SUPER DEALS! new radeons 9700np!

Dran

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
303
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0
Originally posted by: Parasitic
People, get the Sapphire. PowerColor has those horrid Infineon 3.3ns memory.

What's the problem with Infineon 3.3? I'm just curious because that's I have on the 9500 non-Pro I just got/installed. Clocks up to 303Mhz on the memory, appears to be stable, and it's faster than the memory that I read was supposed to be on the card (3.6ns). Is there something wrong with Infineon chips? Is my beautiful new 9500 going to explode in a burst of face-shredding shrapnel? Will fire come shooting out of my front USB ports?
 

AkumaX

Lifer
Apr 20, 2000
12,643
3
81
rolleye.gif
 

CherryBOMB

Senior member
Nov 12, 2002
857
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76
does any one know if the ATI 9700 All in Wonder have any thing to loose twards the New ATI 9800 cards ,9800 Pro 128mb or 9800 All in Wonder? of course not to the 9800 PRO 256mb ..........
 

edplayer

Platinum Member
Sep 13, 2002
2,186
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Originally posted by: CherryBOMB
does any one know if the ATI 9700 All in Wonder have any thing to loose twards the New ATI 9800 cards ,9800 Pro 128mb or 9800 All in Wonder? of course not to the 9800 PRO 256mb ..........


faster gpu and faster memory. Minor improvements in the core.
 

Parasitic

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2002
4,000
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Originally posted by: Dran
Originally posted by: Parasitic
People, get the Sapphire. PowerColor has those horrid Infineon 3.3ns memory.

What's the problem with Infineon 3.3? I'm just curious because that's I have on the 9500 non-Pro I just got/installed. Clocks up to 303Mhz on the memory, appears to be stable, and it's faster than the memory that I read was supposed to be on the card (3.6ns). Is there something wrong with Infineon chips? Is my beautiful new 9500 going to explode in a burst of face-shredding shrapnel? Will fire come shooting out of my front USB ports?

They have low voltages, and it's nearly impossible to get them to run anything over 303MHz.
 

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
7,512
2
81
What's the problem with Infineon 3.3
The Sapphire has 3.0 or even 2.8 so why not get it? There's nothing wrong with Inf 3.3, it's just not as good as what you could otherwise get.
 

Slaben

Member
Jun 6, 2002
60
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They have low voltages, and it's nearly impossible to get them to run anything over 303MHz


My 9500 pro has the 3.3's had it up as far as 330 with minor artifacting ( I don't think that's a real word) but I run it at 320 now. Rock solid performance!
 

Parasitic

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2002
4,000
2
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Originally posted by: Slaben
They have low voltages, and it's nearly impossible to get them to run anything over 303MHz


My 9500 pro has the 3.3's had it up as far as 330 with minor artifacting ( I don't think that's a real word) but I run it at 320 now. Rock solid performance!

It varies from case to case, but the majority can't get over the 303MHz barrier, and some can't even run anything over 297MHz. Consult Rage3D overclocking forum for more details. My 9500np softmodded also comes with the 3.3ns Infineon memory, and it doesn't like anything over 300MHz either.
 

Dran

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
303
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0
Originally posted by: Parasitic
Originally posted by: Dran
Originally posted by: Parasitic
People, get the Sapphire. PowerColor has those horrid Infineon 3.3ns memory.

What's the problem with Infineon 3.3? I'm just curious because that's I have on the 9500 non-Pro I just got/installed. Clocks up to 303Mhz on the memory, appears to be stable, and it's faster than the memory that I read was supposed to be on the card (3.6ns). Is there something wrong with Infineon chips? Is my beautiful new 9500 going to explode in a burst of face-shredding shrapnel? Will fire come shooting out of my front USB ports?

They have low voltages, and it's nearly impossible to get them to run anything over 303MHz.

Volt mod.

But from my own testing this afternoon (Q3A test, bilinear, no AA, no AF, 1152x864, 32bpp color and textures, all other quality options maxed), the gains from memory speed increases are negligable. Half a frame/second was what I could measurably reproduce during the tests (that is, for each 5Mhz the RAM was OCed, approximately 2.5 fps were gained). I'd expect that increasing the resolution or turning on AA/AF would lower that even more.

At any rate, from what I've read on Rage3D, the 9700 series didn't suffer from the low voltage issue, just the 9500 non-Pros. It also appears that the +5v voltage has a more significant impact on overclocking 9500 and 9700 cards than the mem voltage.
 

Dran

Senior member
Jul 24, 2001
303
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0
Originally posted by: zephyrprime
What's the problem with Infineon 3.3
The Sapphire has 3.0 or even 2.8 so why not get it? There's nothing wrong with Inf 3.3, it's just not as good as what you could otherwise get.

Mine's a Sapphire (9500 non-Pro). It has Infineon 3.3. Newegg refurb, $104. All things considered, I think I made out like a bandit. :D
 

Killrose

Diamond Member
Oct 26, 1999
6,230
8
81
3.3ns infineon sucks. I have it on my 9500np>9700 hack, and even with ramsinks will barely break 300MHz.
 

HiTek21

Diamond Member
Jul 4, 2002
4,391
1
0
My Radeon 9700 has the 3.3ns Infineon RAM, got it from Mwave couple months ago for 200. Memory doesn't overclock very well but I had the GPU running 360.
 

Redviffer

Senior member
Oct 30, 2002
830
0
0
Overclocking isn't guaranteed! Don't blame the chips because they run like THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO, if you wanted 9700 pro speed then you should have bought a 9700 pro.

 

CitizenHaax

Member
Feb 18, 2003
26
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0
BEWARE!!

Powercolor has some misleading product models.

For instance in the 9600 Pro series they have a version called the EZ. Its got the core of the pro version but the memory of the non-pro, 200x2 instead of 300x2. Instead of benching at 10500-11500 in 3dmark2001 it benches in the 8100 range.

Check the product specs before purchasing don't assume its the same as the ATI standard model specs.

BEWARE!!
 

PinchyCM

Golden Member
Feb 25, 2003
1,006
0
71
Originally posted by: Parasitic
People, get the Sapphire. PowerColor has those horrid Infineon 3.3ns memory.

the one with the black pcb doesnt come with the 2.8 or the 3.6 memory. the black pcb isn't very good at being flashed to a pro....

 

modestninja

Senior member
Jul 17, 2003
753
0
76
I got 3.0ns memory on my powercolor 9700np that I got a month ago. I've heard that some people even got samsung 2.83ns on theirs (only 2 or 3 out of about 50 people that I've communicated with). Most have either gotten the 3.0ns or 3.3ns. I can't complain about my card (although I haven't OC'd it yet because I can run anything that I play at full details.)
 

slycat

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2001
5,656
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how much better are these cards than my crappy ol' pnyti4200?
i have an oced athlonxp 1600(fsb145), nforce2setup with ti4200 oced...all on air
and i get 11000+ on 3dmark2001...
so unless a card can give me 3000+ or more, i don't see the point.