New ATI user with some questions.

[raystorm]

I have just purchased an ATI Radeon 9800 NP (will be delivered today..cant wait!) and this will be my first ATI card after years of 3dfx (I still have my voodoo 3 somewhere...) and Nvidia card use. I know a few of these questions could probably be found using a search, but I figured a nice ATI user can quickly answer them for this ATI nOOb. 😀

1) I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI (Catalyst 3.6) and also downloaded some smartgart uninstaller. I figure that the ATI drivers will install all that I need including the control panel but what is this smartgart program? I figure they offer an uninstaller for a reason, is it required for certain features?

2) What bios settings should I change for this card? AGP Aperture? Fastwrites?? etc..

3) Any windows settings I should change?

4) Any general advice and suggestions you would like to give.

I will be using driver cleaner to get rid of the Nvidia drivers. I know that reformatting is best, but I need to check first to see whether my power supply can handle the card and dont want to reformat only to find out my PSU isnt good enough.

Here are my specs:

Athlon 1.4 ghz (yea yea... upgrade the cpu 🙂 ..that'll happen in Spring when I do a complete overhaul of my pc)
Epox 8k7a (using latest bios)
512mb PC 2100
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Teac CD-RW drive
40 gig Maxtor drive
Windows XP (updated with direct x9.0b)

Its a 2 year old self built pc that never let me down or given my any problems. I dont intend on overclocking (never have really).

Thank you in advance to those who canbanswer my questions! Its only a few hours till I get my card...so wish me luck! 😀

 

[Regs]

1. SmartGart offers video card settings which that you don't need to go into the bios for. AGP Bus speed and Fast Writes. People say fast write is virtually worthless so disable it.

2. AGP Aperture is set around 64-128 Megs on avg. Just how much the card can share of you main system RAM . The rest you can use SMARTGart in the control panel.

3. Not really. Just resolution maybe. 32-bit color and whatever res your monitor supports @ what refresh rate (Hertz)

4. I lucked out and did not have to use driver cleaner on my system . Just went to Add/Remove Programs and removed Nvidias display drivers. Then installed the 3.6 cat's.
As for the PSU, you would want at least a 400 watt true power. I'm running a budget 350 watt PSU but I'm stressing it to the max which is killing its life span.

A hardware monitor could come in handy. Since the video card, cpu, and case fans all run off that 12v PSU rail. So download a hardware monitor and make sure your posistive 12 (+12) and negative (-12) values run somewhere around 11.70 - 12.70.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: raystorm
1) I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI (Catalyst 3.6) and also downloaded some smartgart uninstaller. I figure that the ATI drivers will install all that I need including the control panel but what is this smartgart program? I figure they offer an uninstaller for a reason, is it required for certain features?

Smartgart is a program designed by ATI to automatically detect the right AGP settings for you. But it doesnt allways work propely for some people. I havnt personally had any problems with it.
IMO, disable fast writes. Its suppost to speed up AGP writing operations, but it just induces stability problems in the majority of cases, you`d only gain maybe 1-2fps at most with it on, which compared to the frame rates that your new card puts out anyway, is miniscule.

2) What bios settings should I change for this card? AGP Aperture? Fastwrites?? etc..

AGP Aperture, If you have less than or equal to 256mb ram, then 128mb is good, more than 256mb, then set it to 256mb. As above, Disable fast Writes in the BIOS as well, so it definately cant be enabled.

3) Any windows settings I should change?

What Regs said.

4) Any general advice and suggestions you would like to give.

Dont start throwing a hissy fit if you have a few problems. The chances are that, a) if you were using a nvidia card, then nvidia drivers are causing the probs, or b) an install error. Both of these can be fixed very easyily with the right utilites.
And dont be one of those people who "think" that nVidia drivers are perfect and when you find a small error in the ATI drivers you start blowing up and decided to sell the ATI card to get a nVidia card.

Enjoy the card. Its one hell of a card, you`ll be amazed with the graphics that it can churn out.

 

[Mem]

I just throw in my 2 cents so to speak,when I went from Nvidia to ATI 9700NP I did use driver Cleaner,Bios settings wise I use 128mb AGP size, fastwrites disabled,all video shadowing disabled, video ram cacheable disabled,system bios cacheable dissabled.

As to Smartgart I found when I installed the ATI control panel after installing drivers first,it enabled fastwrites(even with it was disabled in bios) by default,so I just disabled it(requites a reboot).

OpenGL & D3D settings wise I put all the mipmaps and textures sliders all the way to the right( high quality) and disabled trueform,AF setting I use is 16x performance(feel free to try your own settings),I leave AA on application prefered(I was never a big fan of AA anyway).

Btw you don`t need no refresh fix for 2K/XP since in the ATI 3.6s you can set that in the ATI control panel displays tab for gaming refresh rate.

Btw the ATI recommended way of installing the ATI drivers(when you get round to it) is drivers installed first then reboot & then ATi control panel then reboot again,some people prefer to do them together then reboot,but I prefer to do the extra reboot .

I forgot to say after you have run Driver cleaner 1.9 in safe mode etc and go to reboot just before install of new drivers,what I did was close my PC down,removed my Nvidia card,replaced it with my 9700NP ,booted back up when XP detects it and you get the hardware wizard come up hit cancel ,then at desktop just install the drivers like above,hope this helps.

 

[b4u]

Ok, I'm a new ATI user as well, I put together a P4 2.4c, P4P800 Deluxe, Kingston 1Gb RAM DDR434, Gigacube ATI 9600 Pro.

I installed Windows XP, and it all seems correctly working.

I installed ATI calatyst 3.6, and control panel. O the display settings, I can click on "Advanced" and it brings me a window full of tabs, most of them with the ATI icon (they should have appeared with the control panel).

Now I have 2 tabs: Open GL and Direct 3D. Both have similar settings, with AA (Anti-Alaising) and AF (Anisotropaic Filtering). They both are set in 2x, but they are all disabled, since there is a check for "Software Preference" (or something like that).

My questions:

[1] They all have the minimum 2x setting. does that mean that the 9600 Pro always do AA 2x and AF 2x?

[2] What settings should I choose? Must I have to reenter a couple of times in each game to manually set the best performance? Because that is a bit time-consuming ... when someone want to play 😀


<edit>Spelling bugs corrected 😀 thanks</edit>


Thanks

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: b4u
...with AF (Antialysing) and Aniso (Anysotropic (sp?) filtering).

[1] They all have the minimum 2x setting. does that mean that the 9600 Pro always do AF 2x and Aniso 2x filtering?

I think you mean FSAA / AA for Anti-Alaising, and AF for Anisotropaic Filtering (spelling errors there!)

 

[Mem]

b4u,from what I understand it will try to give the best settings possible(for the game in question) for both AF,AA if you use "application preference" however it may also use no AA or use lower AA/AF settings(depends on the game) then you could set manually.

I believe the "application preference" is more a safe/best setting for the game ,where`s doing it manually you can adjust it for performance(more FPS)or high image quality,remember not all games are equal when it comes to best settings.

I`m more of an AF(Anisotropic filtering) fan then AA so prefer to use the high 16x AF performance setting(manually) and stick AA on "application preference",I`ve yet to find a game that does not like these settings.

 

[b4u]

Thanks for the replies 🙂

I heard that ATI is more powerfull with AF than AA, and so it would be better to put high AF and then raising AA to set a good performance/quality. That seems to go with what you said 🙂

One more thing: What is the Performance/Quality? I mean, Performance should bring more speed, more FPS, but dropping some quality on the way, while Quality would bring more visual efects, droping the speed. But from what I can think of, it could only achieve that while twisting these AA/AF settings ... isn't that correct? Does that mean it would be an auto-set-AA-FF for each application? Because that would also mean it to be something like the "Application Preferences" setting ...

Well, I came from a TNT2 32Mb ... no effect happened down there, it was simple install and play 🙂 (or, install and pray for good FPS 😀)


Thanks

 

[raystorm]

Thank you very much for all the great and informative responses. Its highly appreciated! My new card is only a few hours away from delivery..cant wait!! 😀

Cheers my friends :beer:

 

[b4u]

* bump for someone to answer my questions 😀 *

... plus this question:

With Catalyst 3.6 drivers and Control Panel, should I still need for a "Refresh Force" installment?

Thanks

 

[raystorm]

I just installed my 9800 and it worked out great. Games look great and everything went super smoothly!

b4u... you could just manually set the refresh rate in the control panel, but I just used refresh force anyways since it does everything in like 1 second (yea I was a bit lazy there 😀).

Go ahead and use refresh force if you want..doesnt hurt.

 

[MrPabulum]

B4u,

I've noticed that 4X AA/8X AF work best for me, with the tab set on quality. Performance mode means just that: the frame rate hit isn't as great. On the other hand, the IQ isn't as sharp, at least not to my eyes. Some people prefer performance mode. See what works best for you. I've found that the difference between 2X and no AA is minsicule. If you're going to use AA, set it at 4X, and lower the resolution a bit. The IQ difference is incredible. :beer: If you don't want to use AA/AF, then make sure the 'application preference' tabs are marked. 🙂

With regards to Refresh Force, I found that I needed to use it, but many people don't. Use the override refresh rate option in the control panel first. If that doesn't work for you, then download RefreshForce.

 

[Mem]

b4u ,you`ll find everything about the settings and tweaking here ,the 3 pages cover everything you should ever need to know.

🙂

 

[raystorm]

Thanks for the link Mem 😀

So far i'm lovin my 9800np.. great card and a great improvement in quality and performance over my old geforce 3. So far I threw about 20 of my pc games at the card and everything looks and plays perfectly! Awesome card and definitely worth the money!

 

[Mem]

Raystorm you`re welcome,I`m glad you like your 9800.As a long term Nvidia user myself I know it makes you feel great when you go over to the other side and everything works just fine.

🙂

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: Mem
Raystorm you`re welcome,I`m glad you like your 9800.As a long term Nvidia user myself I know it makes you feel great when you go over to the other side and everything works just fine.

🙂

Same here.
My previous 3 cards were nVidia ones (GF2MX, GF2GTS, GF3Ti200).
When i got my 9700pro back in February, i uninstalled the nVidia drivers, "purged" the system of nVidia stuff, installed the 9700pro, installed the ATI drivers, and was suprised by a 3dmark2k1 score of 5k.
But i was not dissapointed, and more importently, i was not rash and didnt get rid of the card.
I had previously read up on all known bugs and errors that i could come accross (like i do with each piece of hardware before i get it, so i know what to expect and how to fix it/avoid it).
So i formatted my HD, and reinstalled Windows and my 3dmark2k1 score doubled. To around 10k. I was in gaming heaven. There wasnt a game out, and there still isnt that i cant run in high res without slowdown. The best upgrade ive ever done. Even better than moving from a 486DX2 66mhz with 16mb ram to a P2 233, imo.

 

[b4u]

Originally posted by: Mem
Raystorm you`re welcome,I`m glad you like your 9800.As a long term Nvidia user myself I know it makes you feel great when you go over to the other side and everything works just fine.

🙂

I second that, this is my first ATI card, and everything works great ... nice we can trust other companies as well 🙂

But about score, I jumped from a P3 600EB, 256Mb RAM, Riva TNT2 32Mb, right to a P4 2.4c, 1Gb RAM, Gicagube ATI 9600 Pro ... so I gess I would expect nothing less than being fascinated 🙂

And mem: thanks for the link 😉

 

[b4u]

Originally posted by: Mem
Raystorm you`re welcome,I`m glad you like your 9800.As a long term Nvidia user myself I know it makes you feel great when you go over to the other side and everything works just fine.

🙂

I second that, this is my first ATI card, and everything works great ... nice we can trust other companies as well 🙂

But about score, I jumped from a P3 600EB, 256Mb RAM, Riva TNT2 32Mb, right to a P4 2.4c, 1Gb RAM, Gicagube ATI 9600 Pro ... so I gess I would expect nothing less than being fascinated 🙂

And mem: thanks for the link 😉