Radeon 9700 Pro = GeForce 3 Ti500 - Why?

[AltKey]

I can probably guess the answer to this, but here goes anyway... I bought an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro a week ago, and in all my benchmarks, it's come up at best only a few fps faster than my old GeForce 3 Ti500. Here are my specs.

AMD Thunderbird 1.4GHz
MSI K7T266 Pro (MS-6380)
512Mb (256x2) PC2100 DDR
Visiontek GeForce 3 Ti500 64MB (Detonator 41.09)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (Catalyst 3.0)
Windows XP Pro SP1
DirectX 8.1

In UT2003 (with bots), Battlefield 1942 (solo on LAN), and NOLF 2 (first level), both cards performed almost identically at the same settings. (1024x768x32, "High" detail) I know the processor/mobo are somewhat archaic, and that the Radeon 9700 Pro is particularly dependent on the CPU power, but would a chintzy chip really bring ATI's speed demon <i>this</i> far into the ground? I just can't see how that could be.

I'm thinking about returning this Radeon 9700 Pro, but if all I need is a faster processor/mobo then I'll hang onto it, since I'm buying those soon anyway. Otherwise, I'll be more than happy to wait for the GeForce FX when it's released next Fall (accounting for Nvidia's inevitable delays, of course...).

Thanks in advance.

 

[letdown]

Did you format and clean install the new card? Usually helps a bit.

You won't push the 9700PRO to its limits with that setup, but it should be better than a GF3 (I'd expect at least +50% in 3DMark). What are your frame rates like?

 

[AMD_Man]

Reformat and turn on AA and AF!

Intelligence is not merely the wealth of knowledge but the sum of perception, wisdom, and knowledge.

 

[AltKey]

I am already running a clean install of Windows XP because I had to uninstall DX9, and Windows won't let you do that. I have AA and AF set at "Application Preference," which (at least in the case of UT2003) I assume means "Off," because that's how I configured it in-game. Running UT2003 at an average detail shouldn't be the slightest challenge for the Radeon 9700, yet it slugs along in a normal UT2003 botmatch at ~30fps. Extremely frustrating, especially considering that I paid $380 for the damn thing...

 

[hellcatjr]

Actually AMD_Man didn't say turn it off he did say turn it on meaning look at the preformance difference when u have AA an Ansy on to reallly push the card you will see how much more power that 9700 really has , but not only that yes ram Pc2100 is what is slowing it down as well as processor and FSB, most ppl here O/C their FSB to about 133 and up giving alot more FPS along with having pc2700ddr as well, make sure if u buy DDR pc2700 that is of good quality this way it can be timed aggressively =)

BTW Why not Try via's 4in1 drivers i use them on my setup and it increased my score by almost 1200marks,

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by hellcatjr on 01/10/03 03:59 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[hellcatjr]

wupps i must need to learn to read better noticed he said to turn it up as well my bad kev =)<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by hellcatjr on 01/10/03 03:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[chuck232]

I don't understand what's so curious. The Ti500 isn't all that slow and for that system it's just about maxing it out. The R9700 Pro is more than max. But if you make the game settings more dependant on video card (by adding AA and AF) you'll see the R9700 Pro quite a bit ahead.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[Kanaz]

The Radeon 9700 Pro uses AGP 8x, your motherboard doesn't support that. This could very well be causing your lack of performance.

"You need to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you get the chance to put the knife in." -Pink Floyd, ‘Dogs’

 

[hellcatjr]

i highly doubt that since agpx8 isn't eve releavant as of yet.. computers won't be able to truley handle that x8 agp until higher FSB speeds start to increase...

 

[Disorganise]

I'd say it's almost certainly CPU based.
I upgraded my 1Ghz T-bird to 1800+ today and almost doubled the 3d mark scores on my Geforce 2 I can put off the video card upgrade for a while now

 

[Ghostdog]

The Radeon 9700 Pro uses AGP 8x, your motherboard doesn't support that. This could very well be causing your lack of performance.

Please don´t give bad advice, or do you really beleive what you just said? AGP4x is a very minimal bottleneck these days.

<font color=red>I´m starting to feel like a real computer consultant.</font color=red>