Radeon 9700 Pro 3Dmark2k1 SE 330

[Helevitia]

OK, some screen shots

All shots are 1600x1200x6fsaax16af.

Note that this game(mechwarrior4) doesn't allow AF that I can tell.

[Indiana]

Ever tried the newest 6159 driver?

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Indiana
Ever tried the newest 6159 driver?

Not yet, trying to iron out some bugs first before moving on so I can feel confident that they exist or don't exist when I upgrade. On a positive note, I haven't felt the need to upgrade since installing the video card though there are plenty of small issues and a couple of major issues.

Dave

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Novdid
That 3.6GHz score is either fishy or they OC'ed the R9700 to around 430MHz core. How can you get 3400Mtexels fill rate in other ways than that???

They did in fact oc the core to a whopping 448MHz (!) with the mem running at 374MHz DDR. Just click the link again, they upped the description.

Of course they had to use severe watercooling and some voltage mod for this. Details on how to do those Voltage-Mods can already be found around the web.

[Novdid]

That card will not live long!!!

[Indiana]

Yeah, I'm sure this card would feel treated better when it was in my computer.
So all those poor abused high-end cards, come to me

BTW, thanks, Helevitia. That's about what I expected (after seeing other tests with several games). The 9700 seems to give about the same performance as my oc'ed R8500, but with 4xFSAA and anisotropic filtering. Now I just need a place in germany where those things are actually available

[Indiana]

P.S.: The new Catalyst&trade 02.3 are available since today (that's version 6.13.10.6166).
See here

[103er-Fan]

What about the artifacts on the lights which are far away on these screenshots? Is this just a compression error or do they look like that in the actual game?

[Indiana]

Here's mine:

http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4500513

Just compare it with Helevitias first benchmark to see how bound to memory-troughput 3DMark really is. (Unbelievable that a so-called gfx-card benchmark shows differences that high between a FSB of 133 and 146 at roughly the same CPU speed....)

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by 103er-Fan
What about the artifacts on the lights which are far away on these screenshots? Is this just a compression error or do they look like that in the actual game?

I'll check when I get home.

Dave

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Indiana
Here's mine:

http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4500513

Just compare it with Helevitias first benchmark to see how bound to memory-troughput 3DMark really is. (Unbelievable that a so-called gfx-card benchmark shows differences that high between a FSB of 133 and 146 at roughly the same CPU speed....)

Nice score I thought 3dmark was more of an overall system benchmark?

Anyway, have been running the new Catalyst 2.3 drivers WITHOUT SP1 for WinXP and I have had no problems at all. I am actually amazed. All of my BSOD in the desktop has not returned and the chopiness I was seeing in some games have all disappeared. The only thing that is still around is, In Madden2003, the helmets on the players in the menu system are gone. But that's no big deal since they are there during game play. I have not tried truform yet and i have really only played 4 games religously with this card. Madden2003, UT2003, MechWarrior4, and Battlefield1942.

Indiana, what are your thoughts on the drivers? Seeing any issues?

Dave

[thop]

indiana: they are available everywhere. i just saw a sapphire 9700 pro for 449€, sounds like a good deal cause sapphire built the BBA's.

[Indiana]

Thop, I know, I already have one

In fact all those cards available now seem to be of the same production line somewhere in China - no matter if BBA, Sapphire, HIS or even PowerColor...

2D quality still lacks a bit compared to Matrox, though, at least at 1600x1200 and higher, but it's a bit better again then the R8500 was.

[thop]

you bucking fon of a sitch !!

[xortam]

Originally posted by Indiana
... 2D quality still lacks a bit compared to Matrox, though, at least at 1600x1200 and higher, but it's a bit better again then the R8500 was.

As confirmed by this article on HotHardware.

Desktop color saturation and sharpness was not quite up to Matrox Parhelia levels for us. However, it was completely acceptable at high resolutions and drove slightly better desktop image quality than what we have seen on Radeon 8500 of GeForce 4 boards.

But they really like the 9700 AA capability ...

As you can see the Parhelia shot is definitely better looking AA than the 4X GeForce 4 shot. However, we would also offer that the 6X AA Radeon 9700 shot is nearly pixel perfect and slightly better than the Parhelia generated image.

In our humble opinion, this is easily the best looking AA yet and it even takes the cake over scenes rendered on the Parhelia with 16X FAA.

They also like the DVD output ...

On the DVD playback front, we are of the opinion around the HotHardware Lab that ATi's DVD playback has always been a notch or two above anything on the market. The Radeon 9700 Pro was more of the same for us, displaying some of the cleanest DVD output on our VGA monitor, that we have ever seen.

First impressions sound pretty good for this product.