Before buying my Radeon 9700 Pro...a few questions...

[jdogg707]

Well, I had a 4600, sold it and then decided to grab a Radeon 9700 Pro, but since I have never owned an ATI card before, I thought I'd ask a few stupid questions before going out and grabbing it.

First, should I do a clean install of Windows XP, to completely get rid of the Nvidia drivers?
Secondly, what are the best drivers at the moment? Catalyst 3.0 and DX 9? Or earlier versions?
Thirdly, how well does this card overclock? What program should I use to do it?
Fourthly, what kind of settings should I be able to use on games like UT2003 @ 1280x1024?
Fifthly, are there any patches that are coming out for the card that I should be aware of to fix problems like refresh rate, etc.?

My system specs:
P4 2.26 @ 2.8GHZ
512MB Corsair XMS DDR 400 RAM
Epox 4G4A+ Motherboard
Western Digital 120GB Special Edition HD
Windows XP Service Pack 1
Samsung 181T 18" LCD Monitor

Thanks.

 

[Excelsior]

Hey dude. I had the same questions as you.

First off, you do not have to do a clean insall of Windows XP, but if its been a while anyway, it wouldnt too bad of an idea. I used this guide here to install my 9700 after my geforce2 and it worked well. If this link doesnt work, just email or IM @ Smartboy603 .

I use the Cat 3.0s and DX9, and I really like them

It overclocks decently, the memory usually gets to 350 from 310 or so which is the actualy theoretical limit of the chips, and the GPU gets anwhere from 350 to 400 from 325. I use Rage3D Tweak 3.6

With that system @ 1280x1024, pretty much everything max. 16x AA and 6xAA. See what that does to you performance wise.

Check Rage3D for any major updates.

 

[Thor86]

Rule of thumb, always uninstall any device drivers before removing the physical device from the computer.

With that, you shouldn't need to re-install WinXP, but if you didn't then, who knows what the outcome will be?

 

[ScrewFace]

To be on the safe side I'd recommend reformatting your hard-drive and reinstalling everything nice and fresh-like. This way you are not gonna have any bits of your old card hanging around and causing wierd problems for ya.

 

[BoomAM]

Hi,
I just brought a 9700pro card(sapphire) and thought that i could get away with just uninstalling my GF3&drivers and then putting in the 9700pro.
Until i got problems with it, so i re-formatted my harddrive and now everything works.
And dont think that a re-install of windows will work as well. It wont. Start afresh to be sure.

 

[jdogg707]

sweet, thanks for the tips, I'll just go ahead and reformat due to a few other new pieces of hardware being installed, like hopefully a granite bay here in the near future and an Audigy 2.

 

[Wolfsraider]

don't forget the intel inf and intel accelerator drivers
i have the epox 4g4a+ as well
directx9 is sweet for the demos and gun metal supposedly has directx9 features in the demo
accelerator driver
inf driver

enjoy