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ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Author: Daniel Topler
Date Posted: February 18th, 2003
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| Bottom Line: The Radeon 9700 Pro is the most powerful card on the market at the time this review was written, but is it worth purchasing, read on to find out. |
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Test Setup:
Before I get to the actual benchmarks, I'd better share with all of you the test setup of the system. Although my system is not top of the line, it provides an accurate representation of a computer that the majority of gamers have, not top of the line, but still pretty powerful.
- Alienware Aurora DDR
- AMD Athlon XP 2200+
- Asus A7N266-C (nForce) Motherboard
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
- 256MB Crucial DDR2100 and 128MBx2 Samsung DDR2100 RAM
- 340W PSU
- 1x Seagate 40GB 7200rpm HD
- Samsung 16x DVD-ROM Drive
- Compaq 48x CD-ROM Drive
- Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
- Phillips Magnavox 17" CRT display and NEC MultiSync LCD400V 15" LCD (Disabled during testing)
- Catalyst 3.1 Drivers
- Windows XP Home
- DirectX 9.0
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3DMark2001
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SE: Patch 330
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3DMark03:
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v1.0
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Comanche 4:
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Demo v1.0.1.10
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| Quake III:
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Demo v1.11
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Demo001
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Return to Castle Wolfenstein:
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Retail v1.4
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Checkpoint MP Demo
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Serious Sam:
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Demo v1.05
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Little Trouble Demo
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Unreal Tournament 2003:
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Demo v1.05
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Retail v2188
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Regarding Testing:
When testing, as shown above, I used the ATI Catalyst driver's version 3.0. I had a problem however, when I needed to decide whether to benchmark with DirectX9 or DirectX 8.1. Since 3DMark03 was just released, and required DirectX 9, I decided to go with DX9. Keep in mind, however, that people have reported seeing benchmarking result decreases with DX9 installed, but better image quality in games.
In this review, as I said earlier, I am not comparing this card with any other video card. It's very clear that the 9700 Pro is the champion as of performance in computer gaming. Instead, I'll show how much performance is sacrificed when Full Scene Anti-Aliasing and anisotropic filtering is activated at various levels.
Unfortunately, at this time, my monitor does not support 1600x1200, therefore making it impossible for me to be able to benchmark using this resolution. The only exception to this was with Unreal Tournament 2003. For some reason, when using the Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmark program, it let me benchmark using 1600x1200 with no problems, giving me accurate results.
My ability to carry out this review was limited by my current monitors a Phillips Magnavox 17" CRT display and NEC MultiSync LCD400V 15" LCD (Disabled during testing). I did the best that I could with my trusty old hardware but if there are any monitor suppliers out there that are happy to pit their gear against the wrath of Daniel, email me at daniel@slcentral.com
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