ATI Newbie - what do I need to know?

[jakobkraft]

I just got , through a friend's formidable discount, a 9700 Pro. Let me start by saying that this is the first ATI card I've ever owned, being a longtime NVIDIA user who never had to worry about driver stability. Now most users say those days of ATI driver instability are over and I hope like hell that this is true - but is there any smaller issue with the current 3.2 cat. drivers that I should know - also, why a separate download for the control panel? Is that necessary or is the driver file enough?

 

[cockeyed]

Yesterday my nephew and I built a new machine for him. We used a Sapphire 9700 and I was a little nervous because I'am a GeForce 4 user with zero knowledge of ATI products. As it turned out, everything went perfect with the install of the 9700. We used the Catalyst 3.2 driver and control panel with DX9, installed in this order: DX9 - Cat 3.2 drv - Control panel 3.2.

The Sapphire 9700 fan is super quiet and the card is only slightly warm running stock speed. The picture quality is outstanding and the speed is something else.

Trying to get it going under Win98se was a pain so we got WinXP and the install went as smooth as butter after that. Everything is running great so far and we plan on using the Cat 3.3 driver when it comes out. Install drivers in the order I did and I think you will be ok.

The new system: Abit BH7 - P4 2.4b - Sapphire 9700 - WD 80gb spec edition HDD - Enermax case (300w) - Liteon CD-RW & DVD - 512mb Crucial PC2700.

 

[SigmaOrionis]

I just got a 9500 pro after being a long time Nvidia user. Cockeyed is right just go to ATI website and download the 3.2 display drivers and the control panel and install them DirectX, Display Driver then Control Panel. If you prefer you can use DirectX 8.1 instead of 9. There arent any games that support DirectX9 anyways. I've got mine running under Win98SE without any problems. There is one glitch for me about every third time I boot up my Win98 screen looks like it splits into scan lines and then shifts everyother line to the right. As soon as the desktop appears it is perfect. I think this is more of a monitor problem then anything with the video card though. The picture quality is way above what I had before with my Geforce 2. Brighter colors and better black levels. Hope you enjoy your new card.

 

[cockeyed]

SigmaOrionis
I see that you are using the same P4-2.4b CPU that I tried to use with Win98se. When I tried to install Win98se, it kept crashing. I forget the code that it was displaying, but I did an internet search and the 1st hit I got, sent me to the Microsoft knowledge base site. The exact code was listed and it said that Win98 has a problem with CPU's over 2.1ghz; they are too fast. I suspect it is a timing problem since there also was a shutdown issue with Win98 when CPU's hit 1ghz. It said to call Microsoft tech support for the fix; we decided to get WinXP instead and everything went perfect after that. I don't know if this would help your problem, but it might be worth looking into.