A Xmas Tale of R9700 Pro Terror

[WazMeister]

Hi all, Kinda stressed so excuse the long post.

I am bascicly getting bad performance with my card I "think".

Reading tomshardware.com R9700 guide and benchmarks I thought blimey this card kicks GF 4 ti4600 128meg to the curb and it does go check the rewviews/compares.

Also all the rumors people say about R9700 being kick ass runing ut2k3 full whack with AA on etc getting no lower than 100FPS so on and so on and that this game is the KING.

Reading that Doom 3 is being made around the R9700 Pro and it will run it full graphics with a good 80fps+.... Or something..

All the other rumors that once DX9 comes out R9700 will truelly kick ass and be 30% faster!!!

...... So when does all that start?

For xmas I bought my self a Sapphire Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro which has made me so skint words can not describe.

So far with default settings in 3Dmark2001SE and AA off I am only gettting 12454 when I got told i shuld at least hit 14 or 13. My brother gets 10802 with his GF 4 TI4200 and his overall spec is slightly lower too..... His got same system as me but mines a XP2200 and his is a XP2100 and I get faster speed in ram etc due to quality of my products.

UT2k3 I put everything full and sometimes my card hit 22FPS on the OPen map and closed ones if some action is going on about 30 FPS..... God so R9700 Pro is already out dated by games and we all need a R9900 when ever it comes out to run UT2k3 fine? very strange I thought the R9700 was the King to the Throne... Can run any game **** easy full whack! Gricous my brother gets better results with his GF ti4200 64mb.. I shoulda saved money and got that. My friend who has same rig as me in USA gets no less than 80FPS with full whack graphics and AA on and AF etc in the heat of battels. I hit max 60 and lowest 22 and 60 only tilts for about 1 second averge if 50/40.

BattleField 1942: Everything full, like I did with my ATI 8500 64 MB i never got less than 50FPS even in heat of action.. well ok it hit 45 at times. But this is a joke.. This really is wait for it.. wait.. 18FPS!!!!! Its in the 50's with nothing going on i get on the island off my boat run round corner 1 model on screen god I cant move 18FPS 20.. god i quit.. and titl my head in shame.

Gosh me tempted to put my 8500 back in.

I got told to go in my bios and tweak it with fast settings enabled and utlra speed mode but I got told thats over clocking by someone else... but another person said its not.. I have thse in my BIOS:

Fast CMD: TURBO/UTLRA/NORMAL/OFF its on NORMAL atm

Top Performance: Enable/Disable I got this disabled.

I got told this counts as over clocking and I should have it normal or I could burn out my system. Whats the real truth and what should I set it too? Also any other bio settings I should set culd u tell me.. I visited bios guides but too muchj detail to write and I got no printer

Ok.... now the details.

I using Cats 3.0 the Mighty DX9 drivers everyones raving about!
DX9! Whoo Weeeeee.... and I have fresh installed and formatted plenty so plz do not beg me to do that again ARF ARF.

Ok.. you know how i feel I notice alot others with same problems.. but to have brothers like mine don't help all through xmas its constant flaming me wasting 260 pounds but I wont give them the benefit of the dout.. I wanna see them scores the R9700 Pro can really get.. if they can at all and shove them in my brohters faces.
.
My brother also gets same or better results than me with his GF 4 ti4200 when my card should kick his crapless and even the Ti4600.

Not only that I kinda want 260 pounds worth. I got the feeling its no driver conflict everythings the same way I used to use my R8500 and i dont clena installs of windows the lot.

Anyway, Any adivce and help greatful.. Check below for my system spec.
I thank you inadvanced for taking time in your xmas holidays to reply.
Merry xmas.
Waz

XP2200
Thermal Take Dragon 7+
Gigabyte 7vrxp KT333 (Bios F9 modded)
Crucical 512mb DDR Ram 2700 333mhz
Matrox ATA133 Diamond Plus 9 40gig HD (how can I see if this is running 133 it don't say in device manger only enable if DMA.. i got feeling this aint running right either my brothers install games quicke rthan me and they got ATA60 and ata100).
Hurcules 5.1 Sound Card


P.S:
update:

So i tried Return Castle Wolfstien....

I put everything fulliest it can go and in windows/desktop propaties i put

AA sample 6

AF: sample 8



textuire pref: high quality and the othrs highest and truform on and V-sync off.


IN game i put everything the highiest possbiel and res 1024*786


At times it was stable 130 140 FPS but about 3 models shooting and m,e it hit 80 and then 50 and in open areas about 50.

What do you think, that sound normal?

Perhaps I got sucked into everyones including ATI's hype of this card, the best on market! the one that runs most games **** easy with all the glory.
But the truth is it doesnt run them 80 fPS and everything full but about 30..

I am very very confused on how people say Radeon 9700 is being used to make Doom 3 and were run it easy with all its glory??? When we can just about hanbdle ut2k3 with its glory.

Someone explain I mainly bought this card for games like Quake 4 and Doom 3 for the future and tbh words cant describe how skint i am now after buying this.. I thought it last a good 3yrs and run D3 and Quake 4 and Unreal 2 **** easy..... But will it

how do I turn FSAA on and AA and what is it and what does it do exactly?

I cant find anything named FSAA i got FA and AA.. ahh i am confused

what scores shuld i be seeking in ut2k3...in res 1024*768

ALso when I had my old card R8500 64mb I got 8500 3Dmark2001 score
Now my soecs better than my brothers..
His is
XP1800
256DDR ram
same mortherbord.

And he gets 8300 3dMark score using my old card.. Does that show something?

 

[BFG10K]

First of all:

• Make sure you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system.
• Make sure you've disabled all background programs such as virus scanners, chat programs and firewalls.
• Did you remove all traces of your 8500's drivers and software before you swapped the cards? If you didn't it might pay to uninstall all drivers and manually clean the system before installing the 9700's software again. Since the 8500 ran so well for you before I suspect that this is the cause of your problems.

Also all the rumors people say about R9700 being kick ass runing ut2k3 full whack with AA on etc getting no lower than 100FPS so on and so on and that this game is the KING.

Whoever said that is utterly clueless. UT2003 will often drop well below 100 FPS and in a lot of the cases the video card has nothing to do with it.

 

[dguy6789]

jeez, i dont know whats wrong with that card. If you have the right drivers the direct x 9 and that powerful a system i dont know. What agp mode are you running by the way? Try using those agp options in your bios, set everything maxxed out to the best, then try games. make sure your in at least agp 4x. I have my Radeon 9000 pro and in the most graphically intense areas, at 1024X768 maxxed everything i get down to about 40fps in ut2k3. I average 70 or 80fps most the time, so try those settings and see if they help, thats all i can think of.

 

[nRollo]

"So far with default settings in 3Dmark2001SE and AA off I am only gettting 12454 when I got told i shuld at least hit 14 or 13"

Who told you that?
I get 13370 or so, on an Asus P4PE/P4 2.53/512 PC2700/R9700. If you got a higher 3dmark with a 2200+, I would be surprised.

"UT2k3 I put everything full and sometimes my card hit 22FPS on the OPen map"
It's well known that the 9700s have lower minimum framerates than the Ti series, as well as higher averages. It's a driver issue.

" titl my head in shame. "
LOL

"but to have brothers like mine don't help all through xmas its constant flaming me wasting 260 pounds but I wont give them the benefit of the dout.. I wanna see them scores the R9700 Pro can really get.. if they can at all and shove them in my brohters"
When you grow up, you'll realize that there is more to life than 3dmark. Whether your brother gets a better 3dmark than you shouldn't matter, for the rest of your life people will have better computers, houses, cars, women, etc.. Be happy with what you have, and glad you have a brother to share your hobby with.

 

[PhoenixOfWater]

Wow your only gotting 12454 with a R9700 :Q
I get about 13049 with my G4 4200 overclocked Link and 11657 at stock
You should be get much better... try everthing that BFG10K said if thats don't work...format your HD and reinstall windows download the newest driver for you card and see if that helps

 

[bikinistud]

TURN TRUFORM OFF! it is about worthless, uses power from your vid card, and leaves some artifacts in most games. That might be your prob. but i doubt it. Sorry i can't help more but im having probs with my AIW8500. I only get 7650 in 3dmark. if i find something, i'll let you know.

Good luck!

 

[chizow]

Your video card's performance isn't tied into your manhood....have some pride man!

I picked up a Radeon 9700pro yesterday and here's some initial thoughts:

1) ATI drivers still aren't up to snuff. Whether its their fault, or other software developers not ensuring Q&A testing for Radeon products, the same type of issues are there that I had with previous ATI cards. My Asus TV Tuner is no longer functional (it displays TV, but locks)and I get some weird slow-down and looping errors. I'll be spending the next few weeks knocking em off one by one.

2) The minimum framerate issue is an issue that needs to be addressed with these cards. Yes, 160 frames 85% of the time is great, but that 15% at 20-30fps is just unacceptable from a card of this caliber. Image quality is excellent, especially with the extra candy the 9700pro can deliver at high resolutions and playable framerates.

3) 2D is excellent, better than the 8500 and GF4 by far. I didn't think ATI could improve that much upon the 8500, but they certainly have.

4) The toolset included seems pretty robust. Haven't had much time to tweak, but the utilities seem to offer everything I could want or need.

I did a fresh install of WinXP SP1, nforce 2 unified drivers ver. 2.0, Cat. 3.0 w/ DX 9.0, latest drivers, latest mobo drivers (1004.E dated 12/xx) and updates for Audigy 2, and the updated versions of everything else. I'm sure its nothing that can't be resolved, but nonetheless, not the level of support from my GF4.

Chiz

 

[Pacfanweb]

I have a similar system, (same processor) and get 13085 in the standard 3dmark benchmark. I'd say you're right on with that score.
That's BS about UT2K3 not dropping below 100 fps. Maybe original UT, but not the new one.


"ALso when I had my old card R8500 64mb I got 8500 3Dmark2001 score
Now my soecs better than my brothers..
His is
XP1800
256DDR ram
same mortherbord.

And he gets 8300 3dMark score using my old card.. Does that show something?"

Yes, it shows that you are 4000 points higher than him, and about that much higher than you used to be. How much did you think you were going to increase your score by?
The only way you're going to get those 14, 15k scores is with a faster processor. The Radeon is sitting there waiting on the XP 2200 as it is.

 

[reelbigfish214]

Even with a P4 2.53, Abit SR7-8X, and Radeon 9700 Pro, I was getting 13000. I upgraded to an Athlon XP 2600+, nForce2, with the Radeon 9700 Pro and I get 15300. On my old rig with an 8500 I would get around 8000 3dmarks. The 9700 Pro is CPU limited. Even with a 2600+ it is still somewhat CPU limited. Once you get an AXP 2800+ or 2.8Ghz or higher P4 does the 9700 really get the power is needs to perform.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: reelbigfish214
Even with a P4 2.53, Abit SR7-8X, and Radeon 9700 Pro, I was getting 13000. I upgraded to an Athlon XP 2600+, nForce2, with the Radeon 9700 Pro and I get 15300. On my old rig with an 8500 I would get around 8000 3dmarks. The 9700 Pro is CPU limited. Even with a 2600+ it is still somewhat CPU limited. Once you get an AXP 2800+ or 2.8Ghz or higher P4 does the 9700 really get the power is needs to perform.

Yep, the 9700pro continues to scale nicely with each successive mhz increase, unlike the GF4's which seem to top out at @ 1700mhz.

Chiz

 

[nRollo]

"Once you get an AXP 2800+ or 2.8Ghz or higher P4 does the 9700 really get the power is needs to perform."
This is just silly. I guess it depends on your definition of "perform", but to say you need one of the 3 fastest processors produced, which weren't even in existence when the R9700 came out, is ridiculous.
Since there aren't cpus which make the 9700 the limiting factor yet, you would be just as accurate to say,"Once you overclock to 3.5Ghz or higher P4 does the 9700 really get the power is needs to perform."
Sure, it's true, but fairly meaningless.
Everyone who owns a 9700 is "cpu limited" just to different degrees.

 

[WazMeister]

OK
Thanks for replie.

ANother thing i hear is the MIN FPS bug?
What is this, everyone keeps jibing on about R9700 PRo having a MIN frame FPS bug in games and people claim they getting 19FPS or 12 like me in games.

Perhaps I got that bug, people state its hardware issuse then 99% say ATI fix it in a bug.

What exactly is it the bug and whats it doing?