ATI Radeon 9700PRO

[Fritzsche]

Anyone knows where I an find latest drivers and betadrivers for this card?

ATI Radeon 9700 PRO

There must be somewhere else then on ATIs homepage where I can find these drivers?


Regards
Paul

[SMOKE_SKULL]

Personally, I wouldnt play around with BETA drivers for a 9700. The damn card is too buggy as it is. Just stick with the latest Catalyst drivers and you will be trouble free. JMHO :)

[Fireblade]

Why would ye want t' download em from anywhere else m8? The following drivers are bang-up-to-date...

WinXP (http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonnowdm-xp.html?cboOS=Windows+XP&cboProducts=RADEON+9700+PRO&eula=&choice=agree&cmdNext=Next) (released 14th Nov) ;)

That's the WInXP driver set. If you use a different OS, use this page (http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/) ;)

[Fritzsche]

what do you mean that its buggy? Would you be so kind to specify or point out a link to where I an read about it myself?

Regards
Paul

[Talon]

Yeah, I would like to know how its buggy as well. I plan on getting one of these!

[bldegle2]

but, if you plan on massive FSB clocking, you will be disappointed with the ATI9700 (Sapphire brand), mine craps @around 195FSB. The ATI9000PRO 128 meg (Sapphire brand) and the Chaintec ti4200 128meg go all the way to 216FSB, tearing at boot, but both work fine in XP.

awesome card though, with the onboard GPU pumping on the card, framerates soar and games load in a flash.

highest i got on 3DMark 2001 was 14,122 with this card, slightly tweaked core and memory, but now much.

if you are keeping the FSB below 195, go for it.

baldy:cool:

[Fritzsche]

so, next question then.. HOW was you able to overclock it? What is default? How do you run the benchmark? alot of questions here =)

[Toby]

i have a 9700 pro (from Gigabyte) and havent found any bugs at all, the card has acted superbly for me!

[SMOKE_SKULL]

Well I have one and to tell the truth I like the performance and image quality of my Geforce 4 Ti4200 and 4400's a lot better. I guess the 9700 had driver problems when it came out where it wouldnt run some games, but that is fixed now. The 9700 Pro will only give a couple thousnad more 3D Marks than a good 4200 will. Mind you it is 50% better in Code Creatures bechmark. Anyways I have seen lots of threads about peeps having problems with a 9700, as far as I am concerned they are like a race car that needs a good mechanic to look aqfter it and keep it tuned to the max.
I was playing Spearhead the other day wit hthe 9700 and was shockingly disappointed with the loss of image quality compared to a Ti4200 with the latest Dets. In the scene where you cross the river in the boat with the squad you cant see squat with the Radeon untill you actually reach the shore on the other side. With the Ti you can see the Germans walking up the bank from a ways out there. Anyways I would recomend a Ti42 or 44 or 4600 series and save your money for something else.

[Bursar]

I'm not an ATi fan, but I'd imagine the problems you have had with some games are driver bugs, and they'll probably get ironed out in time. Some of nVidias driver releases have been truly terrible.

You also need to allow for the fact that maybe the game developer happened to code their game the 'nVidia way', so it will need a patch to fix up things to get it to run the way it should on other cards.

Earlier today I read a review of the Radeon 9500 card. It's essentially a slower paced, slightly crippled version of the 9700. Still the same GPU, but has less of a supporting chipset (I'm not a guru on these things I'm afraid).

In a number of tests, the 9500 beat the nVidia 4600 card. And given the that 9500 is a 'budget' card, that's some pretty good going.

And 3D Mark scores aren't the only thing worth worrying about. As you've mentioned, the 2D quality and driver performance are more important, and those things will probably get fixed in time.

Some of the early nVidia based cards had pretty poor 2D quality as well.

Give the product a bit of time to mature, and most of these things will probably be fixed.

Mind you, by then the GeForce FX cards may be out, and then the landscape changes again :D

[speculative]

I don't know; the GeForceFX cards won't be out for a bit... But interestingly enough, I read that some games, such as Asheron's Call 2, are already optimised for the GeForceFX. I had problems with some games when I first got my Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO, but updated drivers soon fixed them. And, with the Catalyst drivers out for around half a year now (I think?) ATI drivers have been great, and I have really had no trouble at all running anything.

And yeah, I don't see how the GeForce4200 could beat a Radeon 9700 Pro, unless there was some code in there that was "anti-ATI" or the settings needed to be tweaked. But, in this case, there really isn't more than meets the eye - it's only what meets the eye that counts. ;)

-spec

[speculative]

Tip for those having trouble OC'ing the Radeon 9700 Pro:

Ok, I just read this at another site. Some people put on different cooling solutions, and they say that the CPU shim is too high, that it should be lapped. There is a space between where the heatsink/shim connect and the CPU, because it was designed to use a TIM instead of thermal paste. Perhaps lapping the shim and applying some Artic Silver Epoxy in a good mix would help the OC? (Of course, I wouldn't do this, but to each their own. ;) )

-spec

[Fritzsche]

Do you know of any good sites reviewing, overclocking and news on whats going on in the "scene"? I used to have a bundle when I was in to oc;ing but Ive lost all of my valuable links.

[Fireblade]

whew... where t' start :D

My first ports of call are usually The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/), Warp2Search (http://www.warp2search.net/), Envy News (http://www.envynews.com/), Toms Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) + PC Stats (http://www.pcstats.com/) ;)

I have loads of others who I visit for specific news (gaming etc), but those mentioned above are usually good fer most stuff :thumbsup: