How does a 9700pro rate these days ?

[Calidan]

Greetings, this will be my first post on your very fine forums

I have been busy with work out of state for over a year and am now back and thinking of upgrading my ole gaming machine.

The system consists of a XP 2600 barton, Asus a7n8x-x motherboard, 1 gig of OCZ pc3200 DDR, Radeon 9700pro.

How does the 9700pro stack up with the new cards out these days ?
will i see any big change if i upgrade the video card or would the other components be a bottleneck ?

Any info would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Bios24]

Welcome!

I'd say the 9700 Pro is about mid-range. It will run most games with little problems, but you won't be able to run new gamesand uber-high resolutions.

Read this round-up, it will give you an idea of what it can do compared to newer cards:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/index.html

 

[Slimmy]

The 9700pro is still a good card about mid-range like Bios24 said. We have about the same systems and I upgraded from a 9700pro to this 6800nu and seen a big difference.

So if you upgrade make sure that it is a big enough difference to make it worth the cash.
Also depends on the games you play too.

 

[Calidan]

Thanks for the info guys

As far as games we play DAOC, BF2, UT 2004, nothing thats too hard on the comp but i am awaiting the release of a couple games that might spell doom for my ole 9700pro hehe.

After visiting the link Bios24 posted i think im going to go ahead and upgrade.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

have you tried overclocking your card?

many people have 9700 Pro's and take them to some FAST speed!

but your 9700 will be slower with newer games UNLESS

you dont mind playing with no AA and no AF...

 

[Yuriman]

AF shouldn't be a problem, 9XXX+ don't really have much of a performance hit with it on.

As for Battlefield 2, my friend has a nearly identical system, and he has to run Medium/low settings. I don't know if its a cpu bottleneck or what, but BF2 really kills his system. An X700np would go for about the same price and be considerably faster, but you'd have to get a pci-express system then...

How much is this new system going to cost?

 

[Calidan]

Currently my 9700 pro is running at 391/364 and it does run most games just fine but it does lag in BF2 if i turn the settings very high.




Well i made my lil upgrade list, what ya think ?

Asus a8n-e nforce4 motherboard = $120
Athlon 64 3000 Venice CPU = $136
Asus X800pro 256mb = $236

I guess i can reuse my old ram etc.

Please feel free to make any suggestions

 

[Yuriman]

The DFI nForce4 Ultra-D is a much better overclocker, and not much more expensive.

 

[Calidan]

I honestly dont know anything about the DFI brand name, I have been out of touch with tech news as of late so tend to fall back on brand names like Asus beacuse they always work well hehe.

I will look into it though, Thanks!

 

[Yuriman]

The DFI nForce2 was an insane overclocker, but they had a lot of stability issues. Since then, DFI has come a long way and I'd say their boards are on par with Asus in stability (having owned a few) and it's overclocking options far exceed them.

Btw, where are you purchasing this X800?

 

[Calidan]

doh i misread your question...

I was going to buy it from a misc vendor on pricewatch but then decided to go with Newegg instead, it will ocst a little more but the peace of mind will be worth it.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

yeah betetr to go with a solid name

newegg
directron
zipzoomfly (free 2nd day shipping)


take a look around for a 6800GT if you can - they all usually over clock to 6800 Ultra speeds - i got one the other day and it runs @ 429 / 1200 and it plays everything very well! - i have seen thema round for less then $300 for sometime.

 

[Sevin7]

if you buy yourself a 7800gt for $400 you will literally gain about 4 times more performance

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

and have a nice dent in your pocket

but if upgrading is an option, it would bea good choice - even a 6600 or 6800 GT would be a nice improvement as well.

i think anything above that and your CPU could result in being the slow down - is that chip unlocked?

 

[Calidan]

I appreciate the info guys but after the price for the CPU and MB the wife would string me up if i spent $400 on a video card lol.

Looking at the toms hardware comparisons it seems the 6800GT is either equal or actually slower then the x800pro anyways, why spend an extra $40 for it ?

To be honest i am a ATI fan, I've yet to have a single problem with my ATI products including a Radeon 7500 64mb AIW, 2 Radeon 8500 128mb, Radeon 9500 128mb and ofcourse my Radeon 9700pro. all of these cards were retired in 100% working order, well the 9700pro is about to be retired.

Over the years I have tried 5 Nvidia cards and had serious trouble with 3 of them, plus i still havent forgiven them for the FX line which in my opinion was just garbage.

Yes, i do realize that it may have just been bad luck on my part to get multiple DOA's, a video card that wouldnt work on my MB and short life spans etc.... but my luck seems to be holding on the ATI's so far

Some of the Nvidia problems include the following...

2 DOA FX5700 ultras in a row from Newegg.
Ram chip just fell off the PCB of our sons pcx5900 after 2 days.
GPU fan quit on 2 of the cards within a couple months.
Card wouldnt work on my old Epox XP MB (forget model but it wasnt that old at the time), called and was told to buy a new MB....yeah right.
sons FX5200 ultra had a short, took forever to get it back from RMA, Newegg blamed a Nvidia shortage..i donno.

These were all name brand cards and alot of the problems were not
on Nvidia's end but hell i just seem to be cursed when buying their products.

Now i must admit, my wife has had a old TI4200 for like 5 years now and it still does very well but every single other Nvidia purchase has been horrible.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

I love my ATi cards - i also love NVIDIA - when the price and performance benefits me - with either choice you will be happy

i have owned an x800 PRO and XT and now a 6800 and i can agree from my experience the x800 PRO shines in it's own right and so does the 6800 GT.

 

[ket]

if your in the area for a new card, cant go wrong with a x800xl, its basically the new gen 9500

 

[Cheator]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1476861&Sku=C261-3025 R

Can't go wrong with this. I just ordered this and am getting the DFI Ultra-D. It is nice to see another big ATI guy. There arel ots, but I never really see them tell anyone their history.

I personally went from a TNT1 card (Nvidia) to ATI a while back. Started with the Radeon 9000 pro 64 meg, then 128 meg, then 9200se, then 9600 se (these last 2 within 2 weeks of eachother), then my lovely x800 pro vivo. I even had a 9500 pro in there modded to a 9700 pro and with ViperJohn mods but it blew up 3 of my boards...

Sorry. I figured I would rant. But look into the x850. You could also wait for the new core coming out as well as ATI's chipset with crossfire. Apparently they perform quite well.

 

[Calidan]

Welcome!

I'd say the 9700 Pro is about mid-range. It will run most games with little problems, but you won't be able to run new gamesand uber-high resolutions.

Read this round-up, it will give you an idea of what it can do compared to newer cards:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/index.html

Any idea if the 6600 GT and 6800 were the agp or pci express versions in the toms grahpic comparison ?

 

[Quailane]

It doesn't matter they were agp or pci-e as they perform the same.