radeon 9700 :(

[Supernaut]

Hi guys,
I caved and bought a radeon 9700 .
Well not permanently. its on loan from bestbuy. I doubt i will keep it. But I did learn some things from using it a bit.

1.) DVI is FAR superior to analog. FAR FAR FAR!!
2.) Radeon is FAST.
3.) the image quality from what I can tell isnt bad, im only running at 1600x1024 so I didnt expect 2 c a large drop off compared 2 my G400.

4.) Its not perfect, when u look at the control panel tabs for the card, it takes like a second to load up, weird. 5.) I had to repair windows to install it, when I installed the drivers over my Geforce3, it messed up XP.
6.) The dual display aspect of the radeon 9700 is adequate. I can play games on one monitor and IM and winamp on the other. Of course during bf1942, it would minimize every couple of minutes (I think this is due 2 winamp).
7.) I have 2 hit reset once everytime I power up the computer or it will not start.

Well I really dont know what to say. I like this card so far. If it had dual dvi, for 400 bux I would definitely have to think about which card is right for me.

I wish bestbuy sold matrox cards

neway, just thought I would mention my experience as a pro matrox radeon 9700 user.

[K6-III]

Seems like your PSU is inadaquete....

[Supernaut]

450 watt enermax?
I have read about this issue briefly in the rage3d forums.
i will check it out again.

1 dvd drive
1 cd writer
1.4 Tbird
80 gig seagate
2 40 gig IBM
120 gig maxtor

i dunno, i dun think im taxing it that much, it prolly is the PSU but jeese I thought i had enuff juice

[Supernaut]

O SWEET MOTHER OF GOD.
THIS IS SAD

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33652082&highlight=beep+boot

"Nothing you can do about it other than return it! As I have stated many times on here the cold boot problem is an ATI hardware issue that effects alot of people! It took me 3 cards to get a good one! Had garbled graphics had cold boot problems with the second one and the 3rd one works! And dont buy it when someone tries to tell you here that its the PSU! Its not I tried that as well! Its your video card."

hahaa

[Kruzin]

Moved to General Hardware

[Greebe]

Have you ever considered analog being so poor on your setup because it was due to low quality vid cable?

I've been running 1600x1200 or greater for many years now and don't see how it could be a major improvement over what I see here. Text is crystal clear, colors are vibrant, no ghosting, not a problem anywhere to be found.

[Pace]

My cable must be good - they even thought of moulding it into my monitor for me - to increase the quality

Seriously, what cable are you using Greebe? I'm using my (non-captive ) cable that was supplied with my monitor - think I'd notice anything from upgrading to a higher quality cable - or switching to BNC (I only need standard cable lengths).

P.

[Electric Amish]

I haven't had a lick of trouble with my 9700 Pro.

Haven't tried the dual-head.

Single-head Win2k 1600x1200x32.

amish

[The PIT]

Sis and Via have known issues dunno about ali chipsets. I have to wait until the boot into the OS before I can see anything on my screen. Thats on a 645dx based chipset. Rebooting afterwards you either see the bios post screen or the screen comes alive with os boot menu.
Forgot to mention some people have cured it by upgrading the motherboard bios or upping the agp voltage (not possible on my asus) or having the card rma'd.

[Greebe]

My Cornerstone/IBM/ generic monitor cables all work fine. Be they DVI-A, HD15 or HD15-BNC, all appear to be triple shielded with ferrite cored ends (except my 3 meter HD15-HD15 extension cable (no cores))

[Kurt]

I've been using a IIyama S702GT 17" CRT (not exactly top of the line ) with BNC cables and only had problems with nvidia graphics cards (especially the TNT2). The g200 and g400 never caused me any problem. Right now I'm writing this at 1280*1024@60Hz on a Iiyama AS4315UT 17" TFT on the standard analog port of a worse-than-mother's i815 integrated VGA -and it looks fine. It looked really bad on a regular CRT though

[Supernaut]

I do not think my analog cables are the problem. I do know that using a crappy cable will make a world of a difference. These days, for me its BNC or bust. Since my SGI 1600sw do not have BNC inputs, I am stuck with using a stock cable. In my experience though, especially working with LCDs, DVI has always been far superior than a stock cable. I was able to spot the differnce in my friends 17" dell immediately. With my sgis the difference is quite drastic as well. Although it did not look entirely bad, the differnce in dvi vs. analog is quite noticeable to me.

So to sum it up...

-I agree stock cables r crap
-besides using BNC, I have never had the opportunity to test out any high quality monitor cables.