8) I haven't experienced any problems so far. I used to get BSOD's galore with my 8500 (ATI Original), but I used a KA266-R then and I put it down 90% to the ALI chipset and 10% to ATI drivers (which are now much improved!!)

One thing I did get a surprise about was when I applied a BIOS update to my GA 7 VAXP and suddenly got an extra 100FPS in Environment Bump Mapping on 3dMark 2001SE


Tonezone

ATI Cards are a little bit faster, but Nvidia leaks better drivers

Better drivers = more performance

more performance = nvidia rulez

nvidia rulez = ati sux :)

Better drivers from Nvidia - Hmmmm .
Do you mean the 3DMark optimized "25% more Performance" 4x.xx drivers being slower than the 3x.xx ones ?

Have you seen ATI speeding up their driver releases getting better and better with every new one ?

I am running several benchmarks & timedemos before posting here.
O!K the 41.xx are slower, but next month there will be a 50.xx dets which are even faster than 30.xx. Thats nvidia.

I actually thought Degger got a 9700 and now has a problem. :oops:

I actually thought Degger got a 9700 and now has a problem. :oops:

Yeah, it seems hard to stay on the topic, hehe.

He has 13500 3dmarks!
I dont think he has got a problem :wink:

Oh, I allready found some bugs with the cards and drivers. U will read it in the upcoming review.

:-? HMMMM I've started to notice some arifacts in SOF2. Could this be a bug with the card / drivers? :-?

My system is not overclocked. Gigabyte's SIV reports CPU temp at 24degrees and system temp at 32degrees.

Could it be my ram? 3 x 256 Crucial pc2100 cas 2.5 @ cas 2

Tonezone

Have you tried already another drivers ?

:-? Yeah, I've tried a couple. The one's I have in at the moment are the latest Gigabyte ones (August 28th WHQL).

:oops: I haven't actually tried playing SOF2 with any other drivers though. Usually when I put other drivers in I run 3DMark and if there is no improvement over my current drivers then the new ones get ditched :oops:

Not very scientific, but I figured it to be as good a system as any

I will try out the 200 drivers and also try actually playing the game!!

I also look forward to Degger's review

Tonezone

8) well I'm glad someone is also having these artifacts as well as me. I am sitting here with the side off of my case in case my 9700 is running too hot. Anyone know how hot to the touch this card should be after a high load? Mine feels like I could burn a steak on it. Is this normal??

Also - Degger - when is the review coming??

Thanks in advance

Tonezone.

:-? HMMMM, I never thought about the refresh rate having this effect. I use refresh fix to sort out my rates. It seems to work well for me. I will try turning on V-Sync in the game and see how it goes.

Thanks.

Tonezone.

ps - just in case I still have this problem can you point me in the direction of REForce? :wink:

it seems to be a Giga-byte mainboard only issue?

the ati2dvag.dll bsod is a hardware conflict issue, and usually resulted from conflicting irq settings. find out what other device share the same irq as your ati card (tend to be a sound card) and set their irq to be different in bios. a more forceful approach is to move the conflicting device to pci slot 5, which doesn't share irq with any other devices. check your mainboard manufacturer for the lastest bios.

i had this ati2dvag.dll bsod issue since summer. after testing on different os and hardware settings, it was determined to be a hardware conflict (non-defective) issue. i solved it by moving Soundblaster Live to pci 5 and 3com nic to pci 3.

^_^

I am running several benchmarks & timedemos before posting here.
O!K the 41.xx are slower, but next month there will be a 50.xx dets which are even faster than 30.xx. Thats nvidia.

Hi. Ultraflexx. I'm new in this forum. Trying to catch up with you guys, late reply, sorry. I do have Geforce TI 4200 64mb and 2 ATI Radeons 8500 128MB LE: 250mhz/250mhz. In synthetic benchmarks for example 3D MARK 2001 SE Nvidia scores more points than Radeons but doesn't perform well compare to Radeons in games as such Mafia and GTA 3, plus new upcoming games are more CPU intensive than before. the Radeon 9700 drivers under opengl are not fully optimized yet for Athlon XP cpu but instead perform better on Pentium 4 platform but above 2.4 ghz. ATI Radeons 9700 usually if not always depent more on CPU power than Nvidia's Geforce 4 4600.

Got the 9700pro (Gigabyte Maya II). Basically a reference ATI board with Gig's own hsf and ramsinks on gpu side.

I have occasional fps drops in games like UT2k3, Q3-Urban Terror, and RTCW. I've had it drop to 60fps while in game after 15 or so minutes. Artifacts will show up after about an hour of playing. Any ideas? Not overclocked and running latest WHQL Catalyst 3.0 drivers. BTW - I don't have that stutter that everyone else seems to have.

Would ramsinks on back side of the card help? I do have a side case fan blowing right onto the card and a slot fan under the card.

p4 2.4-400mhz-512k / Asus P4PE / 1g pc2700

Got the 9700 pro since it's launch and the only problem i had was "stuttering" and it has gone with catalyst 3.0 , currently i'm using latest omega modified drivers and it has never been so nice !

It's true that catalyst are mostly optimised for Pentium4 and it deals not the way it would do with Athlon XP and opengl about speed .

But the actual drivers with DX9 are brilliant , at least for me regarding bug free .

For those with cooling problems: Have you tried removing the fan, then the needless metal shim around the core, and then replacing the fan with the stock or better, so it actually makes contact with the chip? It made a great difference for me, with my 9500np modded to 9700. I have it running at pro speeds (350+ core and 320 ram, and the core shipped at 275 ram 270 ).

C&C Gen. wont run on my two rigs on a LAN.....w/xp pro

Both are Asus A7N8x (non delux)
Both use the onboard LAN
Both Hav 9700s pro
Both have tried every version of C&C there is(including cracks,JIC)

Plays fine on both systems in single,but multi is a joke(along with online play).

More of a rant about the game than cards,but still.....
We can build a few minutes sometimes,a few hours another.....
Sometimes it disconnects,sometimes BSOD on EITHER machine?!

Sad state of a game,,......

In my conquest to find the "problem" with the game......
1.Stretching your desktop can mess with V-synch with ATi
2.Never use but ONE refresh fix @ a time
3.Realplayer is buggy with RM8 and under(RV9 works fine)
4.Asus A7n8x defualted to the wrong cas in BIOS for 2700 mem(2-instead of 2.5)
5.Re-installing drivers do not help XP(a manual safe boot/removal)
6.ALways but always NEVER RULE YOUR SOUND CARD OUT!!!

I have two diff soundcards-SBpci512/SC-TB
In Nascar 2003,I had poor FPS in one machine and turned the sound off and discovered FPS.....I can only set it to 8 sounds with the PCI512...Santa Cruz can run wide open...

I have lots of ideas of what could be "improved" in ATi drivers....but I think game publishers HAVE to help(they do with NV)....