ok ... there's this 2nd hand 9500 pro thats going rather cheap ...
I ran thru the ATI website and figured out this product was discontinued!
as far as specs go, it seems ok, its dx9 compatible etc.
so whats with the "discontinued" tag? Do I not get driver support? Do newer catalyst drivers not include optimizations, bug fixes etc in them for this card?

yepp ..... look even 7000 cards are supported .... this just means there will be no special optimiziations for it or no new bioses or something like that ... but as long as there will be a unified driver package u can always get a new cat for the crad ... if there is any use to upgrade is the second question

it's a good find because you can turn on the other 4 rendering pipelines (8 total) via a software mod and end up with a 9700 Pro. The mod was posted here several months ago...

.... true but but don't take this for sure ... I have seen 2 9800SE and the activation of all 8 brought pixel faults ....

The 9500Pro is a really good card in its product range. It's has the same number of pipelines as the 9700/Pro. The only difference between it and the 9700 is that the 9700 has a 265bit memory bus.

If I were you, I'd go for it. ATI only discontinued it because the cost of making the card didn't justify the selling price.

Who are the manufacturers of those two 9800SE cards?

:roll:

it was both powercolor ... but since its inside the chip ... ain't the manu equal here ?
same as if you ask what store you bought your AMD Athlon