Well as you probably all know I've bought my Radeon 9700 PRO. Now just a few questions to get the best out of it...
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That's what these forums are all about.

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ATI Catalyst 3.4:
I used to have 3.2. I installed the latest ones and found a couple "annoyances". Firstly I lose 1000 3dmarks ('03). My controls in Half-Life are all totally bugged (Meaning I pretty much can't play..). I see disappearing objects in Unreal II (But thats in all Cat versions). My screen still seems to flicker every time I start the control panel up. I generally lose performance in all my games. Any ideas on what could have happened?
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I had a similar problem with 3.2 drivers when I switched to that version. Mysteriously, it never did clear itself up but as soon as I switched to the 3.4 drivers, my 3DMark03 Pro score in stock settings went up to around 6000+ (from around 5000) and my 3DMark01 Pro score went up over 19000 (from around 15000). At around the same time I updated to the 3.4 drivers, I also reinstalled SP1 on top of XP along with all the updates ... so really, I'm not sure what caused the big jump. I DO know that XP is very finicky about what you install and what you remove. I'd seriously consider a close look at your OS.

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Softmods:
How are they done, and are there any risks, or any major performance upgrades?
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About the only "soft-mods" that are risk free are drivers. I'm currently using the Omega version of the Catalyst 3.4 drivers. I like the "look" of these drivers over the standard ATi fare. There are firmware updates available around the Internet for the ATi 9xxx cards that provide better timing on the DDR ... but you have to reflash the card to take advantage of the tighter timing available. Reflashing ANY card, whether it's an Adaptec SCSI card or HighPoint RAID card or the BIOS in your motherboard, is risky if you don't know what you're doing and you could easily end up with a dead card. I reflashed my 9700 Pro card once but found it to be less stable and went back to the stock BIOS.

By the way, the Omega drivers can (if you install that option) turn a 9700 Pro into a 9800 card. But, like that old saying goes, you can't polish a turd. Meaning ... that if your GPU won't over-clock to 400+MHz with the stock BIOS and drivers, turning it into a 9800 won't push it over that edge. It's a physics problem and not a driver/BIOS issue.

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Overclocking:
I'm told that to make a softmod fully effective I need to overclock. I have a Powercolor Evil Commando Ati 9700 Pro. To make the softmod to 9800 Pro fully effective, how much do I need to overclock by and will I need any extra cooling?
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The manufacturer of the card doesn't seem to make much difference. I'm not even sure who made the one I have (white box) but it'll hit around 420MHz (the core) on a good day and runs at 400/700 ALL the time. It's the generation and lot number of the chip(s) (GPU and ram) that determines how fast the card will run and who's ram is installed on the card (and obviously how fast the ram is). You'll never have any control over that unless you buy someone's tweaked or hand-selected card ... and you'll pay a BIG premium for that priviledge. It boils down to the luck of the draw. I got lucky and got a fairly over-clock friendly card. That doesn't happen to everyone though.

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3DMark '03 and general performance:
I get 4161 3Dmarks on my PC with Cat3.2. Can this score be made any better in any way or is this as far as stock settings will take my graphics card?
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Assuming you install the Omega drivers, they come with an over-clocking utility (tab) in the control panel (make sure you uninstall the ATi control panel first). Turn off EVERYTHING in the control panel (all sliders all the way to the left on the OpenGL and Direct3D tabs) and start bumping up the GPU core frequency 5MHz at a time, run a benchmark (3DMark) and check your score. Keep doing that until you start seeing artifacts and then back down 5MHz. Be advised though that the stock heat sink and fan are anything but good at other than stock settings. If you're SERIOUS about this stuff, start looking into water cooling or at the very least what's available in the after-market world of heat sinks and fans for the Radeon cards.

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Performance in Half-Life and its Mods:
Why so low? My old Ti4200 crushes this Radeon in HL (Not even close in other games though ). But why?
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No idea on this one. I upgraded from a GF4 Ti-4600 (to the 9700 Pro) and until the 3.4 Catalyst drivers came out, was dissapointed in the card as well (other than on a few games). I think the NVidia drivers are "tweaked" for certain applications/games ... which is perfectly valid but I'd REALLY like to seem them tweak the drivers for ALL games.

System Specs (If important for help):
Athlon XP 2100+
1GB PC2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.
MSI KT3 Ultra 2-R.

All stock settings.

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Before you read the rest of this (below), see above (I put comments between your questions).

All stock settings. Well, that's part of your problem. You'll never get outragous benchmarks or game performance at stock settings ... unless you want to keep upgrading to the latest/fastest/biggest/badest everything that comes out every other week.

You need to make a financial and philisophical decision about your system and what's more important (to you). Do you want high benchmark numbers or do you want stability and good performance? You can push a system to extremes and to the point where it's on the ragged edge ALL the time (meaning it's over-clocked to the max day in and day out). But what does that gain you (aside from a shorter life-span for all your components)?

Sure ... you'll hit very high scores and see amazing frame rates ... but while you're staring at that FPS number rolling by or watching the blur of images, is that really what you bought a computer for? Performance just for the sake of performance is like buying an 4-wheel drive SUV and then never taking it off-road (which is what most yuppies do).

If you want performance so you can USE it, that's another story. To get there though, you have to try everything you can (within reason and within your budget) to reach the performance level you're after ... and that includes keeping your components a cool as possible. Water cooling is the only way to fly. Water cooling with TEC (Peltier) water blocks will get you even further. Freon (phase change) is the ultimate. None of it is cheap though and more often than not, that's what dictates the level of performance you'll achieve ($$$).

Think of your computer in the same way you'd think about a car. You want to do a quarter-mile run in under 10 seconds? That'll cost you BIG. Same with a computer. You want to hit 20000 3DMarks? It'll cost you. Not as much as a 10-second car but it'll still cost you. Like everything else in life, you get what you pay for.

Later,
AL

Performance in Half-Life and its Mods:
Why so low? My old Ti4200 crushes this Radeon in HL (Not even close in other games though ). But why?

With the radeon and HL..... you were required to run HL in direct3d with the 3.2 catalysts or less, coz it would crash on opengl when you tried to escape in-game....newayz direct3d runs like crap on HL..... so as long as you keep the catalyst 3.4's, you should be right if you change it to opengl, you will get heaps better performance

Well at the moment I'm NOT getting what I paid for (Poor performance for a 9700 Pro and I'm getting flickering and things which I didn't get beforce - pushes me to think about stability problems) which means either I need to clean my hard drive and OS up with a format or I need to start tweaking the card. I'm going to go for the formatting first - and then I might think about tweaking once games start to get a little too demanding for this Radeon - Maybe once I get $$$ for water cooling as you put it.

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EDIT:
I have just formatted the computer. For now it seems OK with the Catalyst 3.4 drivers delivering a score of ~4600 3Dmarks. Now I just have one question: Do other people using stock settings get the same scores?

I am only 14 and my parents aren't exactly "keen" on spending for the PC (as its mine and its beginning to cost them a lot lately ) so I want my hardware to last. Especially this Radeon...

And one last question: How far do you think stock cooling will take this radeon?

On the question of the stock cooling on the Radeon 9700 Pro, I suspect that given your current CPU/motherboard/ram combo and the fact that you're not over-clocking anything, your scores are probably fairly typical. You should be aware that the vast majority of benchmarks (especially 3D intensive ones) are also very CPU intensive. The faster the entire combo (graphics/cpu/ram/motherboard) the higher your benchmarks will be (obviously).

With a stock XP 2100, stock running PC 2700 ram, stock non-over-clocked Radeon card and no over-clocking on the motherboard, I think a 3DMark03 score of 4600 is pretty good. The stock cooler on the 9700 Pro is not made for over-clocking at all. It's only mediocre at best.

A MUCH better cooler for the 9700 Pro can be had for very little money (around $17) right here - http://ocsystem.com/ocsystem/ocati90vidca.html

You'd also benefit from BGA ram sinks for the ram on the 9700 card. You need a total of 8 ram sinks which you can get right here - http://ocsystem.com/ocsystem/octincoatcop.html

And no ... I don't work for OC Systems ... or anyone else for that matter. I'm retired.

You'll also need Artic Silver 3 thermal compound for the GPU when you attach the new heat sink fan (HSF) as well as Artic Silver thermal expoxy to attach the BGA heat sinks to the ram. Here's the links for those -
http://ocsystem.com/ocsystem/arsil3therco.html
http://ocsystem.com/ocsystem/arsiltherad.html

I would also download and install the Catalyst 3.4 Omega drivers from here - http://www.omegacorner.com/
They have a built-in over-clocking facility in the control panel (make sure you uninstall the ATi control panel first) that will allow you to find out just how far you can push that stock cooler and ram. That's a good place to start. Increase the GPU frequency 5MHz at a time until you start to see artifacts. Then back off 5MHz and that's your maximum operating frequency for the GPU (assuming it will complete 3DMark01/03).

I have no idea just how fast the card will go in stock form. I never ran mine stock and put the TEC water block on it when it arrived. It's never been run in any other mode and I have no idea if it's typical or not ... although I run mine 24/7 (with no artifacts) at 400MHz on the core and 700MHz (350 DDR) on the ram seems to me to be pretty good. That's with an 80watt TEC under a water block though so I would expect it to be at least that good.

If you want to find out what the card will do in stock form, run a search in Google.com for "ATi 9700 Pro review" and read them (especially the over-clocking section). Just make sure they run the card in stock (hardware) form. Take an average of what is being reported and that should give you at least a ball park figure to shoot for.

Also, see if you can find a BIOS tweaking guide for your motherboard ... or at least someone who can recommend optimum settings. You'd be surprised how big of a difference just tweaking a few BIOS settings can make. There are both Radeon and general BIOS guides on the Omega driver site. Check 'em out.

Good luck.

AL

Well as you probably all know I've bought my Radeon 9700 PRO. Now just a few questions to get the best out of it...

ATI Catalyst 3.4:
I used to have 3.2. I installed the latest ones and found a couple "annoyances". Firstly I lose 1000 3dmarks ('03). My controls in Half-Life are all totally bugged (Meaning I pretty much can't play..). I see disappearing objects in Unreal II (But thats in all Cat versions). My screen still seems to flicker every time I start the control panel up. I generally lose performance in all my games. Any ideas on what could have happened?

Softmods:
How are they done, and are there any risks, or any major performance upgrades?

Overclocking:
I'm told that to make a softmod fully effective I need to overclock. I have a Powercolor Evil Commando Ati 9700 Pro. To make the softmod to 9800 Pro fully effective, how much do I need to overclock by and will I need any extra cooling?

3DMark '03 and general performance:
I get 4161 3Dmarks on my PC with Cat3.2. Can this score be made any better in any way or is this as far as stock settings will take my graphics card?

Performance in Half-Life and its Mods:
Why so low? My old Ti4200 crushes this Radeon in HL (Not even close in other games though ). But why?

System Specs (If important for help):
Athlon XP 2100+
1GB PC2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.
MSI KT3 Ultra 2-R.

All stock settings.

They are not a good ATI Drivers. Just download some other good ATI drivers.