I bought one of these !

[Umfriend]

I bought a Hercules 9000 two weeks ago. What speed, what IQ, it was a new world opening up for me. Of course, it replaced a no-name TNT2-M64 card, so my perceptions are somewhat biased

Now I need to get a faster CPU. O/Cing my PIII-700 by 10% yielded 11.7% higher 3DMarks. O/Cing the 9000 with 10% (both core and mem) got me only 1.2% higher scores.

But the quality.... Oh mY GAwD, what have I been doing to myself all thise TNT2 years.....

Umf

[drslump]

my brother bought a Club3D Radeon 9000Pro around a month ago. The IQ is ok and the speed is in par with my Parhelia but the thing that I don't understand is why textures looks so horrible in games.
I mean, I use trilinear filtering with Parhelia (no AF / no FAA) and trilinear in the R9000 too, but the Ati one makes a strange distorsion when the textures are not just in front. It's like the mipmap generation routines are broken in the drivers.
I hope it'll be fixed 'cos I recommended the R9000 to my brother as a good budget card and now he want to swap it for my P.

ciao

[Lambo-Fan]

Are there any known problems with Radeon 9700 (Pro) cards in combination with the VIA KT 266A chipset?

[Indiana]

No. Most problems seem to occur with specific (mainly Asus, Abit) KT400 boards.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Correct me if I am wrong but there's also problems in SiS648 when using Radeon 9700/9500 right? (with any SiS648 board like the Asus P4S8X) (And i think it was ATI's problem) If SiS648 support HT then it would have kicked a$$...

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
Correct me if I am wrong but there's also problems in SiS648 when using Radeon 9700/9500 right?

Could be.
The NForce2 in combination with the R9700 simply rocks, even in AGP8x, so the 8x problems seem to be really not alone ATIs fault.

[Lambo-Fan]

@ Indiana and Chrono_Wanderer

Thanks for the info.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Kooldino
the non pro, is a different GPU, I believe...2/3 as many transistors, etc. Right?

Maybe I'm thinking radeon 9500...

[Indiana]

9700PRO: 325/310MHZ GPU/Core, 256 bit wide DDR Ram, 8x1 Pipeline
9700: 275/270 GPU/Core, 256 bit wide DDR RAM, 8x1 Pipeline
9500PRO: 275/270 GPU/Core, 128bit wide DDR RAM, 8x1 Pipeline
9500: 275/270 GPU/Core, 128 bit wide DDR RAM, 4x1 Pipeline

So the difference between the 9700Pro and the 9700 ist just the lower clocking of the latter. The 9500Pro is just a 9700 non-Pro with 128 bit wide bus.
And the 9500 non-Pro has half pixel-pipe vs. 9500Pro.

So comparing the 9500Pro with the 9700 you can easily see what the 256 bit wide ram does performance-wise vs. a "standard" 128 bits wide with otherwise equal chips and clockings.

[3dfx]

There is a rumour going around that the Saphire Radeon 9500 is just a 9700 which has somehow been de clocked as the card is on the same PCB and the 256 bit is still intact.