Upgrade from G400 to 9700Pro

[Ali]

Well, I finally got rid of my G400, its done me well, but wasnt up to it nowdays.

After waiting about 2 years for the G800, then waiting another year or so for the Parhelia, I decided to go for the ATI.

When Matrox released the G550, I was in the market for a gaming card, so bought the ATI RadeonLe (the origional one with HyperZ disabled). That was quite a good card, but I had the standard ATI driver problems. Stable in 2D, but funny things happened in games.

Anyway, after finishing Max Payne, which was the only game that needed the extra power over my G400, the Radeon went into the wifes computer, and I took myy Matrox card back

A while ago I bought one of those Dell 20inch flat panels, and have been running it through the analogue output of the G400, with my old 20 inch CRT running on the secondary head.

I was going to get the G550 to run the dfp, but they only support resolutions up to 1280X1024, and my dfp runs 1600X1200. Nothing on the market at the time would run the dfp through a DVI interface.

The Parhelia was released with the 165Mhz DVI controller, so I figured I would get that.

I dual boot WinXP and WinMe, so I needed ME drivers, and it looks like Matrox will never release any, so the Parhelia was out.

Last week I ordered a Gigabyte 9700Pro, and it arrived today. I must say that so far it seems ok.

The 2D is identical to the G400, but that might be because im using a dfp. The secondary output is better than the secondary output of the G400.

One problem is that if I have both screens plugged in at the time, the secondary one is locked at 60Hz refresh. That wouldnt be so bad if I was using my dfp as secondary, but I like using the CRT for that.

The drivers are a pain. Why have them cut up into 3 parts? There is the driver itself, the control panel, and the Hydro vision.

About speed. Its fast. I did some relative benches just so I could judge it.

With a format and clean install of WinME (because it boots faster) I get these figures:

G400/9700
Quake2
1024*768
60.4/317.4
1280*960
28.8/318.2
1600*1200
crash/317.2

From that you can see a Athlon 1.4GHz can feed enough info for around 317fps no matter what.

UT2003
640*480
27.95 & 18.4 / 115.71 & 39.11
800*600
17.97 & 11.57 / 115.91 & 39.37

1600*1200
3.36 & 2.65 / 102.69 & 38.68

Here you can see that the 9700 stays constant untill 1600*1200 where it drops a little. Interestingly, if I up the quality to 16Xanso and 6X FSAA at 1600*1200 I get: 48.86 & 30.97

Thats quite a bit faster than what the G400 gets at 640*480

On to stability.

All games seem stable, and fast. The only problem (apart form the 60Hz thing) is that 3dMark2001 ALWAYS crashes at the Nature scene.

Ive tried 3 different drivers, with a clean Ghost in between.

Ive tried many different BIOS settings.

Ive removed all other cards except the 9700

I underclocked the 9700

I installed Motherboard monitor to check my voltages (12.78 - 12.84v)

CPU is at 37C max

Ive just finished downloading CodeCreatures, so Ill run that to see if the Pixel shaders are fraged.

Anyway, so far quite happy. Stable in games, unstable in benchmarks. Thats a turn for the books.

Ali

[ayoub_ibrahim]

me thinks that I'll be following the same upgrade path as yourself!

[Ali]

Well, just finished Codecreatures. Got a score of 2924, what ever that means. The important thing is that it worked properly. Suggests that my card isnt faulty.

I downloaded the latest 3dmark build (330), and thats doing the same thing as the old version I had (300). I wonder whats wrong, as ATI must optimise their drivers for 3dmark.

I even downloaded the whole thing again, in case my origional version was faulty (the patch is only a couple of megs, full download is 40.8Mb).

Ali

[Ali]

Just found this:

http://discuss.madonion.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=mo3dmark2001&Number=1191618&page=4&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1

Looks like there are at least 2 other people with the same problem as me.

Ali

[luni]

G400/9700
Quake2
1024*768
60.4/317.4
1280*960
28.8/318.2
1600*1200
crash/317.2

From that you can see a Athlon 1.4GHz can feed enough info for around 317fps no matter what.

Actually, that means that your 1.4GHz Athlon is limiting your r9700 a lot. With faster CPU those scores would be even higher. Not that it matters in Q3A though...

[Gurm]

Get the Plutonium drivers from Driver Heaven:

http://www.driverheaven.com

The newest versions are based on Catalyst 2.3, but are optimized, have better .inf files, less bugs, and are all in one tidy (and relatively smaller) package.

- Gurm

[GT98]

Originally posted by Gurm
Get the Plutonium drivers from Driver Heaven:

http://www.driverheaven.com

The newest versions are based on Catalyst 2.3, but are optimized, have better .inf files, less bugs, and are all in one tidy (and relatively smaller) package.

- Gurm

How are the Plutonium Drivers with AIW cards? they work with the ATI MMC etc drivers also?

[K6-III]

https://www.driverheaven.net

correct the popup-ridden link...

[Electric Amish]

I tested a 9700 on my system.

No problems whatsoever with 3dMark.

AthlonXP 1900+
Shuttle AK31 mobo
512mb DDR
Windows 2000 SP3

amish

[isochar]

No problems here with 3dmark. Although the ATI Control Panel is causing WB to crash. :/

[Greebe]

Parhelia is too slow?! Shit I'm besting the r9700 Botmatch scores!


While I'm at it, bet that would really tweak Kyle's arse!

[MultimediaMan]

Hey kids, the Parhelia is MORE than enough card for gaming...you really can't see past 60 FPS, so who gives a good damn anyway? The card is absolutely stable and Matrox has been providing regular driver releases, the Apptimizer makes triplehead gaming a breeze.

The 9700 is as awfully pretty beast....FAST, FAST, FAST with very good image quality: tho not as good as the Parhelia.

I'll be transferring the P permanently into my duallie in these next few days.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by GT98


How are the Plutonium Drivers with AIW cards? they work with the ATI MMC etc drivers also?

Well the Plutonium drivers are supposed to work on AIWs, they include the ATI multimedia drivers as well and even better claim to remove M*crovision from the input.
However I can't test this as I don't have an AIW.

3DMark really SHOULD work. I would still think of a flakey power supply, many R9700 problems can in the end be blaimed on weak powersupplies. BTW, the most important number to look at for is the +5V line. It should not drop below ~4.9V.

Greebe: if you're besting his scores, you have a hell of a lot faster CPU than his Athlon1.4GHz. Botmatch numbers are meaningless to compare gfx-cards, they're nearly fully CPU-limited on any new gfx-card.
The flybies show the performance of the gfx-card (but don't have anything to do with actual game performance).
So if you want to see the performance your rig will get in the actual game you should look at the Botmatch numbers (this also means that for UT2003 a fast CPU is more important than the gfx-card), but when using UT2003 to compare gfx-cards you should either equip the system with a Hammer 4GHz CPU or look at the flyby scores.

RichL: I don't have a direct comparision G400 <-> Radeon9700Pro on the same monitor. However the original Radeon DDR VIVO was only very slightly worse than the G400, the 8500 unfortunately was noticably worse than the Radeon VIVO. The Radeon9700 is much better again than the R8500 on the primary output and worlds apart from the R8500 on the second.
At >1600x1200 the Matrox might still have the edge in quality from what I seem to remember.

[Ali]

Well, Ive fixed the 60Hz thing. Found this:
In the registry (use regedit)...search for
"IDCRegOptionDontUseOSMonitorInfo"

This entry by default is set to "01 00 00 00" by the radeon drivers.

Change this to "00 00 00 00".

Reboot.

Now you can set your desired refresh rates !

Now my CRT is usable again.

I know Im CPU limited, but as this computer is only rearly used for games, I dont care. 30fps is enough for me.

About 2D quality:
Onto the dfp there is no difference.

Onto the CRT through the primary head, I would say is about the same as the G400 (I use 1280*1024) At 1600*1200 my monitor isnt usable (Max refresh of 60Hz at that res).

The secondary head of the 9700 is VASTLY superior to the secondary head on the G400. In fact I now have the CRT running at 1280*1024 on the 2nd head, and I cant tell the difference from the G400, except that its a bit darker (I havent played around enough to set that up right yet).

The HydraVision software actually seems quite good. When you right click on a windows title bar you get the option of sending it to Monitor 1 or 2. Its a little odd, as if its on window 1, why would I want to move it to window 1?

It also sticks another couple of buttons up by the minimize, maximize buttons. There is one that looks like a down arrow that opens a 'Individual application setting' page, where you can set some stuff up. I havent played with that yet.

The other button looks like a greyed (well, pinked) out maximize button. This will maximize your application across both screens, but only if they are at the same resolution.

Ive looked through the hot keys, and they are nowhere as good as the matrox ones. I use to use Zoom a lot, and loved having my zoom window open on my secondary monitor. The hydravision doesnt seem to do that. It does have "zoom Display in" and 'Zoom in on monitor', but they are both pointles, as they seem to just increase the resolution.

Also with the hotkeys, you can only use a pre-defined set of keys. I use to use Ctrl-Alt-Z to zoom, and Ctrl-Shift-Z to unzoom. Now I have to use F keys or numlock buttons

I tried overclocking last night also. Went to 385/350 for core/mem, and gained a whole 0.3fps in UT2003 botmatch. Margin of error there I think. I wonder if I can talk the wife into letting me buy a new CPU

So as of now, Im very happy with this card. The 60Hz thing would have been a show stopper for me, but thats sorted now (How can ATI make such an easy error in their registry settings?)

The 3dMarks thing doesnt really bother me too much, as long as it doesnt also happen in other games. Ii was expecting worse.

About it being my Power Supply. I doubt it. If it was, then it would also crash in CodeCreatures, and the ATI demos. It doesnt. Also it would get worse when I have fans running, and all my other cards (SCSI, Sound etc) installed. It doesnt. My voltages all stay nice and high. Minimum voltages after 3 hours on itme are:
+3.3 :3.44
+5 :5.10
+12 : 12.78

The maximums are the same except for the 12V which is 12.84

Not too bad I think.

Oh one last thing. I was worried about getting the Gigabyte version, as some reviews say the fan is noisy. I cant hear it, even with the case off. The only other fans I have running in my case are the northbridge fan (which is a little noisy) and the 2 low speed fans in my power supply (Enermax Whisper 350W).

Ali

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Ali
How can ATI make such an easy error in their registry settings?

Well, that's ATI. Their drivers while in overall nearly decent by now sometimes still have some quirks that really make you wonder if there are any betatests done at all....
(I don't have that 60Hz problem without needing to do registry-fixing, so it's at least not on all systems)

BTW, that's a nice overclock. My BBA instantly crashes when using anything over 350/350. Might be my weak power-supply, though.

If you want to see the effect of your overclocking you should do some fillrate/T&L limited tests, like e.g. the good old GL_EXT_reme benchmark.
Here is the gain I got going from Default clockings to 350/350: