Radeon 9700 rocks!

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: daveman

Originally posted by: Malladine
Well firstly, what's wrong with 50fps?

Secondly, to answer your question the difference between a gf2 mx and a radeon 9700 gold w/1ghz cpu will be huge. I'd say you'd find it to be around 3-4 times faster. With a 2.5+ghz pentium 4, you'll get another 50-80% increase!! Cool huh?

Thanks, well the 50 fps is while I'm sitting still and most of the eye candy turned off. Just trying to upgrade my pc one component at a time. Still torn between the 9500, 9700 and ti4600.
Many thanks,
David

Nascar 2003 is a great sim (that game can't get enough cpu/gpu). You might want to get a Ti4200 for that system unless you plan to upgrade the rest of your rig real soon. The price drop of the 9700pro in the next 2months will cover a cheap Ti4200. IMO

 

[Malladine]

Nascar 2003 is a great sim (that game can't get enough cpu/gpu)

Same goes for all sims

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga
So that softmod won't void the warranty or anything? I'm going ot get either a 9700 or a 9700 Pro in the next few months depending on price. What exactly does the softmod do? I've heard about it but I haven't actually read much about it

No, it won't void your warranty. All it does is enable a 9700pro (new softmods are out for the 9500/pro) to benefit from the 9800pro driver path in Cat 3.2. What does this mean? The artificial performance delta at equal clockspeeds seen in 9800pro benchmarks are erased once the 9700pro is softmodded. These changes will be implemented in Cat 3.3 as well, but as I've said before, why wait when you can get that performance increase right now.

first of all you mean smoothvision, and from most reports 2.0 -> 2.1 hasn't really improved things as much as you'd think.

It certainly does at higher resolutions with any level of AA or AF enabled. The main difference I saw was that I could run quality AF with the softmod at the same performance levels as running performance AF w/out the softmod. The performance gains increase as you increase the clockspeed of the card as well, which makes sense as those resolutions and settings are mostly clockspeed and bandwidth limited.

Chiz

 

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by: chizow

first of all you mean smoothvision, and from most reports 2.0 -> 2.1 hasn't really improved things as much as you'd think.

It certainly does at higher resolutions with any level of AA or AF enabled. The main difference I saw was that I could run quality AF with the softmod at the same performance levels as running performance AF w/out the softmod. The performance gains increase as you increase the clockspeed of the card as well, which makes sense as those resolutions and settings are mostly clockspeed and bandwidth limited.

Chiz[/quote]

that is my experience, as well. not a huge difference, but certainly worth the 5 seconds of effort. my 3d Mark 2003 score also went up 200 points with the softmod.

 

[Malladine]

Seeing as i'm pretty certain i'll be going for the 9700 gold in a few months, i'll gather this data now:

1. What exactly is the 9800 softmod? Reading through posts here i've seen many apparently conflicting answers and i'd like a more definitive one, if you would As my understanding goes it is a form of beta (?) driver which enables some features only previously utilized with the 9800?

2. Who developed it?

3. Where should I be downloading this softmod?

4. Is it likely to reduce the lifespan of the 9700 gold?

5. Is installing it really as simple as installing a driver?

6. lung mentioned in this topic that the next Cat drivers will include much of what the 9800 softmod does. Is this likely?

 

[EdipisReks]

if you are going to wait a couple of months before you get the 9700 gold, then don't worry about it. the cat 3.3's will include the new driver path for 9700 series cards.

 

[Elvis2]

Nascar 2003 is a great sim (that game can't get enough cpu/gpu

Alright...another racer I have every Papy Nascar sim and NR2K3 rock's on my 9700 Pro. Just got it last week to replace my tired Ti4600 and I can't believe the huge improvement in image quality. I'm getting about the same frame rates but can run @ 4xfsaa and 8x ansio. My old Voodoo5 5500 spoiled me with fsaa on N3 and it sure is nice to come back to a great quality picture. Even the 2D is easier on the eyes

 

[BFG10K]

Glad to see you enjoying your card.

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: Elvis2

Nascar 2003 is a great sim (that game can't get enough cpu/gpu

Alright...another racer I have every Papy Nascar sim and NR2K3 rock's on my 9700 Pro. Just got it last week to replace my tired Ti4600 and I can't believe the huge improvement in image quality. I'm getting about the same frame rates but can run @ 4xfsaa and 8x ansio. My old Voodoo5 5500 spoiled me with fsaa on N3 and it sure is nice to come back to a great quality picture. Even the 2D is easier on the eyes

There is a big improvement in quality, my only gripe is that my fps did go down a bit, I guess that I still have more tweakin to do. From what I am hearing the 3.3 cat drivers should make a big difference, I guess I'll just wait and see.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: eklass
ordering a 9700 tomarrow yay for upgrading from geforce2 mx

edit: what's the difference between powercolor's gold and regular and which brand is worth the few extra bucks to o/c it?

Wow, you'll definitely notice a difference there. I can see the difference with my 9700 Pro over the Ti4200 I had in before - better resolutions, with more antialiasing samples, and higher anisotropic filtering. Just don't forget to remove the nVidia drivers from the system before putting the 9700 in. And when downloading drivers, I have been told that the Catalyst 3.1's are better than the 3.2's - so far, I'll second that; the 3.1's seem to work better.

 

[1ManArmY]

Do the cat 3.1 work well with Rainbow 6 Ravenshield?