Radeon 9700pro Questions

[Crank]

Hi all,
I just upgraded my old GF2 Ultra with a Radeon 9700.......and I can't really see much of a difference.
I played Jedi Knight II: Outcast a few months ago on the GF2, so that's what I fired up with the 9700. Now, I was able to set the rez to 16x12, with no more slowness than my GF2 on 10x7, but even then, the graphics didn't really look all that more stunning.
Am I doing something wrong? A couple of questions:

I noticed on the Radeon control panel there are various settings for AA and AF under OpenGL and D3D. They're set to 'Application Preference' for both, except for Open GL - there the AA is set to 'Disabled.' Texture Pref. is set to Quality and MipMap is set to High Quality, and Trueform is off. What do these do and should I mess with them?

I used the cable that comes with the card to splice power off of one of the HDD leads - can I just hook an unused floppy power supply to it? I've got one in a very convenient place, and would rather not use the adaptor if I don't have to.

I did notice some odd shadows on Jedi Knight - is this the sort of ATI bugginess that I read about from time to time?

When I installed the drivers, I got a new media player by ATI (I think it's some special edition of RealPlayer) but the sound level is so low that I literally have to crank my volume all the way up to get a halfway decent level out of it - with WMP I leave it set at about half. Any way to fix this?


I'm running a P4 1.8GHz, 512MB RDRAM, Intel MoBo, Win2kPro SP3, Enhance 300W PS, and all the latest drivers for the card, the ATI control center, the Bios, and the MoBo.

I'm mainly asking because I could return this and get a GF4 Ti4600 for about $100 less, so I'm wondering if there are any reasons to stick with this bad boy or not.

Thanks in advance for all the help. You guys here on ATech are usually very patient with a guy like me, and very generous with your time.
I apprecaite it!

 

[FishTankX]

My reccomendations are this.

Set AF to max in both OpenGL and D3D
Set FSAA to 2X in both OpenGL and D3D
Play at 1280X1024
And have fun enjoying the visual goodness.

The Radeon9700 has twice the muscle power of the Ti4600. It is one kick ass card. I would *NOT* return it.

With FSAA and AF on, the Radeon looks beautiful. As for the shadows, i'd look at the readme doc and see if they have anything on it.

 

[FishTankX]

By the way, with JKII oucast, you can try an experiment to show the Radeon9700's power.

Crank FSAA up all the way.

Crank AF up all the way. Set the resolution to 1600X1200. Then let your jaw drop.

The Radeon9700 can actually handle such absurd settings with aplomb. I would *NOT* reccomend this in other games, but for JK:II outcast the Radeon9700 seems to have a few tricks that allow it to run 4XFSAA 16XAF 1600X1200 while only loosing about 30% of the speed it would have at 1024X760 no AF no FSAA. It's a miracle, really. I don't see how it's possible. But it does. If that doesn't impress you, I don't really know what will..

 

[FishTankX]

Oh yeah, and you can directly plug in a floppy connector. That's what it was designed for.

 

[GTaudiophile]

It would be wise to install a program called RegClear to check and see if any of your old nVidia drivers are lurking in your registry. Delete those, reinstall the lates Cat. drivers with DX8.1, and you should be set.

 

[Curley]

Everyone is looking for the WOW factor of the new card. The Geforce4 Ti series cards provide great visual quality, the ATI 9700 PRO does the same thing, just faster. The large advancements in 3D rendering the web is talking about will not be seen for another year to 18months for both cards, Geforce and Radeon.

At 1024x768, these cards seem to (visually without benchmarks) perform equally. The radeon just doesn't slow down at all when the resolution is pumped up.

I traded in my first Radeon 9700 Pro because I didn't get the WOW factor. I traded it for a Ti4600 and some change. The great thing is I just got a Giga-Byte Maya II Radeon 9700Pro as a gift and running them side by side, I am starting to see the difference.

Technology is so advanced that measuring a 100% increase in speed only equals split seconds.

What's my point? I don't have one, just sharing my experiences.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Personally, I use 4X Anti-Aliasing and 8X Anisotropic filtering... (16X doesn't really make a difference) I play my games at either 1024x768 or 1280x960.


JK2 looks good, but it's not a very demanding game for today's video cards... The Q3 engine is pretty old. Upping the resolution or enabling FSAA will smooth things out, but it won't add polygons to the game. Maybe you can try Trueform, though I'm not sure if JK2 supports it.


Anyways, I'd keep the 9700 if I were you, it'll be worth it in the future when more demanding games come out. I think it's worth 100$ more than the Ti4600.

 

[Wolfsraider]

i am very happy with mine but i had a gf2mx200 64mb card and i see a huge improvement in colors in fps in aa etc...but if you feel it doesn't do you justice then by all means get the gforce4600 and pocket the change

it sounds as if youre having buyers remorse and not happy with the performance/cost of the card in which case i think you should get the gforce as not everone is happy with the fastest horse out there and what might be good for one may be too much for others lol

but this strikes me odd: Now, I was able to set the rez to 16x12, with no more slowness than my GF2 on 10x7

are you saying that you expected the 9700 to be slower?

also what are you running the ati card on (pc specs) my bet is 1.6ghz or less
and i'll say this i had it on my p4 1.5 and it was a big upgrade in performance and visual quality but not near as big as going to a 2.8ghz so if you are running it on a slower system then you are probably not recieving the full benifit of the card

if you have any nvidia drivers or remnants in your registry then that too can cause problems as stated by GTaudiophile above.

what ever you do
do what makes you happy

mike

 

[Crank]

Thanks a bunch for all the quick replies - comments and answers to questions in the order of the posts:

FishTankX - Yep, setting AA and AF to higher levels did produce a nicer picture - why do they default those things to off or application specific??
I did notice the game slow down a lot, but once I turned off Volumetric Shadows, that did the job....I don't really like Volumetric Shadows all that much anyway - they really make the polygons stand out, even during cut scenes, and they seem to be awfully CPU intensive.
BTW, the odd shadow effect I mentioned before isn't a bug, it was a Volumentric Shadow I wasn't used to.

I did uninstall the GF drivers before I plugged the Radeon in, but I'll check the registry for remnants.

No buyers remorse, I just want to make sure I'm getting the most bang for my buck. I realize that today's games can't take advantage of this card for the most part, and I figured if I bought a Ti4600, and saved a hundred bucks, it would get me buy until the 9700 dropped $150 to $200, and I could get the same upgrade for less money out of pocket.

I commented on the Radeon not slowing down at higher rez to demonstrate that I was not surprised that it could equal the GF2 at a more GPU intensive rez - my main point was that if I weren't going to see a lot more eye candy, I'd be happy to save the money and play at a lower rez.

My system's a 1.8GHz - how much of a bottleneck is it to the video card, do you think?

Thanks again, I love learning about stuff here on AT.

-Chris

 

[Valinos]

I had originally purchased a GF4 Ti 4600 back in March as an upgrade from a GF2 GTS. I thought it was insane power...too much...so I returned it and bought a vanilla GF3. At the time, games performed essentially the same with the GF3 as they did with the GF4...Not even six months later I wish I had kept the GF4, because Im' seeing considerable performance hits in games like Battlefield 1942 and UT 2003. Although, I may have ended up pretty well off considering I spent $130 for my GF3 compared to $400 on the GF4. You on the other hand, would be saving $100...not worth it...keep the Radeon 9700. Especially for only $100, you will wish you had kept it 3 or 4 months from now.

 

[Crank]

I ran 3Dmark 2001 and only scored 6,824.
In the 3D accelerator comparison, the GF4's all outscored me....wonder what I'm doing wrong...I did still have AA and AF cranked as high as they would go from my playing around with JKII - would that get me lower 3DMarks?

Thanks,

-Chris

 

[anthrax]

16X AF + 8X FSAA would really eat into the frame rate.....The 9700 handles it quite well...try it with a GF4 ti4600 and I would expect it to be around 2500.....

 

[Wolfsraider]

don't feel too bad i get 7537 with all the bells and whistles on lol

 

[Curley]

I get the same score until I set the card to 640x480 16 bit, no AA, then I get 13000.

 

[WyteWatt]

I can't wait when we can get a score of 10000 or more in 3dmark2001SE with all the bells and whistles on! I am sure the ATI 9700 pro may beable to do it with a 4 or 5 ghz processor ! That will rock! Or at least close!

 

[WyteWatt]

sorry double post.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

Does the 9700 PRO support two displays? I thought it did but read somewhere it didn't.

 

[Crank]

Hmmm...I'm pretty sure it supports two displays - at least the settings look like it does, but I haven't tried it yet...only one monitor at home
The instructions basically only tell you how to install the card, and that's about it!

Yeah, I turned the AA and AF down and the 3DMark score went up 500 points or so. I guess I'll hang on to this card, yeah, it's a lot of money to spend, but I'm always Mr. bargain shopper (thanks to the HD forum), so I guess if I treat myself this once, that's not too bad....besides, I have an Amex with BVG, so I'll be able to PM in 2 months....maybe the NV30 will be out by then to help knock the price down!!

Anybody have any ideas/thoughts about the volume issue with the ATI media player thingy? I'm thinking about just turning it off and letting WMP take back control as the default player.

 

[FishTankX]

Crank, are you sure that wasn't a typo? It's suposed to go up 5000 points, to around 10,000. Without all the pretty stuff. something's wrong there, if you're having trouble breaking the 7000 barrier, as a Radeon9700 pro should break 9,000 no sweat on a T-bird 1.2GHZ...

And the Radeon9700, it really is a killer card. AA and AF can really clean up a picture. And the Radeon9700 made 1600X1200 with FSAA and AF, a posibility, for the first time, ever. With it's 256 bit memory bus (which helps immeasurably) you can plow right up to 1280X1024 with 4X FSAA and AF and still maintain reasonable framerates, or just go without AA and AF and hit the 2048X1536 barrier. It really is an awesome card.

 

[FishTankX]

By the way, I should mention that the Radeon 9700 pro eats into CPU power like candy, and scales almost linearly without FSAA and AF. If you can get up to the 2.5GHZ area, that's the sweet spot for the Radeon9700. I see that your running an Intel mobo, and it looks like you might be running an old P4, and not a northwood...?? If so, an upgrade to a 2.4 northwood would be worthit for gaming performance. But don't take my word for it. Any of you care to back me up on the CPU holding the card back??

 

[Crank]

Heh heh, yeah, I bought my 1.8GHz about two weeks before the Northwoods were announced - I was very, very sad.
That 3DMark score was with AF and AA still on about halfway, I'll run it with them off just to see tonight or tomorrow.

If I were to upgrade my CPU, I'd want to get a new MoBo too, to take advantage of the faster FSB you can get nowadays - but I really don't think I'll be doing any serious upgrading until *at least* next summer, so this'll have to last for now.
I think I should be o.k. game-wise until then, don't you? I'm getting NOLF2 in a couple of days and can't wait to try it with everything cranked up!

 

[FishTankX]

Well, my 1.7GHZ Williamette (Bought around the same time you bought yours) is still kickin it at playable framerates on most of todays games, but if you ever do upgrade i'd carry over your RAM to an i850E system. Anyways, yeah, your videocard/CPU should do fine in most of today's games. Your processor's not too hot (Unless you're talking about thermally. ) But enough to last you till your next upgrade.

 

[Legendary]

Urm floppy power connectors are too small for the 9700s power input I thought? Only regular power connectors work...at least that's how mine's looking right now.

 

[Crank]

Well, turning the AA/AF settings as low as they'd go got me 9,037 3DMarks....still haven't scoured the registry for old NVidia stuff, but ... .. well, it's close to 10K....

 

[Markfw]

I have a radeon 8500 128 meg retail on an XP2000 cpu that gets about 9000. I think there is still something wrong. With your 1.8 and that 9700, you should be in 13000 range (I think)

Edit : typo 8500 not 9500