The Ti4200 will be the best bet, and if you want to overclock, the 4400 or 4200 can probably hit the Ti4600 speeds if you choose the right company, such as Gainward.

ATI Radeon 8500

What card do I want?
 
None of the above, I want a DX9 capable card in about six months time

Dude, DX9 is not yet out...wait another 2 years for a DX9 compatible game too.
 
Btw, I read that the ATI R300 samples need some serious wattage, they got their own PSU,lol.
 
http://www.theinquirer.net/23040206.htm

Is this a what card are u getting or a what card do u really want because if this is a what do you really want then everyone will click the Ti4600

The one you think is ideal for price/performance or the one that is hits the sweet spot for all things.

Ti4200.

Gonna get the Ti4600 when I get back. Currently own a GF3 Ti500. Ordinary GF3 before that. GF2 GTS before that. Matrox G400. Then TNT1.

Oh I'm quite aware DX9 isn't out yet, I shall be beta testing it I'm sure once MS get some builds out to me.
The same argument could very well be thrown at the GF4 cards.
There is nothing out their currently than can seriously tax any GF4 card, so why bother with them at all when a good quality GF3 card is a lot cheaper?
 
In about 6 months time DX9 should be making an appearance and then we'll get the DX9 hardware quickly following.
NVidia, ATI & Matrox have all promised impressive DX9 hardware.
As DX9 is going to include a lot of new features than 8.0 - 8.1 did I think I'll stick with my GF3 Ti200 for the next six months and then upgrade - cutting edge chasing on graphics cards is a mugs game!

I dunno what the big deal is about the R300 [allegedly] needing 28watts - an Enermax 431 should be able to handle that, & the 550 definitely ought to. [& of course, other suibtably higher spec PSUs]

Gee that this no nVidia GF5 nor 3dfx Voodoo 7 on this poll hehehe.

Voodoo 7? LMAO

Got mine already

ATI RADEON 8500 for me also ! NVidia is not the only choice !!

I just talked to a source of mine in a well known German computer store, and he said the Ti4200 will be available in the first weeks of May, at a price between €250-300!
 
That pretty much ends my wait for the Ti4200, since it's still too expensive (at least in Europe). I was looking at the Radeon8500 LE (bit more expensive than a GF3Ti200 from Leadtek), but all those rumours about bad drivers for the Radeon still make me wonder...

ti4200 is your best bet yeah ive owned the 8500 and it is good but the ti4200 is faster and at a lower price and it plays colin mcrae rally without having to mess about with any settings!!!!!! The ti4400 that i got (gainward) is pretty impressive but the 1 think i do hate about it is that it still cant manage 4x fsaa at high res in reasonably new games and keep 80+ fps

Atis drivers arnt really what you would call bad, the last set, the 6058s were pretty fantastic, i really have 0 complains about the 8500 apart from that it wouldnt play CMR2

No offense to anyone who likes ATI, but they aren't getting my business for a long time if ever.
 
had an ATI SVGA card, never got high color modes to work with this even though it claimed it in the manual, had 1 meg of ram on this.
 
got an ATI 3D Xpression, Rage 1, 2 MB card, poor DirectDraw performance, forget Direct3D with this too since only 2 megs yet the manual claimed Direct3D would work.
 
then got an ATI Rage Pro with 8 MB RAM, you would think I learned my lesson by now but no, I bought and finally the Direct3D was good, but now OpenGL was crap, back then Quake 2 was all the rage [no pun intended] and this card just couldn't cut it, and the card had issues with anything that was transparent.
 
so I swore never to buy ATI again, but alas I got an ATI Xpert 2000 Pro, this really sucks, the Xpert Pro model for some reason was clocked slower than the normal Rage 128 Pro models. Poor frame rates all around. Also this card used slow sdram and not sgram [might be the other way around, whichever was slower was on the Xpert line] and this card had a reduced bitpath 64-bit as opposed to 128-bit. Yet all of this information was nowhere to be found. The clincher was the lack of AGP 4X, the manual says AGP4x compatible, which in ATI terms means according to ATI "the card will work in an AGP 4x slot" which means you get a card that is still only 2X, just operating in a 4x slot.

Ok pmistry, u cannot really compare the K6 generation of AMD CPUs with the Athlons, can you?
Sometimes 2 or 3 generations of products really bring improvements, I don't think the Radeon is anything close to the old Rage 128 chips.

Nope, but once you get stung by a company you tend not to go back.
There are numerous manufacturers of certain PC hardware components that I will never purchase again, even if they were the best in the world, simply because I have been stung once or twice before.
What a company does to me in the past reflects on if I shall send any money their way now or in the future.
 
I still see postings on forum's about the poor driver support for the Radeon's.
I could have owned one, went GF3 Ti200 instead, because although I'm not keen on NVidia as a company, their drivers are pretty mature now and updates are never months apart.