can get a 128mb version, as the extra memory on the 256mb version doesn't produce any benefits on low-end cards to be honest.

I always think of the 'SE' moniker as '****e edition' - take a card, reduce its performance noticeably, add an SE on the end of the name... voila. But at the end of the day it depends what you plan to use it for.

[Resonance]

Thanks for the help.