The New Graphics King
Written: Dec 01 '02 (Updated Dec 01 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Current fastest 3D solution, driver updates, small form factor.
Cons: Recommends 300 watt power supply, skimpy manual, price, only one DVI connector.
The Bottom Line: Complete gaming package providing the best gaming experience, package contents, and support.
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| cptsulu's Full Review: ATI RADEON 9700 PRO, (128 MB) AGP Video Card |
I purchased this card when it first came out, September 2002. My old graphics card finally gave out, forcing me to look into new ones. There was a lot of hype around the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, saying it's the best 3D graphics performer and I decided to buy into it. Luckily the Radeon 9700 Pro didn't disappoint, meeting and even surpassing all my performance and quality expectations.
Considering all the online press's praise with the Radeon 9700 Pro, I was really excited when I got home to open the product. The Radeon 9700 Pro's box has some of the nicest artwork I've seen for a box cover. Opening it, I found an S-video cable, composite video cable, S-video to composite video converter, DVI to VGA converter, driver CD, installation manual, and the card itself.
The S-video and composite video cables are included to take advantage of the Radeon 9700 Pro's TV-out capabilities. TV-out means sending the computers video signal to your TV so you can play games or watch DVDs on your from the convenience of your TV. ATI includes two major connector types, S and composite video. So if your television set does not have an S-video connector you can always use the composite video with the S-video to composite video converter for connection to your television set. The two cables with converter are nice additions since ATI provides a complete package so users do not have to purchase extra cables to take advantage of the Radeon 9700 Pro's TV-out capabilities.
Like S and composite video for TV-out, the Radeon 9700 Pro features two ways of sending a signal to your computer monitor: VGA or DVI. VGA is an analog output used in conventional CRT monitors. DVI is an elegant digital output for LCD monitors. Using DVI means there is no quality lost from converting Radeon 9700 Pro's digital signal to analog. Moreover two monitor outputs means you can go with the increasingly popular trend of using two monitors. The most obvious is using a CRT and LCD monitor together, but ATI also includes a DVI to VGA connector if you want to use two CRT monitors. The only problem is it's impossible to connect two LCD monitors since the Radeon 9700 Pro does not include two DVI outputs.
Despite ATI's decision to not include two DVI outputs, the Radeon 9700 Pro includes everything you could ask for from a next generation card. It includes 128 megabytes of DDR memory, making games look better since it can load more textures; a 256-bit wide memory bus, making games run faster by providing more memory bandwidth; 8-pixel pipelines, again making games faster by providing more fill rate; better memory bandwidth saving algorithms; and better quality options like anistropic filtering or anti-aliasing without affecting performance too greatly. The card is even colored in a nice red. The only problem with having all these features is it makes the card quite power hungry, requiring an extra power connector plugged into the card. ATI includes the power connector cable to make it easier, however they recommend a computer with at least a 300 watt power supply or greater. So if you don't have a sufficient power supply, you may have problems running the card.
With all included content, people may find it difficult to install the card so ATI also includes a nice driver CD and manual. The manual is in many different languages, but lacks a lot of content. It describes the basic way to install the card, but doesn't target first time hardware upgraders. Once I got the card in my system I started it an installed the needed drivers and software.
Once the drivers were installed, the card was working well. I noticed no stability issues or degraded output. The 2D quality looked a lot better from my previous card, an ATI trademark. Testing the 3D capabilities blew me away. Games respond very quickly, giving me ungodly framerates. Using the quality settings like anistropic filtering and anti-aliasing make games look absolutely beautiful and doesn't take too great a toll on my framerate. Since the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is capable of delivering great framerates while using quality settings on current games, I recommend using these features. I'm so impressed with the visual quality and speed, I don't think I can ever play a game without anistropic filtering and anti-aliasing turned on.
I've had the card for about 3 months now, and the quality of support impresses me just as much as the 2D and 3D quality. Since then ATI has released five driver updates. ATI is committed to excellence, and their driver updates prove it. If you heard ATI had driver problems, that's in the past. Every driver update I've used is stable, reliable, and performs well. They've even released Linux drivers for Linux users, and DirectX 9 Betas for people tinkering with DirectX 9 RC0.
Overall, I think ATI has everything going with the Radeon 9700 Pro. The package content is superb, the 2D and 3D quality is the best in its class, and the level of support is phenomenal. The only real bad thing is its high price tag. But if you're willing to spend the cash, the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will not disappoint.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399.99
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Epinions.com ID:
cptsulu
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Member: Ryan Samiley
Location: University of California, Irvine
Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 15 members
About Me:
Third year Information and Computer Science major at UCI.
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