[Vadi]

I need some advice please :

I want to buy a Radeon9800 card and I wonder if I should buy the PRO or the SE (128MB 256bit mem). I have a Barton 2600+ (166MHz FSB) and I want to play at 1280*960 (max because my CRT can't go higher at 85Hz) and at least at 1024*768. I'd like enough performance for shader intensive games (Doom3, QuakeIV, HL2, ...) too. I can get the PRO for 190 euros and the SE for 130.

Thanks in advance!

[jvd]

I would get the 9800pro. Check out newegg , they have some refurbished ones for 150$

[Vadi]

Thanks jvd!

I'm going to get the PRO then! I will pay the higher price because I want to buy it NOW at a local store.

Btw. I just tried the Doom3 demo and besides being nicely scary I excpected it to run much slower on my Nvidia 5600. But it ran absuletly fine on 800*600 at high quality! Carmack did a very good job!

[jvd]

Originally Posted by Vadi

Thanks jvd!

I'm going to get the PRO then! I will pay the higher price because I want to buy it NOW at a local store.

Btw. I just tried the Doom3 demo and besides being nicely scary I excpected it to run much slower on my Nvidia 5600. But it ran absuletly fine on 800*600 at high quality! Carmack did a very good job!

I guess good thing it didn't come out last year though huh

[Vadi]

I think that they decided to refine Doom3 because HL2 was delayed.

[Scali]

Originally Posted by Vadi

I think that they decided to refine Doom3 because HL2 was delayed.

I think it's because especially the CPU-requirements for Doom3 are quite high (the 1.5 GHz recommendation is silly, it is almost too slow to play on my 1800+, even though I have a Radeon 9600Pro, it drops under 10 fps when there are more than 2-3 enemies, regardless of the resolution and quality I choose).
It is not that heavy on the videocard actually. My brother plays it quite okay in 800x600 medium detail on his Radeon 8500.
And ofcourse the FX5600 is an excellent card for Doom3. It has the double z-only fillrate, it has double-sided stenciling, it has the depth-bounds thing, and it's an NVIDIA, meaning there are specific optimizations both in the Doom3 engine and in the driver.
Sadly Doom3 is probably about the only modern game where an FX5600 performs nicely

Please tell us how your new card performs in Doom3, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a large difference with the FX5600, because the FX5600 may already have been CPU-limited.
On the bright side, you may be able to increase resolution and/or AA level with your new card.
That's what I did on my PC anyway. Whether I played 640x480 low detail or 1024x768 high detail didn't matter one bit for the framerate in most cases.

[Vadi]

Oh my the drivers are worse than I suspected. Can someone help me please? I've installed the Catalyst 4.9 drivers + the control centre on WinXP Home SP2. But it won't switch to something other than 60Hz (I've got a CRT)! The box sais it's 85Hz for example but nothing changes (apart from the short screen go blank)! In the control centre it reports weird available refresh rates like 43,46,60! NOooo!

edit: I've tried both standard and the specific drivers for the monitor.

[Vadi]

Whew. Ok I installed the drivers without the control centre now. In order to get more than 60Hz I had to specify the maximum refresh rate in ATI's "display" tab. Is this normal? Because I'm sure there wasn't this tab when the control centre was installed. And as I said the control centre dind't let me specify higher rates than 60Hz. Anywas it's no biggie because I found out that the control centre's profiles weren't triggered by apps (I better had read Dave's review properly ).

[Vadi]

The 9800 Pro performs fine at 1024*786, 6*AA, 16*AF, high qual. (a little more choppy than the 5600 in large rooms [like the dropship hangar] but still above 20fps). In the rooms with the quarter turns and the rotating light the lit metal looks much better. The AA looks great of course. Scali I wanted exactly that: higher or equal resolution plus better AA and AF!

I thought that the Imp's eyes glow red though.


edit: I think that the 5900 was the first one to have Ultra shadow but the 5600 doesn't have it.

edit: While Doom3 detected high quality at 800*600 with the 5600, now it suggests low quality.

[Vadi]

Me again!

My ugly cheapo PSU didn't cut it so I bought the Enermax 350W (EG365) for 60 euros. Great PSU! Voltages are good (32A@3,3V; 32A@5V; 26A@12V; 1A@-5V/-12V; total W@3,3+5V=185W), the 9 cm fan (the fans are aligned as recommended by ATX or AMD: one above the CPU and another one blows out at the back) is connected to the mainboard allowing temp readings and fan speed control, while the fan at the back can be controlled by a dial knob. I'm happy now!

[Guden Oden]

Vadi,

Now try your hand at a little overclocking action with ATiTool, maybe stick on some ramsinks too, etc. You're going to see this card can really fly.

The Catalyst driver itself is really solid, but the control center is a mess unfortunately. ATi should not have released it, or at least not in its present state. Too buggy, and WAY too fuckin big. It's more bloated than a hippo pregnant with quadruplets! :? It sucks...

[Vadi]

I'm too lazy for that. The Atitool is cool! I "overclocked" to 400 core and 354 mem.

[The549]

Did you use a driver cleaner? That might help if there are problems with the Cat control center. And yeah that's pretty pathetic that Doom detects lower settings just because you now have a better card that happens to be made by ati.
Although how the heck can you run it on those settings? Do you have the 256meg version? My 128 meg radeon 9800 pro barely makes 1024x768 high without aa at all.

[Vadi]

I didn't use driver cleaner. But I don't need it anyway because it doesn't provide application triggered profiles. I use the newest omega drivers now where Radlinker is included and this allows application triggered profiles.

It's the 128MB version (the Geforce 5600 was 256MB). Maybe it runs well because I have 1024MB ram? Otherwise nothing unusal here (166MHz FSB, Audigy2 ZS [also new ]).


edit: I wanted to say that Ati's drivers are actually much better than Nvidia's because now I can play older games again (alternate texel centre option)!