Which card?....please help

  • Thread starter Thread starter codeblue
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codeblue

After several years, and with Doom 3's 2004 release, i feel it's time
to put my trusty ATI 7200 VIVO to bed and upgrade.

I will opt for another ATI card as i have had know probs with the
7200, but which one?

Having about £200 pounds to spend i've been looking round the net for
prices, reviews and support and come to the conclusion that it's a
bloody minefield!

For the £200 mark the best option would be the 9700 pro currently at
Dabs for £219. Whats puzzeling though is that Dabs are one of the
VERY few places on the Net to stock the 9700 in any form. Why is
this? Is their anything wrong with it or does ATI want people to buy
the £100 more 9800?

Bottom line is that i want a card that will give me great gaming for
as long as my 7200 did. Which one?

As a final thought, can i buy a cheaper model and overclock it to a
better one?

Barry
 
I believe the 9700 is an older model replaced by the 9800. Their numbering
scheme is terrible. I found a 9800 Pro recently for $US 299, not much more
than your £219. I think you can find one in that price range with patience.

Great card.

Tom
 
You will need to consider the rest of your system, in this process.... Just
getting the best card you can afford, may not be the best approach
(depending on your system). I would say that if you have a decent
processor/motherboard/memory combination, the 9700pro would do fine. Tell
us just what kind of box you are going to put the new badboy in.


-
codeblue stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:
 
codeblue said:
After several years, and with Doom 3's 2004 release, i feel it's time
to put my trusty ATI 7200 VIVO to bed and upgrade.

I will opt for another ATI card as i have had know probs with the
7200, but which one?

Having about £200 pounds to spend i've been looking round the net for
prices, reviews and support and come to the conclusion that it's a
bloody minefield!

For the £200 mark the best option would be the 9700 pro currently at
Dabs for £219. Whats puzzeling though is that Dabs are one of the
VERY few places on the Net to stock the 9700 in any form. Why is
this? Is their anything wrong with it or does ATI want people to buy
the £100 more 9800?
Click to expand...

The R350 (9800, 9600) core replaced the R300 (9700, 9500) core and has
stopped being manufactured. The reason few people are selling it is because
they've already sold their remaining stock.
Bottom line is that i want a card that will give me great gaming for
as long as my 7200 did. Which one?
Click to expand...

I've got a Crucial 9800 Pro (now £240) and it's excellent. Probably worth
£20 more than the 9700 Pro (and delivered for free too).

There are a few seemingly minor improvements from the R300 to the R350,
they'll help when games are supporting more complicated pixel shaders.

Ben
 
The system i built included a Athlon 1800+ with the MSI K7T266 Pro2
moboand 80gb HD. 512mb of PC2100 mem and a Creative 5.1 Live sound
card running 5.1 speakers. Iiyama Visiion Master Pro 411 monitor,
Logitec opital/wireless Wingman, Keyboard and Mouse, Plex CD-rw a
Pioneer cd/DVD player and a partridge in a pear tree...(well it is
Christmas!)

The card is the first step to upgrading. Next will be the CPU and
Motherboard, then a DVD witer and a new sound card.

Barry
 
After several years, and with Doom 3's 2004 release, i feel it's time
to put my trusty ATI 7200 VIVO to bed and upgrade.

I will opt for another ATI card as i have had know probs with the
7200, but which one?

Having about £200 pounds to spend i've been looking round the net for
prices, reviews and support and come to the conclusion that it's a
bloody minefield!

For the £200 mark the best option would be the 9700 pro currently at
Dabs for £219. Whats puzzeling though is that Dabs are one of the
VERY few places on the Net to stock the 9700 in any form. Why is
this? Is their anything wrong with it or does ATI want people to buy
the £100 more 9800?
Click to expand...

The 9700 is a discontinued product--the reason it was discontinued is
more marketing than anything else--nvidia started crowing about how
their pixel shader allowed longer shading algorithms than ATI's to be
applied, so ATI brought out the 9800 with the same capability and
discontinued the 9700.
Bottom line is that i want a card that will give me great gaming for
as long as my 7200 did. Which one?
Click to expand...

The 9700 at the price you mention is probably your best bet.
As a final thought, can i buy a cheaper model and overclock it to a
better one?
Click to expand...

Sometimes--depends on the brand and on your luck and to some extent on
the particular circuit board used--for example some 9500 non-pro boards
could be upgraded into 9700s with a software modification, but others
with a different circuit board could not (ATI changed the board design
specifically to prevent this). Many of the non-pro boards can be
overclocked to approximate the performance of the"pro" board in the same
family but that depends on your luck--some boards just plain won't
overclock no matter what you do to them--whether and how far you can
overclock always depends on whether you lucked out on the manufacturing
tolerances. Before you ask, the 9600 series boards cannot be modded to
any higher series--the 9600 uses a different chip from the 9500/9700 and
the 9800. Also, you'll see 9600XT and 9800XT boards that are clocked
pretty high--don't count on getting a non-XT to that level--ATI changed
the manufacturing process they use slightly on the chips for the XT
boards, allowing them to clock much higher than the chips used on the
non-XT boards.
 
Depending on your timeframe for upgrading the CPU/Motherboard, I would
suggest opting for the 9700pro. There may be something new, around the
corner (dropping prices of all current cards). And, since you say
'next'...(if you're anything like me, that will mean when you have the
cash....).


-
codeblue stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:
 
J.Clarke said:
Also, you'll see 9600XT and 9800XT boards that are clocked
pretty high--don't count on getting a non-XT to that level--ATI changed
the manufacturing process they use slightly on the chips for the XT
boards, allowing them to clock much higher than the chips used on the
non-XT boards.
Click to expand...

My Crucial 9800 Pro will clock to a core of 450MHz, significantly (10%)
beyond an XT, no? The memory reaches 360MHz as well, only 5MHz shy of the
XT.

I'm using a Zalman ZM80A-HP, not sure if that is helping or hindering the
overclocking ability of the core, I know the whole heatsink gets rather hot.

Ben
 
The 9700Pro is a good card, it is power hungry, needs its own power
connection.
ATI has stopped making the 9700s, could the one you are looking at
be a refurbished or open stock unit ?

I would say to get the 9600 Pro, should be good enough for most people.
In the US they start around $140, starts around 125 pounds mail-order in the
UK.
 
After several years, and with Doom 3's 2004 release, i feel it's time
to put my trusty ATI 7200 VIVO to bed and upgrade.

I will opt for another ATI card as i have had know probs with the
7200, but which one?

Having about £200 pounds to spend i've been looking round the net for
prices, reviews and support and come to the conclusion that it's a
bloody minefield!

For the £200 mark the best option would be the 9700 pro currently at
Dabs for £219. Whats puzzeling though is that Dabs are one of the
VERY few places on the Net to stock the 9700 in any form. Why is
this? Is their anything wrong with it or does ATI want people to buy
the £100 more 9800?

Bottom line is that i want a card that will give me great gaming for
as long as my 7200 did. Which one?

As a final thought, can i buy a cheaper model and overclock it to a
better one?
Click to expand...


Hi,

if you can find one then the RADEON 9800 (np) is about the best card you can
get for around the £200-00 mark. They seem to be all gone though so good
luck in trying to find one. . . .
--
Wayne ][

Barton (AQXEA) XP2500+ @ 2.2GHz (10x220) - 1.775vCore
CoolerMaster Aero 7 Lite - 3,200rpm
ABIT NF7-S (v2.0 - BIOS#14)
512MB Dual TwiSTER PC3500 @ DDR440 1:1 (9,3,3,2.0 - 2.7v)
Sapphire Atlantis 9800 - 3.3ns Samsung (325/290 Default)
240GB (2x120GB) WD-SE SATA RAID-0 (NTFS - 16k Stripe)
Antec SX630II Mini-Tower Case Inc 300w PSU
2 x CoolerMaster 80mm Blue Neon Fans
WinXP-PRO-SP1
Cat 3.7 - DX9.0b
 
The Radeon 9700 is no longer manufactured, and it is NOT DX9 compatible.
Doom 3 requires DX9 compatibility. Get a current 9600 or 9800.
 
Hey Dave, you are giving bad info there bud...
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9700/radeon9700pro/index.html

The 9700pro are discontinued but are excellent cards if you can find one.
It will easily outperform a 9600 models because the 9700 has eight texture
pipelines whereas the 9600's have only four.

The 9600's overclock quite well but the 9700pro would too with a little
tweaking...

Get the 9700pro if you can find it.
 
PCWorld are doing a deal on the HIS Radeon 9600 pro at the moment, they've
got it on offer for seven days only at £99.98. Normally its marked up at
£141. Its got s-video out plus dvi out and as always vga out! Made alot of
difference to my little bro's pc when he went from geforce 2 GTS. Picture
quality was great, even made me consider swapping out my gf4ti4400!

chris
 
I believe the 9700 is an older model replaced by the 9800. Their numbering
scheme is terrible. I found a 9800 Pro recently for $US 299, not much more
than your £219. I think you can find one in that price range with patience.

Great card.
Click to expand...

Check out Nvidias...
5600xt-64bit RAM
5600xt-128bit RAM
5600
5600Ultra
5700
5700 Ulta
5900XT
5900LE
5900
5900Ultra

or better yet.. go to the gainward, all their cards are called ULTRAS
- even if they are not Ultra class GPUs.
 
The system i built included a Athlon 1800+ with the MSI K7T266 Pro2
moboand 80gb HD. 512mb of PC2100 mem and a Creative 5.1 Live sound
card running 5.1 speakers. Iiyama Visiion Master Pro 411 monitor,
Logitec opital/wireless Wingman, Keyboard and Mouse, Plex CD-rw a
Pioneer cd/DVD player and a partridge in a pear tree...(well it is
Christmas!)

The card is the first step to upgrading. Next will be the CPU and
Motherboard, then a DVD witer and a new sound card.
Click to expand...

Keep saving your money... until Doom3 comes out.

Then put in a spanking new AMD64 in to the system... they are already
$200~225 for the lowest in CPU - when Doom3 comes out, it'll be down
to $125~150. Also, buy the video card too... todays $500 video cards
will be $250~$300 in 6 months.
 
jdc1" <" jdc1 said:
What about getting a replacement if he gets one and it's
discontinued??????
Click to expand...

Depends... but I expect he'll get the equivelent... which would be a 9800pro

Ben
 
ATI would replace the card with another 9700pro or better I would imagine.

But realistically video cards don't die unless you o/c em, flash the bios or
attempt to mod 'em.

Over the past two years I've had:

64mb ddr Radeon VIVO
9700pro
AIW9700pro
9500non pro softmodded to 9700non pro and warp11 bios (did 15k in
3dmark2001se)
9800pro (modified with an AMD heatsink/fan)
9800pro 256mb...

I currently use the modded 9800pro since it o/c's like made and the higher
core speed results in better benchmarks than the extra memory on the 256mb
9800pro.
 
Thankyou everyone for your contributions to my post. I have just
bought a Crucial 9800 pro at £239.69 from their web site.

Next on the list will be a dvd writer.......

barry
 
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