what does everyone think of the new radeon 9700 pro's

[jima]

 

[jlarsson]

I just ordered mine...should be here by Friday. Can't wait!

 

[Actaeon]

Don't have one... but I'd say, Fast.

 

[kylebisme]

going from a geforce3 to a 9700 was like if i would have went from a voodoo3 to a geforce3 and skiped the geforce sdr and voodoo5 all together. that is speed wise, image quality is considrably beter than my visiontek geforce3 in all regards too. it still does have rendering issues with various games though.

 

[Mats]

ATi released the 9700 before it was "ready for primetime". I agree with many of the issues Dereck Smart raised with regards to the driver issues of the Radeon 9700. The driver department of ATi suck. ATi have become notorious for their drivers and nothing has changed, as such, I think the 9700 is a let down.

My personal opinion of the card itself is that the R300 chip is 'brute force' engine that uses too much power to run. It's an unrefined product and the ATi driver dept. needs to mature.

 

[Sanityy]

9700 is an awesome card!! I was going to get 1, then again the nv30 is on the horizon so gonna wait up for that for sure!! =P

 

[jima]

mats this was really for people who have one and from the way ur talking u dont so how do u know its a let down. i believe that with the current drivers it spanked the g4 so............................................ must be good.

 

[Technonut]

I really like the 9700. It has handled all the games that I threw at it so far very well at high quality settings. The words to describe it... Beautiful quality, fast, and smooth.

UT2K3
UT
Q3A
Max Payne
Serious Sam
Alice
RTCW
Star Trek Voyager Elite Force
Star Trek Bridge Commander
BF1942

Are the games I have run so far. I still have to install and try:

Diablo LOD
Dungeon Siege
Morrowind

EDIT: UT2K3 is the demo of course...I will be buying the full version.

 

[Torghn]

I want one!

I just don't have enough money.

 

[jaybee]

Don't have one but need one! Ok, I don't need one -- my 4400 will have to do -- but I'm still jealous. Anyway, I can't think of a game now that I play without AA, and from the benchies I've seen, the 9700 kicks butt with AA (and AF). At my settings, the 9700 would be at least twice as fast.

jaybee

PS Anyone tried the tv-out?

 

[Glitchny]

Ive been playing with my 9700 with no problems at all, the drivers have been working fine, and i would say that ATI's driver department has gotten alot better and is nowhere near a let down. they released a patch for certain games that were haviung problems.. it was some trivial number like (3) and in comparison that is a large improvment over previous drivers, and the brute force point of attack seems to have worked and it seems to be stomping on the gforce4, and thats with the new detanator drivers.

 

[lung]

I love it. There are of course some issues with the drivers, but I haven't experienced anything major. Issues are to be expected with a brand new card especially when you buy it within the first couple weeks. I knew what I was getting into, but I expect to see the drivers mature over time. I could have waited to get a NV30, but I figure that after several years of supporting Nvidia, I would give ATI a shot. I'm totally happy so far with that decision.

I've been playing the following games with no problems:

UT2003 Demo (and 927 build before demo came out)
Jedi Knight: Outcast
Battlefield 1942
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Unreal Tournament
Q3: Team Arena
Morrowind

All run very nicely at 1280x1024 with everything maxed out, ie: textures, AA, AF. A few things need to be turned down like shadows or view distance in some games to get nice framerates at 1600x1200 though.

Overall: great card, now we just wait to see the drivers catch up a bit.

 

[Orbius]

Personally I think ATi gets a bad rap for drivers, I think most of the problems arise from developers doing it 'Nvidia's' way, which makes sense because there are more Nvidia cards out there.

I remember at the time of 3dfx that Nvidia cards had problems with almost every game in Direct 3d. Everyone blamed 3dfx because they said too much development time went into making the game work with Glide, so the other API's suffered.

Well I think we see that to a lesser extent now, games are designed with Nvidia drivers in mind, and so because of this ATi appears to have bad drivers, when its not really the case.

If the Nv30 doesnt outperform the 9700 then we will see ATi become the dominant card so things should change.

 

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by: Mats
ATi released the 9700 before it was "ready for primetime". I agree with many of the issues Dereck Smart raised with regards to the driver issues of the Radeon 9700. The driver department of ATi suck. ATi have become notorious for their drivers and nothing has changed, as such, I think the 9700 is a let down.

My personal opinion of the card itself is that the R300 chip is 'brute force' engine that uses too much power to run. It's an unrefined product and the ATi driver dept. needs to mature.

Before it was ready for prime-time?? It's faster than anything else out? I have not had a problem with drivers.

It does not adhere to the AGP standard, but oh-well. I don't think you could get it to run as fast on the 15u die without the extra power. It still is the fastest thing around.

amish

 

[scottrico]

if the Nv30 doesnt outperform the 9700 then we will see ATi become the dominant card so things should change.

You know nvidia will beat the proformance of the 9700, even if they have to cheat.

The 9700 spanked the geforce 4.
And unless the Nv30 has a 30-50% gain on the 9700, Nvidia has already lost.

I play all my games with 4x AA and 16X AF on.

This card is sweet.

 

[kyoshozx]

My Experiences with the Radeon 9700 pro has been great. The card is fast and it's great being able to turn up everything and still play at a reasonable framerate. The 2d quality was the same as my Radeon 8500 which was a lot better than the Geforce i had before it. I haven't had any major issues with the card. Ati drivers have improved ALOT since the Radeon 8500 been released I know since I had a radeon 8500 right when it was released.

I think driver problems are being blown out of proportion, and ATI already released a fixed for some of the games that were having problems.


About the AGP 8x, I have no experience but will soon since My Asus AV78X will arrive tomorrow.

 

[Mats]

jima: You asked what "everyone thinks" of the new Radeon - I simply posted my opinion. Whether I have one or not is immaterial, I prefer to do some research before buying a new card, don't you? Because it gets a higher fps in games, doesn't mean it "must be good". There are many other factors to judge a card by, one of the most important being the drivers.

Orbius: OK that's what you think or would like to believe, but the fact is that ATi drivers are broken in certain circumstances. Their drivers are bad, believe it. Even John Carmack has said that nVidia dirvers are the "golden standard". When ATi release a new card or drivers, many devs have to come up with workarounds or release patches to get their games to work. These issues never appear with nVidia or even Matrox.

Electric Amish: The card is powerful (however 'brute' and unrefined that it is) but I believe a card and it's drivers go hand in hand, therefore the card was a let down and unless ATi sort out there drivers, it's a waste of hardware. So you have no issues, nice, but this still does not detract from the fact that ATi does have serious driver issues that need to be resolved. The card required patches for games from ATi aswell as from game devs themselves. So no, the card was not ready. The release was all marketing and publicity, nothing more.

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Disclaimer: I don't have the card either (*yet*)

Mats--

Electric Amish: The card is powerful (however 'brute' and unrefined that it is) but I believe a card and it's drivers go hand in hand, therefore the card was a let down and unless ATi sort out there drivers, it's a waste of hardware. So you have no issues, nice, but this still does not detract from the fact that ATi does have serious driver issues that need to be resolved. The card required patches for games from ATi aswell as from game devs themselves. So no, the card was not ready. The release was all marketing and publicity, nothing more.

As has already been stated, it's a brand-new card. Look at the 8500 when it came out, everyone was ranting about the GF3Ti's. So I bought a Ti200, on the basis that NVidia had good drivers. Radeon 8500 was considered to be on par with Ti200... but look what happened, ATI got their drivers dialed in and now it outperforms Ti500, even hangs with GF4's. Best case scenario, we can expect this to happen with the 9700 as well...

Although I do expect the NV30 to kick serious butt... we should be thankful NVidia's taking their time. The .13 die will be worth it.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Mats
ATi released the 9700 before it was "ready for primetime". I agree with many of the issues Dereck Smart raised with regards to the driver issues of the Radeon 9700. The driver department of ATi suck. ATi have become notorious for their drivers and nothing has changed, as such, I think the 9700 is a let down.

My personal opinion of the card itself is that the R300 chip is 'brute force' engine that uses too much power to run. It's an unrefined product and the ATi driver dept. needs to mature.

some never give up, do they?

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Mildly disappointed in BF1942, but I think this game is just coded bad because it's no shining beacon on my friend's 4600 either. I can almost always run it at 1600x1200, but you can forget any sort of AA. This game benefits more from the high res than the AA anyway from what I can see.
Pretty disappointed w/ performance in NWN (but this is definitely because this game was coded for nVidia :| ) 1600x1200 looks AWESOME, too bad 15 fps is not playable. My friend's 4400 got higher frames than me at every res.
NOLF2 demo looks amazing at 1600x1200, and most the time it looks smooth as buttah, but there is an odd frame skip every once in a while. It isn't really related to activity though.

Everything else it tears it up though.


P.S. I've had NO driver problems of any sort.

 

[danzig]

Originally posted by: Torghn
I want one!

I just don't have enough money.

I'm in the same boat

 

[Johhn]

 

[Johhn]

 

[Johhn]

 

[gwlam12]

Orbius: OK that's what you think or would like to believe, but the fact is that ATi drivers are broken in certain circumstances. Their drivers are bad, believe it. Even John Carmack has said that nVidia dirvers are the "golden standard". When ATi release a new card or drivers, many devs have to come up with workarounds or release patches to get their games to work. These issues never appear with nVidia or even Matrox.

GTA3 has a problem with some Geforces. It is addressed in their readme.