Just recieved my saphire 9700 non pro!

[Rogozhin]

Just wanted to let you all know that his card is very very nice!

I got it from newegg.com for $242! It even has the samsung 2.8ns memory, as soon as i can get ahold of a bios I'm flashing and overclocking. At the stock speed 275/275 I'm playing my games much more smoothly than my old radeon 8500LE (volt modded and running at 300/300).

Here is the list of games I've tried so far.

Morrowind (tribunal)
Rallisport challenge
Max Payne
Il-2Strumovik
Ghost Recon (IT and DS)
Nascar 2003
also
UT2003 DEMo

They all run better than the previous 8500 and this is WITH 16x AF and 6x AA!!!!!!

I can't believe how smooth it is!!!!

And for chalnoth I want to tell you that I'm not seeing any z-buffer errors in morrowind. But I'm running DX 9.0 and the WHQL certified CAT 3.0s

Thanks for reading ;)
rogo

[netape]

Nice one! I hope your card overclocks well :D

I would like to have one 9700 too but they cost way too much in here :(

[Rogozhin]

Thanks netape ;)

It should overclock like a banshee! With the samsung 2.8ns i should hit above pro speeds. I'm going to pry the HS and put some as3 on it plus i have two 80mm fans blowing directly on the card! Hoping to get 350/350 at least!

rogo

[netape]

Does that Sapphire card have any ram heatsinks on it?

[Rogozhin]

nope

it doesn't, it looks like the reference ati board

rogo

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by Rogozhin
And for chalnoth I want to tell you that I'm not seeing any z-buffer errors in morrowind. But I'm running DX 9.0 and the WHQL certified CAT 3.0s

Well, Rogozhin, have you tried the specific places that I've talked about? Here's a few places where the z-buffer errors are obvious to me:

1. Sadrith Mora: Wolverine Hall, just outside the Imperial Shrine. Easiest way to get here: teleport from a guild guide (in any mage's guild) to Sadrith Mora, then exit the guild and go down the spiral stair one level, entering the Imperial Shrine, making a right turn to exit the Hall. Once outside you'll be on top of a staircase. Turn left to go down the staircase. Just walk down or jump down, keeping an eye on the level of the water. The water level should not change (It does on my R9700).

2. Imperial Guards. They're in many places, but if you looked at the above situation, there are guards nearby. Just walk directly towards or away from one. The z-buffer error here manifests itself in small pieces of the armor flickering on and off.

3. Trees and other "skyline" objects are not properly clipped. That is, as I move, pieces of the trees jump in and out of view. On the GeForce4, the clipping plane moves smoothly.

[netape]

Rogo, how's Max Payne with that card? :D I would love to play that game with all the details maxed up (including AA/AF) :D

EDIT: Typo

[Rogozhin]

Chalnoth--I will check it out tonight to see if I get any z-buffer errors.

netape-Max Payne looks super "fly" ;) Gonna have to play it all the way through again ;)

rogo

[Renzo]

ATI's OpenGL driver needs some optimizations. Of course it's faster than TI4600 but only at 1280*1024*32 or higher or when using ANISO+AA combination. Some results:

Q3A : 238fps vs 230fps
JK2 : 144fps vs 138fps
Unreal(OGL) : 175fps vs 150fps
UT(OGL) : 128fps vs 122fps

Settings are identical in games. The first result is GF4 running at 305/630 and the other is R9700 running at 325/320.

I got my Hercules R9700 today. Had to flash the bios so the ID would change from xx45 to xx44 and I can now overclock. Before this, changing clockspeeds would cause serious GFX problems :)

Also what is/was strange are the clockspeeds

350/270 = ok
275/330 = ok

But when overclocking core and mem together...

325/320 = ok

Huh? I don't get it. Why is this? probably something to do with current or something. What the heck, those clockspeeds are enough for me.

[Chalnoth]

Could be power usage, heat, or signal noise. I think it's normal to not be able to overclock as high when overclocking both core and memory together.

[Gator]

Rogo, any overclocking results yet?

[Rogozhin]

Gator

I flashed the bios to a sapphire pro and am running 310/310. haven't pushed it to far.

Rogo

[Steppy]

Originally posted by Renzo
ATI's OpenGL driver needs some optimizations. Of course it's faster than TI4600 but only at 1280*1024*32 or higher or when using ANISO+AA combination. Some results:

Q3A : 238fps vs 230fps
JK2 : 144fps vs 138fps
Unreal(OGL) : 175fps vs 150fps
UT(OGL) : 128fps vs 122fps

Settings are identical in games. The first result is GF4 running at 305/630 and the other is R9700 running at 325/320.

Imagine that, they perform almost the same it 4 benchmarks well known to be CPU limited UNTIL you start getting into high resolutions and/or turn on AA and aniso. ;)

[Renzo]

Actually, the Unreal score is 135fps vs 175fps as the opengl renderer I used was one revision too old and couldn't use detail textures. I updated it and the fps drop another 15fps.

Anyway the point is, all the games get the same result on 512*384 , 640*480, 800*600 and 1024*768*32 in 16bit or 32bit color. GF4 could get a lot higher results at lower resolutions (270fps instead of 238 in q3 etc). The difference isn't really noticeable in any of those games without fps shown, but it reveals the lack of optimization in the drivers which is rather pathetic.