I can't believe this. Bought a ATI 9500 Pro for crisper text than GF4 and it's worse. Much worse!

[Salvador]

I can't believe it. I finally decided to track down a ATI 9500 PRO card to replace a GF4 Ti4200 because I wasn't happy with the 2d text on my Nvidia card. ATI has always had excellent text and I didn't think that this card would be any exception. Well.. I was wrong. Not only is the text not as sharp, it's blurry. What a disappointment!

BTW.. I used a cleaner to clean all the Nvidia drivers off of my system prior to installing the 9500 PRO. As far as ATI drivers go, I installed what was on the cd that came with my card. Is there some kind of known problem with certain drivers or is this just my card?

TIA,

Sal

 

[Schadenfroh]

1st: Was this a 1st or 3rd party radeon? (3rd party radeons can vary )

2nd: any good AIB nvidia maker has 2d on par with ATIs

3rd: Matrox owns you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[rbV5]

1. 3rd party "pro" Radeons are almost identical, if not the very same card.
2. GF4 cards "can" have very good 2D IQ.

All my Radeon cards have had very good 2D IQ, so I'm thinking something is wrong (blurry..never . You might try Rage3d.com forum and check the driver discussion for particulars of drivers that might have issues with 2D (acceleration maybe with some prior to Cat drivers), but I've run nearly every set and don't remeber 2D suffering ..or even changing much.

I run my Mitsu monitor at 1600x1200@85HZ primarily, but sometimes 1920x1080 for clone output to my HDTV...always nice both on the CRT and the larger Digital display.

 

[Salvador]

ATI Retail card, not OEM or 3rd party. I made it a point to buy the full retail card because I wanted the best possible card even if it cost me a few extra bucks.

I agree that the 2d is much better on the GF4 than the Visiontek GF3 Ti200 card that I also have.

BTW.. I just ran 3DBenchmark2001SE on both cards and my score with the PNY GF4 Ti4200 64MB 8x AGP card was 9322 and the score on the ATI 9500 128 MB was 10072. I'm new to this benchmark thing. Is this a substantial benchmark difference?

One thing that I like about the ATI card is that the fan is much quieter than my PNY. I'm suspecting a bad fan now because there is a big difference.

I don't know what to do. I bought the GF4 for $85 with tax and the ATI card was more than double the price. I don't think it's worth it. If the 2d were better (like I had hoped), I'd stick with this card, but as it stands now, I'm taking this one back.

Yeah.. I know all about Matrox cards. I also know that the 3d sucks with Matrox. I'm looking for a good all around card and thought that I had it with this 9500 PRO. ATI has always had nice, crisp text and I thought that now that ATI finally has a card that is competitive or beats an Nvidia card in 3d, I thought that I was set.

Sal

 

[Mingon]

All my Radeon cards have had very good 2D IQ, so I'm thinking something is wrong

All of my nvdia cards have had excellent 2d, But I have seen bad monitors spoiling good cards.

 

[rbV5]

All of my nvdia cards have had excellent 2d, But I have seen bad monitors spoiling good cards.

I still say something is wrong. The text looks good using the GF4, so the monitor is capable of a crisp display.

BTW.. I just ran 3DBenchmark2001SE on both cards and my score with the PNY GF4 Ti4200 64MB 8x AGP card was 9322 and the score on the ATI 9500 128 MB was 10072. I'm new to this benchmark thing. Is this a substantial benchmark difference?

Not really, I'd call it a draw essentially. Run the FSAA and AF up if you want to see a substantial difference. The 4200 is still a great performer, the 9500 is the next level when you bring on the eye candy.

 

[Blooz1]

The first thing you should do is to install the latest Cat 3.4 drivers. The IQ has improved in the last couple of driver sets.

 

[bluemax]

You might actually have a bad card. If you bought it from a retail shop, perhaps it might be worth trying again.

If you actually get better 2D out of your GF4 and still want more speed, maybe a GFFX 5600 Pro?

Seems odd.... usually ATI has top-notch 2D, leading me to believe you either have a bad card or there's something else screwy in the system.

 

[Salvador]

I just tried the latest drivers and that made a HUGE difference. Thanks!

Sal

 

[Salvador]

Ok.. Now the 2d text is on par with the PNY GF4 card, but I decided to run 3DBenchmark again for the hell of it. My score dropped 1000 points and is now lower than the GF4 64 mb card with the new ATI drivers.

I think I'm going to try exchanging this card for another one just to make sure that it isn't the card. Otherwise, I can't see keeping this ATI card for almost 3x the price that I paid for my GF4.

Sal

 

[bluemax]

3x???? Holy crap.... just return it and keep the money. :Q
Put it into more important system parts like RAM/CPU.

(BTW, what do you have now? It could make a difference...)

 

[Salvador]

Well.. I paid $85 with tax for the PNY GF4 Ti4200 on the Circuit City deal about a month ago. I paid $235 with tax for my ATI 9500 PRO. That would be close to 3x the cost, wouldn't it? Basically, I got a great deal on the GF4 and almost no deal on the ATI card.

The one thing that really pisses me off about the GF4 is the fan noise right now. I should probably just replace that with a fanless Zalman unit anyway.

I'm running a Athlon 1800XP with a Epox KT333 board and 2 sticks of 256 mb (512 total) PC2700 RAM. The system is fine. I don't care about the ultimate frame rates. I'm just using the benchmark as a comparison tool. All things being equal, I was getting just over 9000 score on the GF4 and just over 10,000 on the ATI card with the drivers supplied with the card (with lousy text quality though). Now that I updated the drivers, the text is much better, but my benchmark score dropped 1000 points.

So.. The question is whether to keep the GF4 card that has comparable 2D text sharpness and a comparable benchmark score or pay nearly 3x as much and get similar results with an ATI card.

There is that fan issue though.

Thanks again.

Sal

 

[bluemax]

I was about to say return the 9500 and not look back, but if you really want to be sure..... fresh Windows install.
Personally, I think a 4200 is plenty enough for anything right now.... if noise is a concern, save the money and put it into the smaller Zalman unit. (Or the biggie if you want to overclock.)

You'd be better off spending the same $200+ on a 9700 non-pro card!

 

[FluxCap]

My heavens yes....put that money on a 9700 (non-pro) !!!

 

[Salvador]

9700 non PRO? Are you talking about a real ATI card or an OEM like Sapphire? I thought that the 9500PRO was better than the 9700 non pro? What makes it better? What's the difference between the 9700 pro and non pro?

Also. I paid $220 for the 9500PRO. The $15 was for local tax making it a total of $235.

What smaller Zalman? Is it fanless? Do you have a link?

It would make most sense to probably keep the GF4 at this point. I got a great deal on it and I probably couldn't sell it for much more than what I paid for it at this point, so it might be a keeper regardless. If the 9500PRO would've blown me away, maybe, but the cards are too close to call IMO and for the price difference, forget it.

Sal

 

[Viper96720]

9700NP is a 9700Pro with lower clock speeds. If you don't use anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Then don't get another video card. If you do and don't want too much slow down. Then get a newer card.

 

[Salvador]

anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering

What is it anyway?

BTW.. I just reinstalled the drivers that came with the video card and my 3dBenchmark score jumped back up another 1000 points. The newest drivers are really slowing my card down for some reason. The 2d text is better though, so I guess it's a tradeoff.

Sal

 

[Doh!]

Why waste $235 when you don't even use AA/AF and you already have a more than adequate performance card? For that amount of money, I would get a new cpu & an nforce2 board & you would still have some change for a nice dinner. And that's even before selling you existing cpu/mb.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

I'd say return the 9500, stick to your Ti4200 with better 2D and comparable scores, drop the coin into something else (cpu/mbd/ram) and have some left for dinner.

- M4H

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd say return the 9500, stick to your Ti4200 with better 2D and comparable scores, drop the coin into something else (cpu/mbd/ram) and have some left for dinner.

- M4H

Word.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Salvador

anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering

What is it anyway?

Sal

no wonder you don't see any improvement with your new 9500pro.


anti alising smooths out jagged lines and anisotropic filtering sharpens textures, you can turn them both on in the driver control panel.

 

[poohbear]

Dude, u paid $220 for a Radeon 9500pro!?!?! u coulda got a 3rd party, which is identical, for $175. There is NO difference in performance, infact the 3rd party manufacturers were at one point MAKING ati's retail cards. Now, if u don't know what AA or ASF is, u really have no business buying this card. $200+ for 2d quality (in the year 2003) is NOT something u want to pay. What 2d applications do u use anyways? (and why are u buying a 9th generation vid card for 2d applications?) It's like buying a corvette just to drive on small roads @ 40 km/h.

 

[EdipisReks]

yeah, if you don't know what Anisotropic Filtering and Anti-Aliasing are then just keep the geforce4. otherwise, you can get a powercolor 9700 gold (the board on these is identical to that of ATi branded cards) for about $200 online. these will fairly smoke a 9500 pro, though the largest difference is with AA and AF enabled.

 

[dfloyd]

Also do you use cleartype effects?

I notice using cleartype effects on my GF3 looked much better than on my 9700 Pro.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Originally posted by: Salvador

anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering

What is it anyway?

BTW.. I just reinstalled the drivers that came with the video card and my 3dBenchmark score jumped back up another 1000 points. The newest drivers are really slowing my card down for some reason. The 2d text is better though, so I guess it's a tradeoff.

Sal

Take the card back, save your money, and do some research before you spend another dime dude.