Almost forgot this Thread
Well, since I have it running since a while now, here's another one from my side :
ATI Radeon 9700Pro 128MBWell, this card was bought as a
Performance Monster, and it should get the job done for years to come.
However, even this Card has its high's and low's :
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On the Pro side, there's (obviously) Performance.
By all practical means, this card offer's
ludicrous performance, and is still most of the time waiting for the CPU to deliver the next frame to be rendered
Framerates in 1024x768 32bit can
easily exceed 500fps
, provided the CPU can keep up, which is rarely the case though...
I haven't found any real Driver Bugs, the often blamed ATI Drivers worked like a charm right from the beginning, now having reached the Catalyst V2.4 level.
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However, when looking at the Driver's Advanced Properties, any 3dfx User will instantly notice the lack of literally
any advanced Tweaks in the Driver.
Knowing just how much Advanced Features are embedded in the R300 Core, that was my first disappointment about the Card, or rather the Drivers.
There are alot of Tweaker Programs out there, but they are quite a pain to use, and offer a complete overkill of options (most of them appear rather ineffective, or the performance gain is not noticeable). That's unfortunate, and there's no Tweaker existing, that limits itself only to the "real things" that would be really useful to tweak.
Since the Card is fast enough, not a big loss, but something worth mentioning
Something that
really disappointed me was the very low Texture Quality (compared to a 3dfx Card), even on highest Driver settings. It seems MipMapping is performed much closer than a Voodoo5 would render it, for example.
In order to get the same Texture Fidelity (in terms of MipMap Quality), Aniso Filtering is really needed.
The R9700Pro definitely needs about 4x Aniso Filtering in order to achieve Image Quality comparable to a Voodoo5 on default settings.
And what 3dfx Users really have to their advantage with their MipMap Dithering Option really becomes apparent, when viewing those clearly defined MipMapping Rings drawn on the R9700pro. Again, only the 4x Aniso can really even this out on the Radeon.
So putting it side by side with a 3dfx Card, with both running on default settings, would clearly make 3dfx a winner without any discussion, in terms of default MipMap Texture Fidelity.
One thing that also never happened to me with any other Card, was that I was struck by a variation of the infamous 60Hz Bug. Surprisingly, as this error is commonly seen only on Win2k/WinXP machines. Since I'm running Win98SE, I clearly did not expect that.
In some Resolutions, I have full control over the Refresh Rate. But in some, I have only partial control (not all Modes are accepted), and eventually, some Modes are stuck at 60Hz.
What hurts even more, is, that there's no tool existing, that has helped me.
Luckily, my main Resolution still runs at 85Hz, but effective use of higher Resolutions is (presently) inhibited, as I don't want to make my eyes hurt.
I guess that's up to some serious Registry hand-modifying, which I still have to do...
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Other than that, a very nice, stable running card, and it also has the additional Power Connector, just like a Voodoo5
It permits simultaneous, effective use of FSAA and Aniso Filtering with practically no Performance loss in 1024x768 32bit.
The ability to finally use FSAA at no loss is probably the most dramatic factor, which puts its Image Quality ahead of the competition, since playability is not affected
Colors are nice and vivid, and can additionally be tuned if that would be desired (Overbright).
---- update ----- Finally, someone has found a Registry Trick, that solved the 60Hz Problem under Win9x
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