upgrade 9700p to 9800p .....worth it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter iiee
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iiee

I have a 9700pro since Sep02. Thinking of upgrading to 9800pro/FX5900.
Advice please? P4-2.53, 1G ddr400.

Thanks!
 
iiee said:
I have a 9700pro since Sep02. Thinking of upgrading to 9800pro/FX5900.
Advice please? P4-2.53, 1G ddr400.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Firstly, read the thread in here DX9 (HL2 & Doom 3) on ATI vs. NVIDIA, you
won't be touching any geforce.....
secondly, no it isn't worth upgrading a 9700 pro to a 9800 pro, definitely
not, they are practically the same card.....do a search in google and find
out what everyone else says, you'd be taking a step sideways rather than
up....If you do want to upgrade, wait for the next ati card. Your card
should be more than capable of running absolutely everything at extremely
high spec, why do you want to upgrade? got the technology bug?
 
methylenedioxy said:
Firstly, read the thread in here DX9 (HL2 & Doom 3) on ATI vs.
NVIDIA, you won't be touching any geforce.....
secondly, no it isn't worth upgrading a 9700 pro to a 9800 pro,
definitely not, they are practically the same card.....do a search in
google and find out what everyone else says, you'd be taking a step
sideways rather than up....If you do want to upgrade, wait for the
next ati card. Your card should be more than capable of running
absolutely everything at extremely high spec, why do you want to
upgrade? got the technology bug?
Click to expand...

Agreed - wait and see what happens when HL2 comes out (with the R400).

PS2 and VS2 are improved on the R350, but not significantly to warrant an
upgrade from the R300.

Ben
 
Agreed - wait and see what happens when HL2 comes out (with the R400).

When do you thing the next generation cards are coming out? I have to
buy mine until middle November - after that I will move back to my
country and some of the high-end cards take a while to get there.
 
in my opinion - regardless some product information - the 9800pro is almost
the same as the 9700pro at higher clock rate and a slightly different card
layout (leading to greater clockability).

smoothvision2.1 etc. seems to be just a driver issue, otherwise my 9700pro
(alas only under win98..) oc to 380/350 with driver 9800pro hacks could
never reach a score of 5.600 3dmarks 2003 with an athlonXP1800@ 2.138mhz.

anyone sharing my opinion ?

greetings

atlan
 
chracatoa said:
When do you thing the next generation cards are coming out? I have to
buy mine until middle November - after that I will move back to my
country and some of the high-end cards take a while to get there.
Click to expand...

Maybe end of October for the R400, next year for NV40

Ben
 
Atlan said:
in my opinion - regardless some product information - the 9800pro is
almost the same as the 9700pro at higher clock rate and a slightly
different card layout (leading to greater clockability).

smoothvision2.1 etc. seems to be just a driver issue, otherwise my
9700pro (alas only under win98..) oc to 380/350 with driver 9800pro
hacks could never reach a score of 5.600 3dmarks 2003 with an
athlonXP1800@ 2.138mhz.

anyone sharing my opinion ?
Click to expand...

Yeah - the same people that think you can upgrade an R300 to an R350 with
software, but they're wrong.

The major differences lie in the Pixel and Vertex shaders, officially the
R300 doesn't quite meet DirectX9 spec. on progam length for Pixel shader,
but the R350 greatly exceeds it.

You won't notice much difference in benchmarks because the differences
aren't in speed, they're in ability.

You will probably start to notice this more now that you can run almost any
game at a rediculous resolution, with AA and AF maxed out. The rest is eye
candy and that will be the differentiation between cards.

Ben
 
Ummm, the Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 all meet DX 9.0 specs. The 9600/9800
exceed some of the specs, the same way the GeForce FX series does. I am not
sure if the older ATI cards meet DX 9.0a or 9.0b specs, but they most
certainly meet DX 9.0. Check any respectable site or magazine review for
clarification.

Rich S.
 
Rich said:
Ummm, the Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 all meet DX 9.0 specs. The
9600/9800 exceed some of the specs, the same way the GeForce FX
series does. I am not sure if the older ATI cards meet DX 9.0a or
9.0b specs, but they most certainly meet DX 9.0. Check any
respectable site or magazine review for clarification.
Click to expand...

I thought I read somehwere tha DirectX9 requires a minimum Pixel Shader
program length of 192 instructions, however, according to this page:
http://www.evga.com/articles/public.asp?AID=128
It's 64.

Of course, I don't seem to be able to find out anything authoritative from
Microsoft. Releasing important details of their own technology would be far
too easy.

According ATI:
http://www.ati.com/companyinfo/glossary/includes/list.html#smartshader20

Smartshader 2.0 (on the R300)
Has a maximum program length of 160 instructions.

DirectX 9.0a and 9.0b should be fixes to the released DirectX9.0 and not
updates or changes to the specification or interfaces.

Ben
 
Hi Ben,

I didn't mean to sound smart-alecky or rude with my post, just trying to
add to the conversation. Prior to placing my post I did a quick search
looking for the site where I had read about the "improvements' the GeForce
FX had over DirectX 9 (which is what the R300 based cards were designed
around) including it's vaunted 32-bit precision over DirectX 9's required
24-bit (what the R3XX series does) and additional shader program length
(exceeds DirectX 9 spec). I had read this I think on Anandtech, but I
couldn't find the info. Thanks for the further info and have a great day!

Rich S.
 
The major differences lie in the Pixel and Vertex shaders, officially the
R300 doesn't quite meet DirectX9 spec. on progam length for Pixel shader,
but the R350 greatly exceeds it.

You won't notice much difference in benchmarks because the differences
aren't in speed, they're in ability.
Click to expand...

Your thinking of R300's Smartshader 2.0 vs. R350's Smartshader 2.1. R300
meets DX9 spec, R350 excceeds it. As newer program make use of shaders
having an unlimited instruction length (R350) can hold a fair advantage over
the limited R300. Carmack alluded to some efficiency advantages the Nv30
chip had over the R300 in Doom3 because of longer instruction lengths. More
info for those interested: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDM5

So is it worth it to upgrade a 9700pro to 9800pro? Not now. But if your
unable to upgrade to R400 anytime in the forseeable future and you've got
money to burn or you sell your 9700pro, I'd say do it.

best-0-luck,
ugg
 
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