Got my Radeon 9700, now what to play?

[Xerin1]

I just upgraded from a Geforce 3 Ti500 to a Radeon 9700 Pro. Any recommendations on games that will help me appreciate my new card? My Geforce was already able to run most of what I have at top specs and I want to see the power under my Radeon's hood.

 

[BoomAM]

Theres a very large thread like this on the rage3d forums, so go there for loads of ideas.
Anyway, here are a few games/programs that look good.

RalliSport Challenge,
demo available. Looks amazing.

Unreal2,
demo coming out soon, dont go too crazy with the FSAA/AF, the game runs slow on any system.

3D Mark 2003,
downloadable, will seriously stress your system, looks amazing, just dont expect fps over 100fps in all tests, ok

ATI Tech demos.
Goto ATI website, theres loads of tech demos there. big downloads, so its not for 56k users(like me, dam). You need to DX9, and Catalyst3.0 or above.



Hope this helps.

 

[Smilin]

I did the exact same upgrade a while ago. First, go play quake 3 at 1280x1024 w/ 8xAF and 4xAA turned on. Ah sweetness. Then probably go check Unreal Tournament 2003. It plays real nice at 1024x768 with 16xAF and 4xAA turned on.

That's the big thing you'll notice. Turn on AF and AA at the "display settings" level and just leave it on for everything. The Ti500 can do it but not at decent resolutions. I've actually found myself playing at or even a bit lower res than I was with the Ti, but I use AF and AA for everything now and it looks better.

Wolfenstein and Warcraft look good too. If you want to see what it can do without AA and AF then fire up quake3 at 1600x1200. You can still do the 125fps jump to the MegaHealth on DM13 even while carrying the quad.

 

[Xerin1]

Thanks for the recommendations, going to check them out now.

 

[warrenpeace]

Yep, unreal 2 will give your card a workout, a friend of mine who has a Ti500 came over here and was astounded by the difference in detail and frame rate on my machine, though i have a faster proc and ram as well...

RalliSport is pretty cool too, especially the snow stages, but it is more subtle i think, not so outright amazing.

 

[DClark]

Here's ATi's Radeon 9700 series (and 9500 series) demo page.

The Animusic and Car demos are the best, and I personally like the Non Photorealistic Rendering demo as well. The bear demo is a bit boring (and repetitive, since the loop is so short).

 

[Peter D]

go get splinter cell ^_~

its prolly not resource hungry but its still a sweet lookin game

 

[blindtothagame]

I GOT POWERSTRIP AND B4 I HAD THE RADEON 8500LE N I DIDT HAVE POWERSTRIP I COULD O/C MY CPU MUCH HIGHER(@2900) AND I WAS RUNNIN PC2100!!!!!!!!!NOW I HAVE THE RADEON 9700PRO PC2700 DDR333 N POWERSTRIP MIND U I DIDNT HAVE POWERSTRIP B4 N NOW I COULD BARELY GET TO 2800(@2740 MHZ) W/MAD VIDEO PROBLEM....................

 

[blindtothagame]

YEA YEA YEA
WHATEVER 9700PRO IS THE BEST THIS THAT BULLS!!!!T...........
I GOT A BETTER HSF N BETTER MEMORY PC2700 DDR333 N I CANT O/C MY SYSTEM HIGHER THAN I DID WITH MY 8500LE N SLOWER MEMORY DDR266 PC2100 AND RETAIL HSF!!!!

 

[cainsdive]

That's because of your m/b. I have the same one and cant o/c it past 2.36 (have 2.26).

 

[Skibby9]

As it was said earlier, turn on your anti-aliasing and aniso filtering as high as you like and have at it in any game. I upgraded from a 8500, and I would never go back. While the 8500 was a great card, I really believe it was worth the $$$ to be rid of the jaggies and have crisp textures out in the distance.

JK2 looks so good with everything on and max AA/AF that it makes me want to watch the star wars movies. Unreal 2 is fantastic, running it at 4xAA and 16x Aniso at 1024x768 on my Tbird @1333MHz, no problems.

The ATI demos are great. 3dMark2003 is ok. the Doom 3 leaked alpha looks fantastic but runs terribly. It looks better on my slow cpu with 9700 Pro than my buddy's fast machine with a GF4 ti4600.

 

[Skibby9]

one more thing-- i hear impossible creatures and command and conquer:generals are supposed to use a bit of DX9 functionality.. can anyone confirm this?

 

[WaTaGuMp]

You should see No One Lives Forever 2 with the Radeon, its not going to test the card real hard but its suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure looks good and to me the best FPS game of all time.

 

[Skibby9]

OMG I cannot believe I forgot to include NOLF2!!! That was the first game I played all the way through in a ling time, and looks FANTASTIC!!!

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Originally posted by: Skibby9
OMG I cannot believe I forgot to include NOLF2!!! That was the first game I played all the way through in a ling time, and looks FANTASTIC!!!

Lets not forget how good the cut scenes are in that game, I mean how many games do you actually take the time to watch them? If a game can be as good as NOLF2 is run amazingly well and have good and funny cut scenes has to be the best fo all time. I have yet to play a game at 1600res with 4x AA on etc etc and run as smooth as it did.

 

[Dragon365]

Vietcong is a good way to see some well rendered nature scenes - too bad the water isn't pixel shaded, though.

 

[CubicZirconia]

I second Rallisport Challenge. It has the best graphics of any game out there for any system, bar none (imo).

 

[Skibby9]

Mafia also benefits greatly from the FSAA and AF the 9700Pro is known for, but it doesn't seem to have any real DX9 rendering. It is extremely detailed...

Man that Cate Archer is money!

 

[Xerin1]

I have a 1.8 athlon XP along with my 9700 and am getting stickiness just running the demo from 3dmark 2003. Also getting some lag in Rallisport...is that normal for my setup?

 

[CubicZirconia]

Originally posted by: Xerin1
I have a 1.8 athlon XP along with my 9700 and am getting stickiness just running the demo from 3dmark 2003. Also getting some lag in Rallisport...is that normal for my setup?

By 1.8 do you mean 1800+? I don't know about 3dmark (I don't use it), but I've heard that even the best systems have slight problems with Rallisport. As long as it isn't consistantly slow, I'd say its the game not your setup.

 

[BoomAM]

I have an AthlonXP1800 & 9700PRO as well.
RalliSport Challenge runs fine, the only time that it gets noticably jerky, is in the racing mode against other cars. It think that it`s just CPU limited though.

 

[DARRIN]

Splinter Cell is quite nice.

 

[DARRIN]

I think Unreal2 looks good as well.

Here are some of my screenshots from Unreal2.

Link

 

[Xerin1]

Can't wait until the Unreal 2 demo comes out so I can try it. I take it the graphics are better than in Unreal Tournament 3?

 

[BoomAM]

You mean Unreal Tournament 2003.
Yes the Graphics are better, the textures are more crisper, and the character details are far better. The particle system(for smoke and such) is unbeliveable.