Anybody going to bite the bullet?

Just waitin for Compusa to get them in, so I can trade my GF4 TI4600 back in for it.....plus $30.00 for a 9700......jeez, good thing I got decent blatter control :LOL:
 
You have a "blatter"? Get your self to a doctor as soon as you can. You should have a bladder. :LOL:
 
I'm seriously considering chnaging my mind and not waiting as I was going to do two things in a couple of months;

i) upgrade my CPU from an XP1600 to a new XP2400 (say spending £100-£120)
ii) wait for either NV30, price drops and 9500 to make a more informed decision and hopefully a cheaper one (perhaps spending £180-£230 on a vid card)

But my mobo doesn't support the new B Revision T-Breds so I might as well put it all into the vid card rather than a complete new set of mobo, cpu, memory and vid card which would be a >£500 outlay for perhaps no greater performance gain at 10x7 rez then just buying a Rad9700 now for £300.
 
BoardBonobo said:
I just get the feeling that the 9700 is pretty unsupported at this moment in time and though it can offer higher frame rates and better FSAA\Aniso in current games it just doesn't seem worth it.
Heh,it's called beta testing.

It seems to me that most of the driver related problems have to do with users using Win. XP.

Anyway,I for one will get it in due time for not only will it be cheaper but most of the problems & all the features of the card should be working by then.It seems that the anti-aliasing for the chip isn't fully functional yet,not because it doesn't enable super-sampling but because there have been some user-based opinions saying that it doesn't work for older games which I have quite a lot of.By the time I'm ready to upgrade which is around December I hope these issues of the many are fixed,if not,V5 stays.
 
Getting one for sure, On a side note I am running Windows XP SP 1 with the latest Catalyst drivers and notice improvments in all my games..

1)GUI is faster
2)SOF 2 loads much faster
2)Nascar 2K2 picked up a few frames and loads faster

I saw ATI posted they were optimized for SP1 so keep that in mind future 9700 owners...and 8500 owners.

EditL..Oh the refresh rate bug is not fixed with SP1
punch.gif
<--Bill Gates
 
I'm waiting for the "LE" version of the 9700... i.e. the version that costs around $100 less but has 90% of the performance, and can be overclocked to the same level. Now THAT will be a killer product when it comes out. I got my Radeon 8500 in January, about a month before the 8500LE came out, and I wish I had just waited a little longer and got a better deal. Since the 9700 was released in late summer (same as the 8500 last year), it's a good bet ATI is planning an LE version for early next year, or hopefully sooner.
 
I went to Overclockers-UK store today and after buying my AX7-478 do you know what the salesman said?
He said...'I got a Radeon 9700 .. wanna see?' (These are like the first ones in the UK).

It was the Sapphire WhiteBox version but it was just a repackaged ATI RADEON 9700 PRO.

Was I tempted? Not even for a second... hehe. I ain't ever spending that much money on a graphics card. So I will wait and see :)
 
I have my order in on the GameStop 20% off deal/debacle. If they should ever ship the card out, I'll have one. Or once the OEM card drops below $300, it's so mine.

I haven't had a major computer upgrade in close to a year (Dell ATI-8500 deal), so I'm due. If the GameStop deal falls through, I'll just have to spend that money elsewhere... Koolance PC2-C case and XP-2400+ or P4-2.5G. That should be a suitable replacement for my 1.4Ghz Athlon classic (o/c to 1.6Ghz with Delta-8K-RPM monster).

--|BRiT|
 
I'm going to wait until Nvidia at least officially announces NV30, just to see what it's going to offer.
If it looks substantially better I will wait, otherwise I'm going to grab a 9700.

Lincoln
 
Lincoln Bauman said:
I'm going to wait until Nvidia at least officially announces NV30, just to see what it's going to offer.
If it looks substantially better I will wait, otherwise I'm going to grab a 9700.

I think you might have just identified the reason the announcement of the NV30 will be delayed as long as possible :)
 
Typedef Enum said:
Seems that newer topics have been slow to surface...

So, is anybody feeling the itch to grab a 9700? I keep telling myself...

"Self, do you really need it?"

Of course, self answers with something like, "Damn straight baby..."

Honestly, who has taken the position of playing the wait & see game...versus, getting the first thing out the door?

The only thing that has stopped me from buying one right now is the unavailability in my area...otherwise, I would already have one. But then again, I like to blow cash on new hardware. But at the same time, I also realize that there may only be one game which will really harness the power of the thing, that being UT2003.

I waited a few months when the 8500 first came out...
same with TNT2, GF2

only other card I got within the first month or so of being released was the voodoo 2.. cost me a kidney and my future kids, but that thing rocked!!! I was DA MAN, at least until my friend showed up with a SLI Rig with a Rendention V2200 primary setup.

anyway, my newegg card will be here tomorrow screw waiting around, I wanna play at 1600X1200, 1280X1024 is too small for my 21" Trintron.
 
I know a shop here in town that's getting some in on Friday...I could have slapped down the cash this evening, but decided to think about it.

I just dumped some cash towards a pair of LCD's....and to be honest, I'm struggling trying to convince myself that the Parhelia isn't what I really want. I really do want something that's outstanding @ 2D, since that's what I've spent more time on in the last several months.

The surround gaming thing sounds way too awesome to me. That's one of those things that I think, above all the Shader/FSAA/etc. features, would be like, "man, this is the single, most dramatic improvement in existing game experiences that I've ever seen."

At this point, the price/performance thing is what has held me back...and the fact that you can't find any Parhelia's anywhere...I mean, anywhere in town.
 
DaveBaumann said:
maskrider,

the term 'Built by ATI' is a little bit of a falcay these days since they are actually built by one of ATI board vendors under contract.

However, initial 3rd party board are viartually all built by the same manufacturer to the reference specification becuase ATI want to ensure fast movement into the channel. It will be a little while later before the board vendors take up their own design (if they do it at all).

Its not 100% cast iron but there is a good chance that if you by any board right now its very likely to be to the reference spec and probably going to be built by the same people ATI use for their own boards anyway.

I have cancelled my order, I will buy one tomorrow locally and will be an owner of one of the ATI R9700 PRO by tomorrow, ha ha !
 
For starters I'll have to wait until it's available here (maybe early next month). Then I'll probably wait until I can get a DX9 SDK. By then there should be enough data on other cards, and the 9500 is quite possibly available. So by then I'll do a further evaluation.

Even then it's rather likely that I won't by an expensive card unless I hear some good development on fast frame buffer readbacks. That realy is a make-or-brake feature for me.

Without a DX9 SDK or VS/PS 2.0 equivalent in OGL, it's rather uninteresting to me.
 
I bit the bullet.....heck, I ate the whole clip and I am completely satisfied with my $319 purchase from GameStop :).
 
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