The Xmas Tale of R9700 Pro Terror

[wazmeister]

Hi all, Kinda stressed so excuse the long post.

I am bascicly getting bad performance with my card I "think".

Reading tomshardware.com R9700 guide and benchmarks I thought blimey this card kicks GF 4 ti4600 128meg to the curb and it does go check the rewviews/compares.

Also all the rumors people say about R9700 being kick ass runing ut2k3 full whack with AA on etc getting no lower than 100FPS so on and so on and that this game is the KING.

Reading that Doom 3 is being made around the R9700 Pro and it will run it full graphics with a good 80fps+.... Or something..

All the other rumors that once DX9 comes out R9700 will truelly kick ass and be 30% faster!!!

...... So when does all that start?

For xmas I bought my self a Sapphire Radeon 9700 Atlantis Pro which has made me so skint words can not describe.

So far with default settings in 3Dmark2001SE and AA off I am only gettting 12454 when I got told i shuld at least hit 14 or 13. My brother gets 10802 with his GF 4 TI4200 and his overall spec is slightly lower too..... His got same system as me but mines a XP2200 and his is a XP2100 and I get faster speed in ram etc due to quality of my products.

UT2k3 I put everything full and sometimes my card hit 22FPS on the OPen map and closed ones if some action is going on about 30 FPS..... God so R9700 Pro is already out dated by games and we all need a R9900 when ever it comes out to run UT2k3 fine? very strange I thought the R9700 was the King to the Throne... Can run any game piss easy full whack! Gricous my brother gets better results with his GF ti4200 64mb.. I shoulda saved money and got that. My friend who has same rig as me in USA gets no less than 80FPS with full whack graphics and AA on and AF etc in the heat of battels. I hit max 60 and lowest 22 and 60 only tilts for about 1 second averge if 50/40.

BattleField 1942: Everything full, like I did with my ATI 8500 64 MB i never got less than 50FPS even in heat of action.. well ok it hit 45 at times. But this is a joke.. This really is wait for it.. wait.. 18FPS!!!!! Its in the 50's with nothing going on i get on the island off my boat run round corner 1 model on screen god I cant move 18FPS 20.. god i quit.. and titl my head in shame.

Gosh me tempted to put my 8500 back in.

I got told to go in my bios and tweak it with fast settings enabled and utlra speed mode but I got told thats over clocking by someone else... but another person said its not.. I have thse in my BIOS:

Fast CMD: TURBO/UTLRA/NORMAL/OFF its on NORMAL atm

Top Performance: Enable/Disable I got this disabled.

I got told this counts as over clocking and I should have it normal or I could burn out my system. Whats the real truth and what should I set it too? Also any other bio settings I should set culd u tell me.. I visited bios guides but too muchj detail to write and I got no printer

Ok.... now the details.

I using Cats 3.0 the Mighty DX9 drivers everyones raving about!
DX9! Whoo Weeeeee.... and I have fresh installed and formatted plenty so plz do not beg me to do that again ARF ARF.

Ok.. you know how i feel I notice alot others with same problems.. but to have brothers like mine don't help all through xmas its constant flaming me wasting 260 pounds but I wont give them the benefit of the dout.. I wanna see them scores the R9700 Pro can really get.. if they can at all and shove them in my brohters faces.
.
My brother also gets same or better results than me with his GF 4 ti4200 when my card should kick his crapless and even the Ti4600.

Not only that I kinda want 260 pounds worth. I got the feeling its no driver conflict everythings the same way I used to use my R8500 and i dont clena installs of windows the lot.

Anyway, Any adivce and help greatful.. Check below for my system spec.
I thank you inadvanced for taking time in your xmas holidays to reply.
Merry xmas.
Waz

XP2200
Thermal Take Dragon 7+
Gigabyte 7vrxp KT333 (Bios F9 modded)
Crucical 512mb DDR Ram 2700 333mhz
Matrox ATA133 Diamond Plus 9 40gig HD (how can I see if this is running 133 it don't say in device manger only enable if DMA.. i got feeling this aint running right either my brothers install games quicke rthan me and they got ATA60 and ata100).
Hurcules 5.1 Sound Card


P.S:
update:

So i tried Return Castle Wolfstien....

I put everything fulliest it can go and in windows/desktop propaties i put

AA sample 6

AF: sample 8



textuire pref: high quality and the othrs highest and truform on and V-sync off.


IN game i put everything the highiest possbiel and res 1024*786


At times it was stable 130 140 FPS but about 3 models shooting and m,e it hit 80 and then 50 and in open areas about 50.

What do you think, that sound normal?

Perhaps I got sucked into everyones including ATI's hype of this card, the best on market! the one that runs most games piss easy with all the glory.
But the truth is it doesnt run them 80 fPS and everything full but about 30..

I am very very confused on how people say Radeon 9700 is being used to make Doom 3 and were run it easy with all its glory??? When we can just about hanbdle ut2k3 with its glory.

Someone explain I mainly bought this card for games like Quake 4 and Doom 3 for the future and tbh words cant describe how skint i am now after buying this.. I thought it last a good 3yrs and run D3 and Quake 4 and Unreal 2 piss easy..... But will it

how do I turn FSAA on and AA and what is it and what does it do exactly?

I cant find anything named FSAA i got FA and AA.. ahh i am confused

what scores shuld i be seeking in ut2k3...in res 1024*768

ALso when I had my old card R8500 64mb I got 8500 3Dmark2001 score
Now my soecs better than my brothers..
His is
XP1800
256DDR ram
same mortherbord.

And he gets 8300 3dMark score using my old card.. Does that show something?

 

[AMD_Man]

REFORMAT!

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

 

[letdown]

I'm with AMD_Man, you got some wacky software issues. Format, clean install with new drivers.

 

[AndrewT]

what they said! and I score over 13,000 with the 9700PRO so you're not far behind!

<b><font color=blue>Press 1 if you want to be on hold, 2 for disconnect, 3 for a representative who will put you on hold before disconnecting.</font color=blue></b>

 

[Earthdog]

Somehing to try before you format: go into BIOS and set the Top Performance to ENABLED.
Fast CMD: either Turbo or Ultra.
This is NOT overclocking. Its freeing up system resources. If you remember back in the days when computers had a Turbo button on the front its the same thing just done through BIOS. We dont need turbo buttons anymore because the games made today all run at pretty constant clock cycles. There used to be a big difference between a 32mhz 286 and a Pentium 90. Hence you dont need a turbo button.

Overclocking is the changing of multipliers, or, changing of Front Side Bus speeds, beyond recommended (stock) speeds.
Enabling faster system performance option in BIOS doesnt involve either of them.

Disable Floppy drive Seek on Startup. You dont need it anyway and disabling it will increase the life of your floppy drive as well as decrease your boot up time.

If you think it will improve performance, turn it ON. If it doesnt improve performance, turn it back off or leave it on unless it actually hurts performance.

The rest of your problems sound very driver related. Did you uninstall the drivers for the old card before you installed the ones for the new card? Not doing so can cause conflicts as Windows might be trying to boot drivers for a card thats no longer there.

Crappy driver support are the only reason why I wouldnt have an ATi card if you gave one to me. Sure, if you can get one to run right they are totally awesome.

Problem is getting them to run right. ATi even suggests that you flash the mainboard to get the card to work right.

Problem with that is if the MoBo isnt flashed properly it is now a PAPERWEIGHT. Thats just not on, mate.

One more thing, set all of your RAM back to STOCK Latency.

If its not broke dont fix it.

 

[Ghostdog]

Where ever did you here that Doom III is being made around the 9700Pro? The game has been in development for too long for that. iD confirmed the game back in 2000 I think.

Doom III will use a lot of the technology from DirectX 8.0, and I think Carmack said that the GeForce3´s were a target-platform. There has also been rumours about a "FPS-cap", limiting the framerate for smoother gameplay. But I really wouldn´t listen too heavily to rumours.

Don´t asume your card will run future games like sh!t just because you can´t make 100fps on UT2003, I´ve heard comments about it being somewhat CPU-dependant.

I´m going to suggest a re-format aswell, you might have some weird driver-conflict. A clean install will solve anything software-related.

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

 

[wazmeister]

Thanks for all your help!

I am very very greatful, cheers.

Bit confused how and why BF1942 runs to 18fps..

But as I say I can not be like a bobbing dog in the back of a car repeating the same thing over and over.

I have and must have formatted about 7 times now.. trying new drivers and constantly clean installs.
I think its ATI side of a problem but my problem in seeking how to work around getting the card to run right.....
Only if I knew

 

[Rob423]

dam dude.. that is horrible

let us know when you fix it so we not what was the cause of the problem. Dam ATI DRIVERs!

Is THG Slightly Slacking??

 

[AMD_Man]

Yea, you have a point, the Catalyst 3.0 have too many changes (the first driver set to support DX9), so I would forget about installing DX9 and Catalyst 3.0 and stick with the Catalyst 2.5.

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

 

[wazmeister]

I enabled Top Performance in my BIOS.

Everyone tells me this is not over clocking but it helps PC run its right resources or something...

I am scared its going to burn out my system can someone explain in greater detail what it does?

As after putting this on my score in 3Dmark2001 SE flew to:
13583

I gonna go test games now....
Anyone plz tell me if my system is ok with that on
Thanks

 

[Ghostdog]

Your 3DMark score seems right-on. The ~15k scores are achieved by 2.5ghz and up P4´s or with newer Athlon´s.
Keep us posted.

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

 

[Unit01]

you wont find much support or help here judging by the answers.
Try www.rage3d.com and ask for help in the tech support forum. They'll try to help you there
Try freeing up IRQs
Disable serial ports you don't use, printer, firewire usb etc
Try to place the card on a single irq
check agp aperture size experiment between 32,64,128,256
see how it works out
I hope your PSU is a good one and doesn't fluctuate to much.
And that you got some case cooling of some sort.
Try clearing ESCD might help a little.
You'll find more help at that site i'm not sure of all the possible causes.
No company is perfect