Anand's 9700 Review

[NOX]

This card does killer at 1600x1200! My games will look even better, like MXM2!

 

[bluemax]

Originally posted by: mchammer187
all i can do is drool

too bad i have only a 15in LCD

need a 2000FP to take advantage of what this card has to offer

Not really. At 1024x768 you can have 6x AA and 16x AF turned on. In other words, you can have all the visual goodies going and still get smooooooooooth framerates.
6x AA on 1024x768? You'll never miss the higher res.

 

[apoppin]

Isn't this card - awesome as it is - simply overkill for all of today's current games? Even Doom III won't take advantage of its features (Doom III is optimized to run on the Radeon 8500 and GF3 cards).

What differences will I actually see playing a current game besides a faster FPS (who cares?) and better Antialiasing Anistropic filtering over a Radeon 8500 or GF4?

EDIT: I mean, is any current 8500 owner or GF4 owner saying "my card is too slow with too many jagged edges?"
Does its real-world performance justify spending an EXTRA $300 over a Radeon 8500 (besides bragging-rights, which are priceless)?

 

[bjc112]

Intim, where ya at?

Im glad to see that the 9700 pulled through for ATI, all those other benchies like gamespot and whatnot weren't even close...

Great Job ATI...

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I can't get over how shameful the GF4's Aniso performance is. Just 2X is almost a 50% drop, and it's a greater drop than enabling 2X FSAA. Nvidia needs to get on the ball with this.

 

[AdamDuritz99]

Originally posted by: apoppin
Isn't this card - awesome as it is - simply overkill for all of today's current games? Even Doom III won't take advantage of its features (Doom III is optimized to run on the Radeon 8500 and GF3 cards).

What differences will I actually see playing a current game besides a faster FPS (who cares?) and better Antialiasing Anistropic filtering over a Radeon 8500 or GF4?

EDIT: I mean, is any current 8500 owner or GF4 owner saying "my card is too slow with too many jagged edges?"
Does its real-world performance justify spending an EXTRA $300 over a Radeon 8500 (besides bragging-rights, which are priceless)?

Yes, it's over kill. And for the price, it's only for the hardcore gamer or someone who is completely obsesive about power. But there is nothing wrong about either of those peeps, b/c they really help push new technology to be better and come out faster when they spend the money. I'm certinantly not going to buy this card in the next 6 months, unless i get rich soon. None the less, i am excited as everyone else b/c of such an increase and how advance technology is getting. It's purely amazing. And with a break through like this can only mean things are going to get even better. Another thing is that ATi did it right the first time this time. Which makes the a worthy competitor to many folks. ATi will feel the benefits of doing it right the first time, and will want to get it right a lot more often now. It just gets better and better for the consumer. Just enjoy the benchies and get excited about the future, even if your not going to buy this particular product right now.

peace
sean

 

[bjc112]

Yes, it's over kill. And for the price, it's only for the hardcore gamer or someone who is completely obsesive about power. But there is nothing wrong about either of those peeps, b/c they really help push new technology to be better and come out faster when they spend the money. I'm certinantly not going to buy this card in the next 6 months, unless i get rich soon. None the less, i am excited as everyone else b/c of such an increase and how advance technology is getting. It's purely amazing. And with a break through like this can only mean things are going to get even better. Another thing is that ATi did it right the first time this time. Which makes the a worthy competitor to many folks. ATi will feel the benefits of doing it right the first time, and will want to get it right a lot more often now. It just gets better and better for the consumer. Just enjoy the benchies and get excited about the future, even if your not going to buy this particular product right now.

Good Post



Well said...

 

[Leon]

I can't get over how shameful the GF4's Aniso performance is. Just 2X is almost a 50% drop, and it's a greater drop than enabling 2X FSAA. Nvidia needs to get on the ball with this.

They already did. Download 30.xx driver and RivaTuner, you will get wide range of AF options. No way to select them from NV control panel, yet.

 

[AdamDuritz99]

Is there anybody that kind of wished that Anand included the radeon 8500 too. It would help to sure the difference between the avg. joe gamer card (8500, ti4200) and the r300. I guess another reason why is b/c i have a 8500.

peace
sean

 

[Alkali]

Hopefully Anand will be able to do some more in-depth benchmarks comparing other video cards (eg. GF2, GF3, GF4, Radeon 7000 series, 8000 series, and the new 9000 card) all on the same hardware

plz Anand

 

[ravedave]

I really wish Anand included a TNT2 (or TNT2U, which can be considered Nvidias first modern 3d GPU). Its so cool seeing how bad old hardware gets whipped. Most people still have TNT2's or GF 256's class cards, so why not include those so you can see what your buying for $400.

also has anyone tried reading the review at hardocp? man the server is farked! he has a 2.5Ghz amd, he says its beond spec.. sounds like a 2400 (2.06GHz) overclocked!

 

[John]

I am placing the order now for a 9700

 

[dexvx]

Kyle at HardOCP has a 15x166 = 2480 Mhz (REAL Mhz) XP thats based off an unreleased core benched.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Alkali
If anyone wants some really detailed 2, 4x, 8x, 16x whatever comparisons, head over to another review from FiringSquad (direct link)

i just read that... and they claim "NVIDIA's Quincunx AA mode however truly does deliver free AA performance." while ATi's is nowhere near it...

but when you look at the numbers... nvidia is taking a pretty big hit...

Q3 1024 (ATi v nvidia)
no AA: 291.7 vs 271.1
2X: 275.5 vs 213
4X: 228.2 vs 112.7


ummm? free AA? nvidia? looks like the 4x cuts FPS more than in half for the 4600...

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: John
I am placing the order now for a 9700

lucky bastard

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: apoppin
Isn't this card - awesome as it is - simply overkill for all of today's current games? Even Doom III won't take advantage of its features (Doom III is optimized to run on the Radeon 8500 and GF3 cards).

What differences will I actually see playing a current game besides a faster FPS (who cares?) and better Antialiasing Anistropic filtering over a Radeon 8500 or GF4?

EDIT: I mean, is any current 8500 owner or GF4 owner saying "my card is too slow with too many jagged edges?"
Does its real-world performance justify spending an EXTRA $300 over a Radeon 8500 (besides bragging-rights, which are priceless)?

Even if i have a 8500 since last year november and i am [in general] very happy with it - YES, the card is *still* too slow.

For me there is only three things which counts: Image Quality, Image Quality and [again] Image Quality.

I dont give a **** about 3dmarks or benchmarks run in plain mode without AnitiAliasing and without Aniso cranked up to 16x, since this is my DEFAULT in all my
games. I didn't spend almost $300 (when i bought it) to run games with all that features disabled - otherwise i could get the same perf with some Nv*dia MX "graphic card" from walmart

Problem:
AntiAliasing is fine (4x that is) up to a resolution to 800x600....and this is way too low especially since i own a nice 19" monitor. My lowest reso i run games at is 1024x768.
In this resolution 4x AntiAliasing hit considerably and the only option is switching back to 2x Quality AntiAliasing for this resolutions.
Drawback:
There is a hardware limitation with the 8500 which smoothes only vertical, NOT horizontal [like with 4x AA on] when you run in 2x AntiAliasing modus.
Result:
Even if i have a [still] quite good graphic card i have JAGGIES....4x AA is too slow...and everything else gives jaggies.

That's the reason a card can not be fast enough because the ONLY reason which could legitimate to spend $400 on a Radeon 9700 would of course be running all games/apps with highest Image Quality settings and keeping smooth framerates. I dont give anything for 25000 3dmarks if what i see on my screen looks BAD, jaggies, etc...etc...

I also dont pay attention [anymore] for "benchmarks" and "reviews" where obviously these factors [performance with AA and AF] are not looked at...and all scores and tests are only done wityout that settings.

greetings

 

[Wolfsraider]

check here for more reviews subscribers

HardOCP
Tom's Hardware
HartWare (translated from German) athlon 1900 and more graphics cards etc
Hot Hardware

non subscribers

 

[Alkali]

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: John
I am placing the order now for a 9700

lucky bastard

I would love to myself, but I cant find a shop that sells it yet (in the UK) :disgust:

 

[BFG10K]

Well, it looks like ATi delivered what they promised - a killer card. And the best part is that the initial drivers appear to be excellent with only minor issues.

It's good to see the option to choose fast anisotropic and quality anisotropic alive and kicking and ATi's fast anisotropic method coupled with the power of the 9700 really makes for blazing framerates at high resolutions with the 16x setting, something that I've been after for a long time.

Am I going to buy one? I'm 90% sure that I will but first I'll wait for more indepth reviews that cover a wider range of games.