Which one should I choose? Radeon 9700 Pro or non-Pro?

[zymbalist]

The price difference is about 40-50 Euroes. Should I go for Radeon 9700 non-Pro and have a go overlocking it to 9700 PRO level or higher or is it worth it to spend the extra money and go for 9700 PRO straight away?
Many thanks!

[Nappe1]

There's no way non-pro reaching the pro memory speeds.
core reaches easily 315MHz but memory does not reach 300MHz

Still non-pro is pretty fast card even without clocking it. Of course it loses a bit behind of pro, but keeps all TIs behind on high resolutions and with AA & AF.

[zymbalist]

you actually can reach Pro speeds and higher with a Rad 9700 non-Pro by flashing a modded BIOS - Check out Rage3D frontpage:
http://www.rage3d.com

[Nagorak]

Save the money, you won't notice the difference in speeds and you'll be happy to have saved that extra $50 when it comes time to upgrade again.

[Ante P]

I'd say go for the Pro and get a version with proper cooling (Tyan, Hercules etc.)

R300 is a really good overclocker (as in you gain extraordinarilly much by overclocking)

http://www.nordichardware.se/recensioner/grafikkort/2002/HIS9X00/OC9700.gif
That card is a HIS Excalibur, it just has the basic cooling (ie nothing on the memory, and it's a 1.0 rev, I bet a 1.3 rev with proper cooling will do better)
pretty nice gain though huh?

[Ante P]

btw according to my homebrew calculation based on nVidias benchmark results from the nv30 a 9700 Pro at 400/700 will perform on par