Who's buying a Radeon 9700?

[Helevitia]

Just curious more than anything. Also, are you getting one from ATI or from a third party? AIW? Waiting for 256MB? I want a VIVO or AIW personally. If the clock speeds aren't the same for the AIW I may get the VIVO instead. Of course, this is all speculation since nothing is out yet

Dave

[rubank]

I probably will.

[Novdid]

I probably won't. Low on $$$€€€...

[IllogickMind]

It depends on the 2D Quality, I want a faster gaming card but I don't want to give up the IQ of my G450!

[dZeus]

I'm waiting for reviews and the price it will sell at over here (as well as the Parhelia by then).

As for different brands, probably Hercules is the only real option on this side of the pond.

[RichL]

Originally posted by IllogickMind
It depends on the 2D Quality, I want a faster gaming card but I don't want to give up the IQ of my G450!

Ditto for me. I want a faster games card but to retain the 2d and quality of my G400Max, but quite frankly the Parhelia's lack of 3d grunt puts me off, no matter how clever the technology is.
So I might just risk ATI drivers again

[GT98]

Well I find that the Radeon 9700 is a pretty nice card, I have to ask the people who are considering it...why buy it now if you already have a card thats fairly recent? Only the R9700 is gonna offer you right now is faster frame rates in games that are already out. Before you say UT2K3 sucks on a Parhelia..well all I have to say is that both the game and the drivers for the Parhelia aren't final yet. DX9 is overkill right now and there wont be any games taking advangtive of it till another year or 2. In the mean time both the R9700 will have a refresh or two and I'm even willing to bet that Matrox will have a new verison of the Parhelia out that takes care of the current issues the card has now....and not to mention that the price will be lower on most products

[Tempest]

My current card is the Marvel G400-TV (I have a MAX too, but since I want to be able to do EVERYTHING with my PC, I purchased an used Marvel). Although I don't play many games the G400s really start to look pretty aged in my Athlon XP 1800+ setup... So I might buy a R9700 (maybe of the AIW variety) if the drivers prove to be decent. Then again, being a Matrox user for the last seven years it's quite hard to stay away from Parhelia, even if I think it is something of an example of "too little too late"

[GT98]

Originally posted by Tempest
Then again, being a Matrox user for the last seven years it's quite hard to stay away from Parhelia, even if I think it is something of an example of "too little too late"

I dunno about the too little but if it came out six months earlier..well the card would have been much better accepted

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by GT98
Well I find that the Radeon 9700 is a pretty nice card, I have to ask the people who are considering it...why buy it now if you already have a card thats fairly recent? Only the R9700 is gonna offer you right now is faster frame rates in games that are already out. Before you say UT2K3 sucks on a Parhelia..well all I have to say is that both the game and the drivers for the Parhelia aren't final yet. DX9 is overkill right now and there wont be any games taking advangtive of it till another year or 2. In the mean time both the R9700 will have a refresh or two and I'm even willing to bet that Matrox will have a new verison of the Parhelia out that takes care of the current issues the card has now....and not to mention that the price will be lower on most products

GT98, You ask why buy it if you ahve a fairly recent card. Like what? I own an Original Radeon. Is that "recent"? Anyway, I am buying the card because it supports HDTV out, Video in/out, has "next gen" features & performance, and image quality that rivals anything out there except for the Parhelia. Of course, since I have not seen the Parhelia or the 9700, I can only guess on the image quality. Also, why are you defending the Parhelia? I didn't even mention it in my post above nor did anyone else since your post. You statement about only supporting faster framerates is simply not true. It supports that plus everything else I mentioned above that the P doesn't do. P has FAA and Surround Gaming, cool but not what I was looking for.
Nobody in this thread said P sucks with UT2K3. I have never seen it in person, hell I haven't even seen UT2K3 yet. The fact is though, the P is a $400 video card that is slower than the 8500 in a lot of tests and I simply was not looking for that kind of performance out of P. 9700 is exactly what I was looking for.

Dave

[GT98]

Only point I was making is that if you have a card thats equal to R8500 or GF3/4 Card, well your throwing your money away right now. In reguards to Parhelia vs. R8500 performance...I had a R8500 in my system and theres no Major Difference between the two when it comes to my Eyes in Gaming performance, even though according to Reviews there are huge differences in Frame rates. Hell I run the P at 1280x1024@85hz and it runs better then the R8500 did at 1024x768@85hz. Basing your purcashe just on what a cards frame rate can do is stupid. Theres alot of unknowns with the R9700 right now like drivers and if they are even able to keep the clockrate at the same as the preview ex.

At the same time I'm Dissapointed in the Parhelia's 3d Performance if you look at it with benchmarking in mind, but in accual game play its fine! Plus the other varibles like decent drivers and Image quaitly are there already with the Parhelia.

I guess I partly posted this in my Fustration with waiting 2 years for a half decent 3d card from Matrox...I went from a G400Max to a Radeon AIW like (Which I think is a flaming POS with the drivers they had with it) to Kyro 2 and to a R8500 (got it for a good deal from Dell in November, though I had to sell it for half of what I paid for it 2 months ago,much improved drivers over the orginal Radeon I had) in a year and half year time period.

But let me end this with these immortal words spoken here: "Its just a piece of ****ing computer hardware"

[Snakebitten]

If I didnt have the Triplehead setup and the P, I'd probably consider it. I'd rather just heatsink modify my P and overclock it while I wait until next summer. If the original P can't handle Doom3, I'll upgrade to whatever card has triplehead + best IQ and speed for Doom3. (Hopefully a Parhelia2 ultra/turbo 512mb)

[Admiral]

It'll probably be Hercules here also, since you won't be able to "officially" find ATI by ATI products in Europe.

Here's a picture of the card:

Elle sera commercialisée aux alentours de 430 à 450 € hors taxe à partir de la mi-septembre, ou plus probablement au début du mois d'octobre.

taken from Nvchips-fr


430-450 euros, without taxes. The only tax I can think of (since they're produced in France) is the VAT. Maybe someone from there can give us a clue ?
Available midd september, begining of october.

Also, some benchmarks they took from a danish site.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by dZeus
I'm waiting for reviews and the price it will sell at over here (as well as the Parhelia by then).

As for different brands, probably Hercules is the only real option on this side of the pond.

The same here. And Hercules seems to be the most viable option since the Hercules R8500 based cards have better 2D quality than built by ATI R8500s.

[Ali]

There are a few things I need in a new video card, and so far it looks like the 9700 has them all, and the P doesnt.

I run a 20 inch dfp as my primary monitor, and it has a 1600x1200 native resolution. Therefore any card I buy has to have a DVI capable of running that. So far the only cards available, or soon to be available that can do that are the P and 9700.

Dual head is needed, as I have a 20 inch CRT for that, and couldnt live without it.

WinXP and Win98 drivers are needed, as I use XP as my main OS, but HAVE to compatibility test my work on Win98 because thats when most of the computers here at work use.

Im only in the country for another 18 months, then Im off to the Uk, then USA, then OZ on a 3 year working holiday. That means I need a card that will last 18 months of work and gaming. In that 18 months Im expecting to play lots of UT2003 and Doom3 when it comes out. Carmack says the Parhelia will have to use low detail to play Doom3 well. We know the 9700 runs it well.

As my main screen is digital, the 2D filter quality isnt as important to me now as it was when I was only using CRT monitors, so Im guessing the 9700 will be fine for that.

The dual overlays of the P sounds VERY nice, not sure if the ATI will have that.

If the P was say US$250 I would pick it up without a hesitation, as its US$400, and the 9700 is rumored to cost US$400 I would say the 9700 is the best card for me at the moment.

Ali