Is it worth upgrading to 9800 Pro from Ti4200 on a P4 2.53Ghz system?

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by john19055
But if he want to upgrade might as well get the best,at the moment. But you can get a Radeon9800 NP for under $300 and ever thread I have seen that got one say it will overclock to a R9800PRO

Yes, but the ram isnt the same! But its still a great value!

[rabblerouser]

I play Warcraft III quite a bit compared to other games but I also like FPS games. One of the reasons for upgrading now is for Half-Life 2 and then Doom III early next year. I think really all I play are Blizzard games and then a few FPS games like the UT and Jedi Knight series. There seem to be so many not-so-good FPS and RTS games around that I don't bother trying out new ones that much anymore, unless the game happens to get excellent reviews.

I suppose it would be better to wait for R360 since it apparently should be released in Sept, but I may not have a chance to buy it at US prices since I don't have any plans to go there in the next few months and neither do any of my family or friends. In that case, I would have to pay a lot more for whichever I chose - R360 or 9800 Pro even 2-3 months down the line. Since the 9800 Pro is available now while my brother is in the US, I may as well get it. I expect it to last me until at least this time next year.

Regarding Warcraft III (and the expansion), it plays fine right now on my Ti4200 at 1024x768 without AA/AF. When I first got the original game, I had 256MB ram. It got quite choppy during large battles. Upgrading to 512 ram makes a big difference in Warcraft III and it is much smoother now. Still I wouldn't mind playing at higher resolutions and with AA/AF.

[rabblerouser]

Well, just thought I'd let you know that I finally got my 9800 Pro. My brother's trip was longer than expected and he didn't get back till a few days ago and I got the card from him yesterday.

In fact it is an All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro (I had asked for just the 9800 Pro), which is a bonus.

Installation was very smooth, no problems at all, and I've got the card in the PC I'm posting this from.

Anyway I haven't had time yet to try out the card in games. I had a quick look at the tech demos though which were excellent.

The only bummer for me is that I don't think I can take advantage of the TV tuner because I think it is NTSC only and the system here is Pal Secam I believe.

Will try out some games later on today or tomorrow when I have a bit more time.

[LiquidX]

I will be waiting for that update rabble because I was thinking of making the same upgrades on one of my pc's with similar specs. Please try assortment of games.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by rabblerouser
The only bummer for me is that I don't think I can take advantage of the TV tuner because I think it is NTSC only and the system here is Pal Secam I believe.
I believe you can flash the bios and change an NTSC to a PAL, you might want to go over to Rage3D and poke around their all-in-wonder/video capture forum. (I've yet to own an AIW product, but I'm working on it... ;) )

[5150 Joker]

Originally posted by rabblerouser
Well, just thought I'd let you know that I finally got my 9800 Pro. My brother's trip was longer than expected and he didn't get back till a few days ago and I got the card from him yesterday.

In fact it is an All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro (I had asked for just the 9800 Pro), which is a bonus.

Installation was very smooth, no problems at all, and I've got the card in the PC I'm posting this from.

Anyway I haven't had time yet to try out the card in games. I had a quick look at the tech demos though which were excellent.

The only bummer for me is that I don't think I can take advantage of the TV tuner because I think it is NTSC only and the system here is Pal Secam I believe.

Will try out some games later on today or tomorrow when I have a bit more time.


There should be a tiny dip switch on the card itself that will allow you to switch between PAL and NTSC. Read the manual that came with the card and it will tell you exactly where. You can't miss it though.

[Sotos]

Originally posted by rabblerouser
I'm thinking about upgrading my graphics card from a Ti4200 to a 9800 Pro 128MB. I have a 2.53Ghz P4 (533FSB) and an Intel mobo (PEBT2 or something like that I think). Do you think it's worth it? Maybe my cpu isn't powerful enough to take advantage of the 9800 Pro? Would a 9600 Pro for instance be almost as good on my system? All the reviews seem to use the most powerful CPUs on the market. I haven't really used AA/AF much at all obviously because games don't run very well with those features on with a Ti4200.

I don't play that many games but I do play the ones I like a lot (eg., Warcraft III) and I like to be able to run new games as smoothly as possible. I'm looking forward to half-life 2 which is one of the reasons I'm thinking about upgrading. I'm not sure whether to go ahead and get a 9800 Pro 128MB now or wait a while and see what the R360 is like. Warcraft III runs pretty well at the moment on my system at 1024x768 with I think high detail and I'm not playing any games at the moment where the frame rates are too slow (usually I play at around 1024x768, 32bit color).

Thanks.

Yep go for a 9800pro

or you can wait for a 9900 (or 9850 TX) if you want to go with ATI of course

[rabblerouser]

I actually already got the AIW 9800 Pro - just got it yesterday.

Anyway, I tried out a few games today initially with the drivers that came in the box:

JK2 - runs smooth as anything at 16x12, 4x/8x, and looks really great. Makes me feel like playing through the game again. Maybe will wait for the third installment though. Didn't try any other settings.

GTA Vice City - same as above and will probably play through again one of these days. It looks so much better.

Diablo 2 Expansion - I'm playing the expansion for the first time. Just got the game a week or so ago. It's not really a 3d game but I thought I'd mention that there were no problems running the game.


WCIII Frozen Throne - I think there is some problem with drivers or some compatibiliity issue with my combination of hardware. Every once in a while when you're scrolling it jerks or jumps a bit. I thought perhaps it was my mouse or something and may try a standard PS/2 mouse tomorrow.

I checked it several times by scrolling up and down rapidly using the keys 10-20 times on a few occasions in different maps and on areas away from battles - loading the games from saves I made some time ago . The jerks seem to happen randomly. This is probably the stuttering thing I've seen mentioned around, since it happens regardless of resolution and AA/AF settings. At this point I downloaded the 3.7 drivers but it didn't make a difference as far as I can tell. The performance is still of course better than the Ti4200 I had but that was a frame rate issue and this doesn't seem to be.

I have Norton antivirus which I closed (what a bitch it is to get rid of that thing, had to use the task manager and even then it hung around for a while). There are a bunch of other processes running in the background, some labeled ati.... Not sure what these are or if they are having an impact, but since the other games were smooth don't think they should be affecting the game that much.

MOHAA - first at 1024 and 4x/8x. The AF made a big diff but didn't look like AA was on. At 1280 res same 4x/8x it looked better but I still wasn't sure if AA was working properly (compared to the other games it didn't look like it was on). Anyway it was really smooth at these resolutions and the AF made a big improvement in the quality (the AA as mentioned didn't seem to work).

Tomorrow will check out morrowind which came with the card and maybe UTk3.

Regarding the Pal/NTSC issue, I couldn't find anything that would help in the manual - doesn't say anything about flipping a switch and the box says that it is NTSC or PAL-n or PAL-M only for the TV tuner. I'm pretty sure that it will not work with PAL/SECAM and a thread I read today seems to confirm that. I'll check a few more threads out though to be sure.

[B&R]

Wow!! a AIW good for you. Now find out how good OC'ers AIW 9800p's are.. caz i rarely see people getting one and OC'ing it. :angel:

[Red Dog]

I recommend you try Omega's drivers. They improve image quality slightly, provide fix's for some games, and in some cases slightly better performance. (imo)

If you play opengl games I recommend version 3.5.

Version 3.6 and 3.7 render 32bit textures in 16 bit under opengl. the bug exists in both omega's and ati's releases and occurs when the texture preference slider is set to high quality. a work around is setting the slider to any setting other than high quality, but I wont do it cause thats why I bought the card in the first place.

[rabblerouser]

I un-installed and re-installed WCIII and that seems to have resolved the problem.

I've just spent a bit more time playing UT2003 over the last few days and I've got to say, this card is great!