Author Topic: ATI 9700 quick review re:Aces High (Read 907 times)

Gman · « **on:** September 15, 2002, 01:30:43 PM »

Well, I've read what Animal and others were saying about the new ATI card, and I hadn't bought one for years, so figured wth, why not give them another shot.

I upgraded from a Geforce 3 ti500 amd 1.4 to a 9700 Pro and a 2100xp+.

Wow.

I used to get 100 fps MAYBE at higher altitudes with less going on, with no fsaa, no scopic filter, and vsync disabled at 1280x32 rez in Aces High. Smoke over bases could be bad news, I've seen 20 fps in it before. This was having the card tweaked for maximum speed.

Now, I am running 6x fsaa, 16x scopic filtering, every detail and quality setting maxed out, clutter on, you name it, at the same 1280x32 rez AH.

I rarely if EVER drop below 120 fps, and cruise around in the 145-147 range. It has totally changed the game for me, it looks so much better than before.

Animal, good call on the card, it's about 30% faster than my pals ti4600 without fsaa or anything, and with it all cranked, it barely drops my fps at all.

I've maxed out at 12500 3dmarks in 3dmark2001, but I've only got 512 pc2100 generic ram, and an older a7m 4x agp MB. I'll get myself some better ram and an 8x AGP board, and then maybe o/c my cpu and vid card a little and see if I can match all the guys on madonion with the 14000's.

Animal · « **Reply #1 on:** September 15, 2002, 03:14:32 PM »

Glad you like it, I wish I could upgrade to it from my Ti4600 it really is that good.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #2 on:** September 15, 2002, 03:35:45 PM »

Ok,...if Animal wants it, then,.well,..ya gotta know it is something. Never thought I would hear that from you Animal

.

I was going to post what the 9700Pro was like for me, but I thought I would hold off and let you see for yourself. I knew you would like it Gman.
The performance and the image quality is rather astonishing and even hard to believe.

Did you load the Catylyst 2.3 drivers? The performance is better,..again. Looks like about a 10% gain across the board in performance with the 2.3's.

You just need more CPU to get your 3DMarks up.

Heck, I need more CPU just to try to keep up with the card. I cannot recall the last time a video card had to wait for the CPU. I know it had to happen before, I just cannot remember the product.

Animal · « **Reply #3 on:** September 16, 2002, 04:50:05 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
[snip]I cannot recall the last time a video card had to wait for the CPU. I know it had to happen before, I just cannot remember the product.

Voodoo2 in SLI mode had to wait for the CPU when it was new and so did the original Geforce DDR but not for long.

Heh Skuzzy my loyalty for a company lasts as long as another one releases a much better product out of nowhere.
Though I really hope the NV30 will rock. With these companies releasing such great technology I cant wait to see how games will look two years from now.

I read somewhere that computer video chipset is one of the most advancing technologies in the world, way ahead of CPU's for the moment.

AKSWulfe · « **Reply #4 on:** September 16, 2002, 06:52:46 PM »

Animal- the first "3D" cards came out were essentially 2D cards with some features built in. This was in 1996/1997. Most of them only incorporated alpha blending and simple fogging.

Now... now they have their own processing unit, 32x more onboard RAM that's far, FAR faster (dunno exactly, but the first "3D" cards had EDO RAM), have their own algorithms and no longer rely on the CPU for building the scene... but just to give it the instructions to build the scene.

I remember having a S3 ViRGE... "3D" card... Diamond Stealth 2000 I think it was... didn't even need a heatsink on the chipset... the best thing it did was make 3D scenes clearer... instead of pixels they were blended together, but it couldn't even do fogging (used where "sky" meets "horizon" in games)...

5 or 6 years later... I get a hard on when I play Il2.

Back in the day when Aces Over The Pacific came out on CD-ROM (wow, step above floppies!), I looked at the box and on the front it had this cool painting of an F4U flying by a fleet with clouds surrounding it.. I said to myself, "Someday, games will look like this..."

I had no idea it would be so soon..

So yeah, I really had no point to post this other than ramble on about how fast 3D card technology has been advancing over the past couple of years. It was uber-slow at first, but like CPU technology, it started off as a slow small rock and quickly snowballed into a high speed freight train.
-SW

Kratzer · « **Reply #5 on:** September 16, 2002, 07:29:37 PM »

You got framerates in the 20s w/ a GF3 Ti 500 and a 1.4 at 1280?

I simply don't believe you, unless you piss in your PC to cool it off.

With a PIII 800 and a GF3 Ti 200 overclocked to just under Ti 500 levels I could run 1600x1200 32bit in AH and NEVER drop below 35.

Same video card and a 2000+, I never drop below 65 at the same resolution/color depth, and it generally stays between 72 and 85.

eagl · « **Reply #6 on:** September 16, 2002, 08:20:36 PM »

20 fps is a little low for a GF3...

I usually get 45 near fields and 85 elsewhere (vsync locked) with an Athlon 1.4 and GF2-GTS Pro at 1280x1024x32. I get some weirdness at 1600x so I run at 1280.

I just wish I could get ansio filtering and decent FSAA. Turning FSAA on chops framerate to under 30 at 1024x768x32 and looks like crap compared to V5 FSAA. My NEXT vid card will do all that, but I'm not in a rush to spend $350+ just to get ansio and FSAA. Not yet anyhow...

Pongo · « **Reply #7 on:** September 16, 2002, 09:15:07 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by AKSWulfe
Animal- the first "3D" cards came out were essentially 2D cards with some features built in. This was in 1996/1997. Most of them only incorporated alpha blending and simple fogging.

Now... now they have their own processing unit, 32x more onboard RAM that's far, FAR faster (dunno exactly, but the first "3D" cards had EDO RAM), have their own algorithms and no longer rely on the CPU for building the scene... but just to give it the instructions to build the scene.

I remember having a S3 ViRGE... "3D" card... Diamond Stealth 2000 I think it was... didn't even need a heatsink on the chipset... the best thing it did was make 3D scenes clearer... instead of pixels they were blended together, but it couldn't even do fogging (used where "sky" meets "horizon" in games)...

5 or 6 years later... I get a hard on when I play Il2.

Back in the day when Aces Over The Pacific came out on CD-ROM (wow, step above floppies!), I looked at the box and on the front it had this cool painting of an F4U flying by a fleet with clouds surrounding it.. I said to myself, "Someday, games will look like this..."

I had no idea it would be so soon..

So yeah, I really had no point to post this other than ramble on about how fast 3D card technology has been advancing over the past couple of years. It was uber-slow at first, but like CPU technology, it started off as a slow small rock and quickly snowballed into a high speed freight train.
-SW

I started playing AH with an S3 Virge...lol
And I remember that Corsair on Aces Over the Pacific..that was some of the best box art that ever was done...
My copy came with a 1/72nd scale corsair kit..
What ever happend to Damon Sky or what ever his name was at dynamix, who designed the aces series...

Animal · « **Reply #8 on:** September 17, 2002, 07:55:48 AM »

S3 Virge the infmamous 3D DEcelerator.

Oh and on the 20FPS thing; he's saying he could get low frames at 1280x1024 over heavy smoke, wich is entirely possible with a Geforce3 in a bad situation.

Kratzer · « **Reply #9 on:** September 17, 2002, 09:11:17 AM »

Yeah, I understood him - I just don't believe it. Heavy smoke would bring my PIII down to the high 30s, but never the 20s. And that was at 1600x1200.

AKSWulfe · « **Reply #10 on:** September 17, 2002, 10:43:12 AM »

Damon Slye... dunno Pongo.. he just kinda disappeared when Dynamix stopped doing the air combat games. He wasn't onboard the Red Baron II/3D devel team...
-SW

Gman · « **Reply #11 on:** September 18, 2002, 11:27:08 PM »

Well, over a runway with lots of fires going, I've popped a bomber that exploded in front of me in that smoke, and I dipped into the mid 20's for about 3 seconds. I think I have film of it I can drag up. I'm not saying I see it often, but I KNOW for a fact that I have.

As an addendum, I'm having some trouble with ATI's drivers working in a lot of other games, but oh well, so long as it keeps chugging in AH, I'm happy enough.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #12 on:** September 19, 2002, 05:56:50 AM »

Gman, did you get the Cat 2.3 drivers? They fixed every issue I had.

jonnyb · « **Reply #13 on:** September 19, 2002, 12:20:37 PM »

2 good things about the ATi Radeon 9700 Pro:

1) Raises the bar WAY up over nVidia's head.
2) Makes nVidia drop their price points on current cards, and forces them to speed up development on the NV30 series.

Edit: About time nVidia had some competition again...

Gunthr · « **Reply #14 on:** October 03, 2002, 10:51:26 PM »

Well, Bad news and Good news..

First the bad...
I tried to unlock my AMD 1.8 ghz cpu (on a Shuttle AK31r3 - very good board) Well this cpu o'clocked very well using just the FSB. I had great expectations for the unlocked results. Well, when I was done, the cpu showed up as a 1200 mhz processor. I had to overclock just to get it up to the original 1800 mhz! And it did that fine, and a little higher, but I was disgusted. I must have messed up and made a connection that was not intended. I sold the cpu/mobo/Alpha cooler.

The good...
I started eyeballing the Intel P-4's, and yes, I jumped ship. I got a 2.8b ghz cpu and an Asus P4B533-E (I chose this mobo for stability with the ATI 9700 video card. It is a 4x-AGP mobo). You can lock the AGP/PCI at 66mhz/33mhz, or whatever you want, and still raise the FSB, and that is the first thing I did.

This little sweety-pie went from 2.8 ghz to 3.2 ghz @ 154 mhz FSB effortlessly. Asus probe reported 39 degrees C on the cpu at idle, but I don't trust that number yet. I didn't try to overclock higher. Stock cooler, but I do have a well ventilated case. I'm not ready to go further just yet.

I bought the ATI 9700 Pro. I am just thrilled that it works at all, after reading all the posts on the 3dRage board about the probs that some have had with this card. I havn't had problems with it, although I have had indications that this particular card doesn't like to run too far out of spec. I love the card so far.

The card is HOT. You can burn yourself touching the heatspreader after running a 3d game. I've got a 92mm blowhole fan coming soon, and also solid copper sinks for the 9700.

Just goofing around, I ran 3DMark2001 SE benchmark on "performance" settings, with the o'clocked cpu at about 3.2 Ghz and got a 14036 under Windows XP Home, with 512 mb Crucial PC 2100 ram. Frame rate stays about 100 in AH on my Samsung955df. I guess that is because my refresh rate is 100 mhz...