well, late but my look at the AIW Radeon 9700 Pro

[ben6]

http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/hardware-reviews/1220_2.html

[Doomtrooper]

Great selection of games Ben, better late then never....I do see the lack of any Sims series games though, you know being #1 in sales and all...http://jeeptalk.org/crack/smilies/cwm/cwm/cwm27.gif

[ben6]

I don't play "The Sims' . Every game in the review is currently being played by me (well not so much Morrowind, but I am playing the Tribunal expansion

[Doomtrooper]

It was a joke...I hope you took it that way...the Sims belongs in the trash.

[ben6]

heh whoops
:lol:

[Neutrality]

Currently im playing MW : Tribunal on my P4 1.8@2.4 Ghz, 512 Mb Ram, Geforce 3 TI200 PC.

Playing at 1600x1200 is great and jagged edges isnt really any issue, but the game sure could use some AF. How well does it handle FSAA and AF at that res? Just being able to use AF would be great.........

(looking to upgrade to a Radeon 9700 Pro soon but dont know if its worth it)

-Neutrality-

[Beatles]

As to value, if you're planning on buying a Radeon 9700 Pro at $399 retail, there really isn't a reason to spend the$50 more on the AIW Radeon 9700 Pro. The addition of Morrowind, Mediator 7.0 , and Pinnacle Studio to the software bundle and the Remote Wonder makes the $50 premium well worth it, even without the TV tuner

?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???

[ben6]

I don't do online prices in my reviews as a rule of thumb Shrug . Was meaning that the bundle and the TV tuner made the price premium over buiying a 9700 Pro retail well worth the extra cost.

[martrox]

Ben6, shouldn't it be"As to value, if you're planning on buying a Radeon 9700 Pro at $399 retail, there really isn't a reason not to spend the$50 more on the AIW Radeon 9700 Pro. The addition of Morrowind, Mediator 7.0 , and Pinnacle Studio to the software bundle and the Remote Wonder makes the $50 premium well worth it, even without the TV tuner"

[ben6]

Doh!!!!

[mr]

Hi ben,

great review.
Is it just me or is the "..there really isn't a reason to spend the$50 more on the AIW Radeon 9700 Pro." error still in your conclusion?

[ben6]

hrm yes it's still there....

[archie4oz]

It was a joke...I hope you took it that way...the Sims belongs in the trash.

Why because it's popular? Or because it doesn't use every last whiz-bang 3D effect? :(

[Chalnoth]

Currently im playing MW : Tribunal on my P4 1.8@2.4 Ghz, 512 Mb Ram, Geforce 3 TI200 PC.

Playing at 1600x1200 is great and jagged edges isnt really any issue, but the game sure could use some AF. How well does it handle FSAA and AF at that res? Just being able to use AF would be great.........

With a Radeon 9700 Pro, playing at that resolution with 16-degree aniso and at least 2x AA shouldn't be any problem. Morrowind isn't particularly fillrate-limited anyway (I usually play it at 1024x768x32 w/ 6x FSAA and 16-degree aniso, when I'm using the 9700).

But, there are problems. Specifically z-buffer issues when outdoors (water level moves when the elevation of the player's eye view changes, armor on some characters flickers, a few others). Other than this it plays and runs great.

As a side note I'd just like to let it be known that I think Morrowind has crappy water. As we've seen elsewhere, there are other, better ways to render water that look much better (such as in 3DMark2001's "Advanced Pixel Shader" test).

[sireric]

It's not z-fighting errors. They are actually related to processing of polys in the VS TCL. Anyway, next driver should fix all that in Morrowind.

[Jamm0r]

Great news! Will this fix also affect other games such as Strike Fighters, where the only solution to get > 10 FPS is to shut TCL completely off?

[ben6]

Thanks Sireric .

[ben6]

changed to : there really isn't a reason not to spend the extra $50 .

[Reverend]

sireric, any idea about what's up with the AA "bug" in F1-2002 that I brought to your attention during the 7.77s which still exists in the current 7.81s? You said you replicated the "bug" and that it was fixed in internal driver versions back then (October) but performance still goes down 50% when any AA is introduced with the 7.81s.

[sireric]

I had forgotten about this -- I'll look into it.

[sireric]

We had to go back to FRAPS version 1.8A, since the newer version reports really odd performance numbers.

Anyway, running F1-2002 with and without AA, we get basically the same performance (~52FPS) at 1024x768 -- Game seems CPU limited for us (P4, 2.0GHz, 512MB). We did not "force AA" on, we used the apps' option. This was 7.83 driver, but we doubt that makes a difference.

Can you specify what you did (res, modes, etc...) to get a massive frame drop?

BTW, if it's at 1600x1200 with 6xAA (or lower resolutions/AA in some cases), you must realize that in that (those) case(s), the video buffers will use up most of the on board memory, and textures will end up being pushed into AGP space. When that happens, performance drops can be significant (AGP has 1/20 the BW of memory).

[Reverend]

I'll report my procedures when I get back to the machine at home later today.

[Reverend]

Okay, the following is how I tested F1 2002.

AthlonXP 2000+
512MB PC2100
MSI K7TPro2
ATI Radeon 9700Pro w/ official Cat3 (7.81)
DirectX 9
WindowsXP Professional
FRAPS 1.9

F1 2002 set to 1024x768x32bit @ 75Hz with FULL textures and detail. Force feedback is set to OFF in the game.

- Loaded up the game and selected "Test Day"
- Chosed Ferrari
- Chosed Monza
- Clicked "Drive"

Game loads with Ferrari in the pits. FRAPS framerate readout reports the following at this time :

1) NoAA = 80+ fps
2) 2xAA = 40+ fps

The results are the same whether I chosed the game's own AA setting or driver-forced.

The results are essentially the same through driver versions 7.77 to 7.81

When 2xAA is applied, I checked that it is indeed applied IQ-wise (compared to No AA) and it is. I also notice the difference between 40fps and 80fps :)

As it is, I do not understand how (based on your post above) you are getting only ~52fps without AA (there shouldn't be anytwhere near such a difference between your P4 2GHz and my AthlonXP 1.67GHz). I also do not understand the difference between your post above and what you wrote me back then (quoted above).

BTW, what is this about the newer FRAPS "... reports really odd performance numbers." ?