My Radeon 9700 Pro experience :-(

[Yannis]

Hi,

I just had the opportunity to try an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro with my PC.
Unfortunatelly I was expecting more after I read all these reviews. First of all I have to say that I am no way an Nvidia fan. I "loved" 3dfx and sometimes in the past I couldnt accept Nvidia's superiority. When 9700 came out, after I read all the positive posts I was very eager to test the card.
I am using this card for 2 days now, and although it is supposed to be faster than the Ti4600, it just doesn't feel like that!
My worst complain is that after installing the card my microsoft wireless optical mouse behaves very jerky in games.
Medieval Total War, Rallisport, Hitman2, UT2003 have a very strange and jerky mouse problem!! I dont know why...
Unreal with or without AA and AF feels the same. Fast, "almost" smooth, but not impressive because of this mouse lag.
Rallisport stutters A LOT without 3d analyzer and mouse button DOESNT work!!
Hitman2 plays great WHEN I increase AA and AF from inside the game, but stutters a lot when I increase the detail from the catalyst control panel.
Medieval is fantastic WHEN it doesn't have the mouse problem.
Please guys do you have any ideas?

My PC:
Pentium4 2.26
Asus 845G (533V)
512MB DDR 333
Audigy Player

[BRiT]

That's a shame. I'm having no issues at all with my 9700Pro and Logitech MX700 cordless optical mouse in UT2K3. Everything is smooth for me. I'm using WinXP+SP1 with DX8.1 and Cat2.5 drivers. Rest of my hardware config is AMD XP 2400+, with 512M PC2100, epox 8RDA+, nForce2 SoundStorm. I'm running 1280x1024 with HIGHEST settings and 16AF, and have Hardware EAX sound enabled.

HAve you tried reinstalling the games when you put in the new video card? They may have settings leftover from your prior card. Some games on their first launch after an install will auto-detect hardware and make appropriate setting changes.

Also, how does the system perform when using a corded mouse? It may be a conflict between the MS wireless mouse drivers with the new card.

[Babel-17]

For UT2k3 a reinstall might not be necessary. Sometimes just deleting you UT2k3.ini file is enough. The game will automatically regenerate one if you delete your old one.

With a default install it will be located here.

C:\UT2003\System\UT2003.ini

Some settings are located in your user file.

C:\UT2003\System\User.ini

Deleting that will also cause the game to generate a new one. Remember to back up these files first, that's always a good idea anyways.

If v-synch is disabled mouse lag can be improved by lowering the prerender limit to "0". I use a tweaker for my nVidia card to do that for d3d (ogl is not as cooperative but has its' default prerender limit set to "2" instead of d3d's "3".), RivaTuner. Afaik wireless mice inherently have a bit more latency by nature. There are other settings too especially now with the new patch which has added some new functionality in the games control panel as well as improved on the overall responsiveness.

http://unreal.epicgames.com/ut2003patchlinks.htm




Hmmm, here's a thread worth checking out. Good luck!

http://ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=225912

[Babel-17]

While a teensy bit OT I found a link for UT2k3 problems that might help someone. It might even have some relevance here.

http://www.planetunreal.com/ut2003/lockup/

[martrox]

I'm using a M$ Explorer cordless mouse with my 9700 without any problems whatsoever. Make sure you have as few TSRs running as possible - especially DSL TSRs. The 9700s seem to be a bit sensitive to them. BTW, did you do a clean install? If not, I'd recommend it, and use the Catalyst ver 2.5's, they seem to be the ones that people are having the best results from.

[Magnum PI]

i remember there was some problems with old ATI card when video bios cacheable was enables in the bios.

i use to dieable anything cacheable in the bios: bios, video bios, video ram...

i dunno if it applies to latest bioses and graphic cards..

[Novdid]

One other problem could be that you may have old nvidia drivers spooking in your registry. Use regcleaner to get rid of them!

[YeuEmMaiMai]

One other problem could be that you may have old nvidia drivers spooking in your registry. Use regcleaner to get rid of them!


You are right on target.


I installed a 9500 Pro on my machine and it works flawlessly nothing is broken and everything is as it should be.

Ut 2K3 is liquid smooth at 1600*1200*32 (OK I admitt it I o/c the card to 300/300) with 2x FSAA and 16X ANSIO

[elchuppa]

"You are right on target. "

uh.. I think that's for Yannis to say really. hehe, but way to be eager.

[Pete]

Sounds like a driver issue, which it usually is. Did you correctly and completely uninstall your previous card before installing the 9700? Is Windows fully updated?

You might try installing DX9, then the Cat3's.

[Randell]

Did you try turning hardware mouse acceleration off? Also in UT2003 there is a reducemouselag optionin the .ini. If it is on turn it off, if it is off turn it on. That worked for me when I had mouse lag on the alpha leak, though never had a problem with the retail.

[Yannis]

"You are right on target. "

uh.. I think that's for Yannis to say really. hehe, but way to be eager.


Well I installed every driver I could and every nvidia reference in registry.