Originally posted by -[xs]-mirage
9700 pro ... here i come!
thanks guys.. im gonna get that card..
Now.. onto the actual card. i was wondering if you guys had an opinion about which card is best?
Tacheyon?
ATI Reference etc
??
coupla quick points before I guide you to the choice card to get..
first off agp 4x-8x makes NO discernible difference in performance whatsoever... a delta of 1% is negligible... and in some test agp4x is faster... which means that there are no games/apps taking advantage of the extra bandwidth afforded @ the moment...
I am still trying to figure out what gonaads statement about the card being stout but not much @ agp4x really means... makes no sense to me @ this time...
@ this point in time and probably through this year you will not be bottlenecked by the agp4x platform... maybe near the end of the year/year 2k4 you may notice more apps/games using agp8x better and therefore a bigger performance difference..
now... you have a very nice system there... and I assume you are going to water cool your gpu ?
if you water cool your gpu AND the bga ram chips... you are easily going to be able to run the card @ clocks of 400/400 memory/core... better than the default 325/310 clocks..
there are a couple of solutions on the market that you may consider looking @...
the tyan offering is quite nice and it has a cooler that covers the gpu and the bga ram sinks and therefore affords decent overclocking potential... as well as looking hella cool
Tyan 9700pro
the sapphire offering has one of the largest coolers on the market... it is fanless therefore completely quiet...
this card benches very very well but overclocking potential is not as good as the tyan unless you add a fan... turning the passive cooling into active cooling...
sapphire passive cooled 9700pro
bear in mind you can buy a reference 9700pro board for around 310-330 bucks from reputable retailers and remove the stock cooler and install the brilliant copper cooler from zalman...
zalman passive heatpipe
note that the cards and coolers I have listed are BIG and therefore you would need space around your dimm slots and also perhaps your first pci slot to be empty...
if you can't do this... get the reference ati retail 9700pro card and you will be fine...
check out
www.rage3d.com if you have any problems with your card... bear in mind reading about problems people have there... it is a tech support channel
people are supposed to post their problems..
personally I have never had a problem with my 9700pro and it plays all games I have @ max resolution or @ 1024x768 and AA and FSAA turned on high... depends on the game... ie mohaa spearhead will not let me play @ 1600x1200...
check out the links and enjoy the card... it is quite a nice upgrade...