Former Nvidia user: 9700 impressions

[nin_fragile14]

I got sick of waiting around for NV30. I recently purchased a 1.6a P4, and clocked it up to 2.3 ghz, and my Geforce 3 wasn't giving me all the performance I wanted. (And that wasn't a surprise; a 1 1/2 year old card just doesn't cut it on new CPUs). I had planned on waiting for NV30 to see what kind of performance that offered compared to the 9700, but I just couldn't wait anymore. As soon as the 9700 OEM card was 335 at Newegg.com (and with no shipping), I placed my order.

It came in the early afternoon yesterday, around 1:00 PM. I uninstalled my Geforce 3 drivers using the add/remove progams, shut down, took out the old card, put in the Radeon (hooking up its power supply) and installed the leaked 6159 drivers from driver heaven. I heard it fixed a few of the problems the CD drivers had, so I didn't even bother with those.

Once the drivers and control panel were installed, I restarted, and everything appeared to work fine. However, I encountered one problem right away: My usual 1280x960 resolution ran in 60 hz. Even if I set it under "monitor settings" to 85 hz, it only runs at 60. Every other resolution is fine, but it still bugs me; 1280x1024 has a stretched look to it, and 1024 is too big. I've been using 1152x864 for now.

The first thing I tried was Quake 3. I don't think there is even a point to referring back to my Geforce 3 results because the 9700 demolishes it. I ran demo four at 1280x1024, max settings, and got 208 fps. At 1600, I got 170 fps.

I decided to check out it's anisotropic performance on Quake 3, and turned it up to 16x "quality" mode. At 1280x1024, I got 190 fps, only a 18 fps hit. I was taken back by that. I then turned on 4x antialiasing and got 134 fps in the same resolution with max anisotropic. Most impressive.

3dmark I got 13,000, but that is neglible. I'm sick of hearing about 3dmark results, and with all the optimizations that have seemingly been made to it (Detonator 40), the usefullness of it has decreased. Nevertheless, I got about 100 fps in the nature test, and 135 in the high detail dragon test. Since a few might be interested, here's the link: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4435247

I've tried many games with it so far.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assualt (most dissapointing speed increase; snowy park runs about 45-55 fps with no aniso/aa at 1280...still runs much better than Geforce 3 and looks nicer)
Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed-- 1280x1024, 4x AA, 16x aniso, constant 60 fps
Mafia--CPU limited, still runs poor, but I can use aniso now.
Unreal Tournament--CPU limited, but can crank details
No One Lives Forever 2 demo--runs very, very well
Madden 2003 demo--runs great
IL Sturv.--perfect

Battlefield 1942 -- I know there has been a lot of complaints about this on the 9700 at Rage3d, but with shadows and lightmaps off, it never crashes. (I didn't even bother trying it with lightmaps and shadows on). Runs at 100 fps constant with 4x anisoptropic on @ 1600x1200.
Asheron's Call 2--Wow, it actually runs. My Geforce 3 had control lag and bad framerates. Looks and runs amazingly well, even with aniso on.

Dungeon Siege--In the benchmark, I got 74 fps @ 1280x1024. My Geforce 3 got 51 fps.

Counterstrike--I run it at 1152x864, 6x AA, 16x aniso, and benchmarked it on de_dust, getting 135 fps. (I can't enable vsync though, hopefully that will be fixed).

NHL 2003 demo -- this is the only game that would not run.

Medieval Total War ran much faster, at least double the speed, of my Geforce 3.

That's about everything I've tried so far. It's come to the point where I play everything with at least 4x anisoptropic on, and some form of antialiasing as well. I've had zero problems, aside from the 60 hz glitch@1280x960, and it was well worth the 335 dollars.

Things I would fix? Get vsync working in Half-Life. The drivers have no option for v-sync to be "always on". Get 1280x960 working properly. Other than that, everything is great. :cool:

If anyone would like to see some screenshots, just point me in the direction of some good image hosting sites.

[-=DVS=-]

To fix Refresh problem its easy use Refreshlock

HERE (http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rl/) :cool:

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by DVS
To fix Refresh problem its easy use Refreshlock

HERE (http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rl/) :cool:

I already am using refresh lock. All the refresh rates seem to be fine, just the 1280x960, which I think previous Radeon's have had problems with in the past.

[Starscream]

I hope you didn't get stuck with one that doesn't work in agp 8x boards, if you upgrade to a new mobo down the line you could run into some big problems:

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00109/
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33634403&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

[Bigus Dickus]

Try this patch (http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4081.html) for BF 1942.

The ATI driver developers seem to be very serious about putting to rest the bad rap, as evidenced by their open acknowledgement and quick fixes for most of the early quirks and bugs.

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by Matthyahuw
I'll host some nin, just no psycho amount...
matthyahuw@nvnews.com

I'll probably have them to you by tomorrow night. Hopefully UT2003 demo comes out and I can get some shots of those. (Like that will happen :rolleyes: )

[Gator]

if you have any further issues on the R9700, I recommend you check out www.Rage3d.com they are dedicated to ATI users there.

I'm glad to hear the R9700 is working out for you :) And $335 isnt a bad price, especially from Newegg!

Unfortunetly I've heard of a few people that are having lots of issues. Mostly power supply related. Boy that card must pack a punch or something... LOL. If you have ANY weird results, don't hesitate to go out and buy the nicest and biggest PSU you can afford. :eek:

And ya, don't let 3dmark bother you too much, actually the results can get screwed up really easily by messing with your FSB. I've seen 1.1ghz Tbirds with 150fsb come close to 3dmarks of AthlonXP machines simply because of the higher FSB fouling things up. 3dmark is far from perfect ;)

[jbirney]

I also have a R9700. Nether my GF4 Ti4200 or my 8500 was fast enough to run with all the eye candy turned on.

OMG is all I have to say. Q3 x16 AF x4 AA, 16x12x32 all settings maxxed 151 fps on my 2100 xp.

SS:SE running the extreme quality script same settins (16x12x32 w/ x16 AF and 4 AA in driver pannel) yeild me FPS 76.1 in the Citidel demo.

Playing SOF2 mulitplayer is a new experince as 1280x1024 again all setting maks never dips below 80 fps. RtCW is the about the same as well as JK2 (go figure all Q3 based games).

I can finally play Tribes2 :)

AVP2: no more flashing metal texutres. I played on line at 16x12x32 x4aa x16 AF and found it very fluid. Still does not let me out run them aliens :)

C&C:Renagade looks very nice in 1280x1024 x4 x16 fill iq. Turing up to 16x12 is ok, just hard to read all the text and I need text as I am a newbie in that game :)

CS: AF/AA max res? Pice of cake. however its using MSAA so railing/grates still not being AA-ed.

UT max settings at only 75 fps wiht high-res textures.

AA: here run at 1280x1024 max everything else. once again still need to ready everything as I am still new there...so going to 16x12 makes text too small to read. so I need better glasses ;)

Only issues I have now is that all games that use OGL and when FSAA is on, it will corrupt screen shots. And in tribes2, the menus are all wacked with AA on.

No other issues. My price $338 at ENPC.

[Gator]

Originally posted by jbirney

AVP2: no more flashing metal texutres. I played on line at 16x12x32 x4aa x16 AF and found it very fluid. Still does not let me out run them aliens :)

UT max settings at only 75 fps wiht high-res textures.


AVP no problems with my former R8500, or my current TI4400 so I'm not sure what this flashing metal texture bug people talk about?

UT - I always got above 100fps with both R8500 and TI4400 with all high textures. Try both Direct3d and the latest OPENGL renderer to see which works better for you, 75 seems a little low to me.

[jbirney]

AVP no problems with my former R8500, or my current TI4400 so I'm not sure what this flashing metal texture bug people talk about?

UT - I always got above 100fps with both R8500 and TI4400 with all high textures. Try both Direct3d and the latest OPENGL renderer to see which works better for you, 75 seems a little low to me.


For the longest time I never saw this flashing texture thing. Untill one of the later sets of 8500 drivers. There is a work around that was posted in the rage3d forums (but can not remember). It was a rather irritating bug as the flashing changed as your POV changed.


For UT thats at 16x12x32 w/ x4FSAA and x16 AF on a large map :)

[Megatron]

Originally posted by nin_fragile14
NHL 2003 demo -- this is the only game that would not run.

Same here man. This is the only demo I have downloaded that just will not work. The madden demo is perfect, kinda wierd since theyre both EA games.
Im sure it will be fixed.

Another demo you may like that has serious eye candy, and flys on the 9700 is Imperium Galactica 3.
Try this one out, the starships look so good, and the lighting effects are incredible.

Glad youre happy with that card man, I am as well. I didnt get the sweet price you got, I got retail from ATI for full price...but oh well.:)

[Clevor]

I have a Radeon 9700 Pro due in from Newegg.

I am using a Ti 4600 now and it is fast enough for most all the games at 1600x1200 - if you don't use aniso or FSAA. And that's the problem. I used to use aniso a lot with my Ti 500 but forget it with the Ti 4600. It's a broke subject and Nvidia sat on their ass since there was no competition until the next ATI card came out.

And I agree on 3DMark2001. There is so much cheating going on that you can't take scores seriously anymore. To me a valid score is running the bench under the same conditions you play your 3D games (no FSAA or aniso though): mipmap set to the default of best image quality, everything else in the Detonators set to default, and run it on a 1280x1024x32 desktop at 85 mhz with all your TSRs running in the background. Do you all go through the trouble of shutting everything down (including removing your desktop icons) whenever you play your 3D games?

If you run the usual cheats to all this you can get 300-400 more points, and I hear with the LOD cheat, you can get even more.

Anytime I see someone claiming a 14K+ score on an overclocked Ti 4600 with anything less than 3.1 gig and 180+ fsb, they be a cheat 'in. I know, as I got 3 rigs at 2.9 gigs or thereabouts, up to 177 fsb, and 3300-3800 bandwidth. The best I can do is around 13.5K under the conditions stated above.

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by jbirney


OMG is all I have to say. Q3 x16 AF x4 AA, 16x12x32 all settings maxxed 151 fps on my 2100 xp.


Is that with demo001 or demo four? With those settings, I get 103 fps in demo four.

[jbirney]

demo001.

Demo4 then its about 150 ish w/o AA

With AA at that same res it drops to 101ish. Sorry I forgot there were two demos in Q3. My bad.

[LoRD.MuAD'diB]

nin_fragile14,

You say you play AC2. One question. I haven't played the game, but I play similar ones. The problem I'm having with AA on an 8500 is that the supersampling is bad for text. Basically it gets all discolored and blurred. Is this fixed with the multisampling on the 9700? There's article on HardOCP has something of an example of this. In a UT2003 SS the frame counter is pink instead of green and slightly blurred with AA on on the 8500. The 9700 seems to not have the issue, but I'd like to hear it from someone with personal experience in MMORPGs.

Also, as for your refresh rate problem, I had the same thing on the Catalyst 2.2s. Even if I disabled DDC and set the refresh rate manually, all I got at 1280 was 60Hz. I installed the 2.3s last night, and was able to set the refresh rate with some ease.

[hax]

Originally posted by nin_fragile14
My usual 1280x960 resolution ran in 60 hz. Even if I set it under "monitor settings" to 85 hz, it only runs at 60.

Have you tried checking the ATI monitor utility? I forget the name of it. There's a monitor setup there with max resolution and max refresh rate. I just bump the refresh rate up to 200, and it would allow the monitor page in the display settings applet to use the displayed refresh rate.

[[Corporal Dan]]

What are the plans for your old GF3?

*looks at gf2*

*looks back, puppy dog look on face*

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by [Corporal Dan]
What are the plans for your old GF3?

*looks at gf2*

*looks back, puppy dog look on face*

I will be using it in a secondary LAN box for now. Sorry, man. :)

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by LoRD.MuAD'diB
nin_fragile14,

You say you play AC2. One question. I haven't played the game, but I play similar ones. The problem I'm having with AA on an 8500 is that the supersampling is bad for text. Basically it gets all discolored and blurred. Is this fixed with the multisampling on the 9700? There's article on HardOCP has something of an example of this. In a UT2003 SS the frame counter is pink instead of green and slightly blurred with AA on on the 8500. The 9700 seems to not have the issue, but I'd like to hear it from someone with personal experience in MMORPGs.

Also, as for your refresh rate problem, I had the same thing on the Catalyst 2.2s. Even if I disabled DDC and set the refresh rate manually, all I got at 1280 was 60Hz. I installed the 2.3s last night, and was able to set the refresh rate with some ease.

Nope, no smearing. Evertying looks great, the text is a LITTLE blurred, but nothing siginfigant at all.

[travbrad]

Glad you seem to be enjoying your new card. The only game that I am dissapointed in performance wise is Mafia also. Only getting about 30FPS. I tried going to 800X600 with nothing on and get the same framerates that I get in 1280X1024 4XAA 16XAF so I supsect it is a very CPU limited game :)


Not that it really matters but thats pretty bad in CS. In 1600X1200 6XAA 16XAF I am getting 350FPS.

[nin_fragile14]

Yep, Mafia still runs like crap, and I get lockups in it, even after installing the D3D patch. Not too big of a deal considering I had almost completed it anyway, and saw the ending at a friend's house.

[Nv40]

Originally posted by nin_fragile14
I've had zero problems, aside from the 60 hz glitch@1280x960, and it was well worth the 335 dollars.

Things I would fix? Get vsync working in Half-Life. The drivers have no option for v-sync to be "always on". Get 1280x960 working properly. Other than that, everything is great. :cool:

[/B]


well is good to see you have ZERO! problems with your new video
card in new games, but what about MAfia locks ? GIants locks ? (other users have experienced)also MEdieval TOtal War and Battlefield ,Morrowind still many users users are complaining are among the most people experience problems ,now many talk about
UnrealT2003 demo lockups or weird graphical glitches...

The point is ,dont claim you have zero problem and later
say


Yep, Mafia still runs like crap, and I get lockups in it, even after installing the D3D patch. .

because many guys here will probably buy a radeon9700 just
to play that game "flawlessly" at blazing fast speeds .
believing in the myth that drivers works flawlessly in all games ,when this is not true. it was not true with retail
drivers and its not true withlatest 7.77 drivers.

1)how many lockups (if any) you got since you posted the first impressions? tell me honestly ?
2)did your card work in agp8x mode?
3)did you have any stuttering on 3dmark or direc3d games ,which
many users claim at rage3d forums ?
4)did you notice broken smoke in quake3 engines or tribes2 ?


i ask because ,many times problems dont arise until you switch
to another game ,or until you play a game for hours in Lan/internet.
lockups /crashes and restart is not NORMAL !!!
the last time i got a lockup was with Windowsmedia player several weeks ago with a corrupted video . if you have a stable system like me (AtlonXp1900+1gb ddr ram +windowsXP+Geforce4) server running 24hours a day every day!!!,your machine SHOULD!!last a couple of months without a single system crash!! see ?

is there is something i cannot tolerate is a video card with stability
issues ..jeez,no matter how incredible fast is .
my suggestion to any RAdeon9700 user is look at the version of you video card ,because seems ,ATI screwed customers with buggy beta boards ,even the ones that say "MADE by ATI" ,so if you have a radeon9700 ealier than revision 1.3 , so maybe if you card works Ok! now ,will be problematic in the future with AGP8x motherboards . anyone who will upgrade his motherboard to AGp8x in the next year ,should avoid any earlier version of Radeon9700 before RV1.3.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33637982

[travbrad]

"1)how many lockups (if any) you got since you posted the first impressions? tell me honestly ?
2)did your card work in agp8x mode?
3)did you have any stuttering on 3dmark or direc3d games ,which
many users claim at rage3d forums ?
4)did you notice broken smoke in quake3 engines or tribes2 ?"




1)The only lockups ive had weren't card related. They were from overclocking my processor WAY to far which would have locked up with any video card.
2)Dont have a 8XAGP mobo so i cant comment
3)The only stuttering issue i had was in GTA3. By enabling frame limiter this problem is gone.
4)No broken smoke in quake3 engined games for me, i dont have tribes 2 :)

[nin_fragile14]

"1)how many lockups (if any) you got since you posted the first impressions? tell me honestly ?
2)did your card work in agp8x mode?
3)did you have any stuttering on 3dmark or direc3d games ,which
many users claim at rage3d forums ?
4)did you notice broken smoke in quake3 engines or tribes2 ?"

1. I did not have lockups in Mafia until I reformatted my system a week or so after I had the card. I had played through about half of the game on the 9700 with zero problems. My POS IBM Desktar then died on me, and I had to buy a new hard drive and reformat. After reformatting, Mafia has lockups. I do not know why.

I had one lockup in Dungeon Siege about 5 days ago. It has not locked up since. I have played BF1942, Half-Life, Medieval Total War, Quake 3, MOH, NFS 4, NFS 5, Colin Mc Rae 2, Moto GP, NOLF 2, UT2003, and Hitman 2 with no lockups and no problems. I have run 3dmark through 2000 tests (about 17 hours) completely stable. Keep in mind this is on a CPU that is overclocked by 700 mhz and the RAM is running much higher than it's spec.

2. I don't have AGP 8x. I don't plan to for about a year.

3. I have not gotten stuttering in my games. I have no backround applications running, and that has been the cause of a lot of the stuttering.

4. I don't plan on playing Tribes 2 ever again, but Quake 3 and MOH have no artifacts.

I'm lucky to have experienced very few problems. When I look at Rage3d, it depresses me to see how many people can't get their card to run well. This is an amazing card, and if you're scared to get it, hold off a few months until the price drops. I have been pleased with it.

[gravioli]

Originally posted by Nv40

1)how many lockups (if any) you got since you posted the first impressions? tell me honestly ?
2)did your card work in agp8x mode?
3)did you have any stuttering on 3dmark or direc3d games ,which
many users claim at rage3d forums ?
4)did you notice broken smoke in quake3 engines or tribes2 ?

I thought I would chime in regarding these questions :).

1) No lockups in any games except once in BF1942 which was resolved after I realized I hadn't installed the D3D patch (JK2, UT2k3 demo, AvP2, MDK2, Deus Ex, NOLF, NWN, Morrowind, RTCW, UT, Unreal, Quake 2.....that's all I can think of right now.)

2) Don't have a 8X board, but will get one soon and check it out.

3) Had stuttering in 3Dmark, but shutdown ICQ and changed my NIC from "Auto_Config" to "100Base TX Full_Duplex" and have not seen the stuttering since.

4) No broken smoke, but honestly, I haven't really looked that close at smoke in the Q3 engine based games I have.