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Radeon 9700 Pro: ATI Ahead

Posted by Hemos on from the battle-rages-on dept.

Keefe writes "The epic battle between ATI and Nvidia wages on. While Nvidia awaits arrival of their near-fabled NV30 for redemption, ATI conquers all by introducing the fastest and most advanced graphics card to date. The next-generation ATI Radeon 9700 Pro marks the second time Nvidia cedes the performance crown to ATI (the first time being the brief glory when the ATI Rage Fury beat the Nvidia TNT). See how the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro stacks up at Techware Labs."

5 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by veddermatic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First they point out a Salon piece mentioning "selling out" and now we get an ATi puff piece for a video card taht has been out for months...

    If only I had a brain, I could figure out what this meant!!

    --
    Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
  2. The surprising part... by foxtrot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is not that this is the second time that ATI has been faster than nVidia, it's that this is only the second time that this has been the case.

    Back in The Day, it seemed that 3dfx would come out with their card, and hold the performance crown for a few months, then someone else would release theirs, and hold the performance crown for a few months, then 3dfx would release their next generation of cards, and the cycle would continue that way.

    It's been all ATI and nVidia now for a number of years, and ATI has only just now figured out that if they want to sell graphics cards to gamers, they have to be faster every once in a while?

    I hope it reverts to the old model. Competition can only yield better graphics cards at lower prices.

  3. High end 3D cards all but irrelevant by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know I'm going to get blasted for being a Luddite, but try to read more into this than a rehash of "640K is more than anyone will ever need." Please?

    First, PC video has gotten very fragmented in terms of capability. Hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) first appeared in the GeForce 1 several years ago. The follow up, the GeForce 2 became a very popular, almost standard, card. But there are still major PC retailers that ship with motherboard video, such as Intel's extreme-whatsit and so on. These chipsets are not T&L capable. Still, several years after the first T&L cards appeared, there is a huge segment of the market that doesn't have hardware T&L. These are fast machines in every other respect (bottom end these days is 1.8GHz), just not T&L accelerated 3D.

    Of course the hot video feature these days is programmable shader logic. But realistically what percentage of very capable PCs support this? 10%?

    Second, the bottom has fallen out of 3D gaming on the PC. The sales figures of games that are perceived as Big Hits, like No One Lives Forever 2, are, in reality, abysmal. We're talking under 50,000 copies. There are some 3D games that are doing well, but it's a small, small handful. Just that "Oh yeah, what about Doom 3?" comes up in these discussions shows how weak the market is.

    My point is that video cards keep improving, but at the same time, there's no market for these features, nor is there a market for the features of cards two generations back. I don't like this, but that doesn't change anything. Certainly it's fun to write shaders and to be able to buy something for $400 that's significantly better than $100,000 hardware from just a few years ago, but that's looking at the situtation from a "look at what I have in MY computer" perspective, not something I can realistically expect to be in most of the PCs out there.

  4. Re:Who would spend ... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > There are no new games that demand a card this instant.

    Try these games at 1600x1200 @ 32-bit, and then tell me a new video card won't help.

    - Battlefield 1942
    - UT2K3
    - Morrowind

    Personally, if you just got a GeForce 3 or 4, then yeah, you won't see that much difference, except you'll be able to crank up the resolution with the newer cards. For people who have a GeForce 2 (and below) (like me), upgrading to a ATI 9700 Pro, or GeForcs FX *is* a big difference.

    But you are correct -- Games requiring 64-bit and 128-bit framebuffers won't be out till next year (2004). I think that's the time to pick up the GeForce FX.

  5. Must be something whacked somewhere ... by waltc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've had the opposite experience since September when I replaced the GF4 Ti4600 I had (moved it to the wife's machine at home) with a 9700 Pro. I have found the drivers terrific so far, from the included version on the CD up to the current 3.0 DX9-compliant Catalysts. What's more, I've tested the card with more than 35 3D games in my library--closer to 40--and have yet to find one that wouldn't run, or either ran so poorly the game was unplayable. From my point of view it's simply the best 3D card I've ever owned--especially for 3D gaming.

    Also, this is the second motherboard I've used the card with--the first was an MSI KT333 chipset board, my current board is a nVidia-based nForce2 chipset board manufactured by Chaintech, which supports AGP x8 and several other things. The card runs extremely well. I've not even been tempted to swap cards with the wife and go back to the nVidia Ti4600 product--no way...

    I would strongly suggest that either you have some underlying system incompatiblity of which you are unaware which prohibits the card from working properly--or else you simply had the bad luck to pick up a defective card (in which case an RMA is order.) Your experience is certainly not representative of that of the reviewer of the article on which this thread is based, none of the other reviews of the product (and there have been dozens of them), or my direct personal experience. Think how you like but I thought you should know your experience is anything but typical.