Radeon 9700 Performance Issues?

[SmuvMoney]

I purchased a Radeon 9700 OEM from newegg.com. Last Tuesday, it finally arrived. I replaced my Gainward Geforce 3 TI 200. However, it seems that my performance has not increased where it counts - within games. Before I explain, here is my present setup:

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ w/ Glaciator-Lite HSF
EPoX 8KHAL KT266A DDR Retail Motherboard
Transcend PC2100 DDR SDRAM - 768 MB (512 MB, 256 MB)
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 7200 RPM UDMA100 60 GB Hard Drive
Pioneer 16x/40x DVD
Plextor Plexwriter 24x/10x/40x CD-RW Retail
SB! Live Sound Card
3COM V.90 PCI Hardware Modem
3COM 3c905c-TX EtherLink PCI NIC
SuperPower KS201 Steel Tower w/ 300 W Power Supply
Windows XP Home (no SP1 yet)

Here are the programs I'm using to compare performance:

3DMark2001SE: This benchmark hasn't given me any problems. With my Gainward TI 200, I couldn't break 7000 without overclocking. With OC, I get around 7500. With my Radeon 9700, I get around 10500 easily, but I have similar setups get 11000-12000 without overclocking the PC. I am unsure where I could have missed the boat.

Quake 3 Arena: I run a high detail config with everything pretty much on. With my Gainward TI 200, I get around 150 FPS on demo four @ 1024x768. If I overclock, I can get to 160ish. For some reason, with the Radeon 9700, I don't get any higher running that same config. I had seen at least one Radeon review and a personal account where demo four ran @ 190-200 FPS. In fact, the fellow sent me his config - he was running a very similar setup as well. His config got 203 on his machine. The same config on my machine got 160-165 (a 20% drop). I am at a loss as to why there is such a discrepancy for the same chip speed, OS, and card. I could see a 10% fluctuation but over 15% seems unusual. My point is that this card should not be bested or tied by a Geforce 3 TI 200 under almost any circumstance.

The only good (yet unusual) part of this is that the Radeon 9700 seems to scale so well that I can use max quality detail in OpenGL and turn on 2x FSAA and AF and lose 1-2 FPS max. This scaling continues into 1152x864 and even a little into 1280x1024 (r_mode 7 & 8 for you Quake buffs). Using this does make the game look a lot nicer, but I was hoping for a significant FPS boost as well.

Unreal Tournament: Running the thunder.dem (from Reverend's UT site), wicked400.dem, and wicked405.dem, both cards demoed in the 85-90 FPS in OpenGL for thunder.dem. The values for the other demos were pretty much identical. I know UT is a lot more CPU limited than Quake 3, but I was expecting at least a small increase using the same config. I don't see any difference between the games in terms of FPS, but that may be more to CPU limitation. As with Quake 3, the game does look nicer in general from what I have seen.

I have tried many things to improve the FPS performance. I have reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled XP twice in the last 5 days. None of this has had any effect. I have moved around RAM and taken out PCI cards. None of this had any noticeable effect. I have turned off services like indexing and other "useless" services. I have been looking in the BIOS for things I might have missed. I have the BIOS set to run AGP 4X with fast writes disabled and Aperture = 128 MB.

I don't want to sound like a whiner as other people are having more serious problems with Radeon 9700 at the moment. However, for as much money as I paid for this card, I was expecting a whole lot more considering how good my TI 200 had treated me.

My questions would be:

- Am I CPU limited by the Radeon 9700?
- Is there any reason why I am running seemingly 15-20% below similar setups?
- Am I just SOL?

Thank you for your time whomever replies to this. I am at a complete loss after trying to improve the performance for 5 days. The card is presently in my machine and I hope to solve/improve the situation soon. Thanks again.

 

[ciparis]

(again)

This is not unusual. You are most likely CPU limited already at that resolution.

Here's the important tip: if you can increase resolition and / or add AA etc, and your FPS stays the same, you are CPU limited. If you want to find what the card can really do (hint: 1024*768 with no AA is NOT a challenge for any modern card, let alone a 9700), run a series of tests. Add AA and Aniso, and check your FPS. Still the same? Go to the next higher resolution and repeat. Keep doing this until your FPS finally makes a significant drop, then back down (reduce resolution or AA a notch to return to max performance) and enjoy your new card.


to answer your questions:
- Am I CPU limited by the Radeon 9700? -- YES and NO - you're CPU limited by the games and low resolutions you've chosen. Raise them.
- Is there any reason why I am running seemingly 15-20% below similar setups? -- Motherboard, RAM timings, bus speed, overclocking... make sure Vsync is off and apply service pack 1
- Am I just SOL? If you want your Athlon to get the same rates as a P4 2.8 running at low resolutions, yes. If you just want to see the benefit of your card, not at all - raise the res and add some eye candy. That's what this card is all about. Want to really see it? Put your old card back in, raise the res or AA to something that looks amazing but is unplayable due to low framerates, then pop your ATI back in. You have a smoking card... enjoy it

 

[GrimReefer]

where can you get service pack 1 ?

 

[Orbius]

No you're not CPU limited.

In the days of the Geforce 2, Geforce MX. In older games the 2 pipeline MX was close in benchmarks to the 4 pipeline GTS2.

Now today the 4 pipeline Ti4600 is close in older games to the 8 pipeline Radeon 9700.

Just as today the Geforce Mx is too slow to run most games decently, in a year or so the Ti4600 will be too slow, the games have to get more advanced before the real power of your card shows itself, wise purchase of that card btw.

Theres no magic getting your 9700 to work right. Install the drivers exactly as directed on a clean system, and you're good to go.

 

[BFG10K]

Last Tuesday, it finally arrived. I replaced my Gainward Geforce 3 TI 200.

Did you correctly remove all traces of your Ti200 before swapping the cards?

Quake 3 Arena: For some reason, with the Radeon 9700, I don't get any higher running that same config.

Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed for your system?
Also check your control panel for slowdowns caused by FSAA or having vsync enabled.

 

[Moishe]

Ciparis, your answers to his question were very clear and good.. I've never seen such good answers... just wanted to say that. heh
Funny how people want they're new card to auto-magically do other stuff when really the newer cards are improved to do MORE stuff with less work, rather than same work faster. If I had an R9700 i'd be happy with just getting to 1280x1024 with ann the eyecandy turned on at a playable framerate.
I dunno if anyone remembers the good old days of the Voodoo add-on card... I remember being WOW'ed by 1024x768 at a playable rate with the crappy graphics we had back then.

Considering the R9700 can do 1600x1200 playable with the eye candy is really amazing!

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

Moishe,

yeah, those were the days...

I added a Voodoo1 to my Matrox Mystique and I was playing Tomb Raider 1 at that time (one of the first games, that had a glide patch). This was a quantum leap in PC/gaming graphics and there was never again one as big as that.

Cheers
Speedy