ATI Radeon 9700 Pros contrasted

[You can find a comparison of the 9700 Pros in this worksheet, here]

MOST OF THE SALES of video cards take place in the mid-range segment, far from the hustle of the top range epic battles taking place at the moment.

Before the imminent arrival of the NV43 core/Geforce6600, here is a review of reviews about what we believe is the best mid-range card of the moment.

Whether you want to play Doom III or the forthcoming Half Life 2, this card will serve you best if you are on a low budget. Normally, mid-range graphic cards are cut-down versions of new versions. The Ti4200 was a slightly underclocked Ti4600 whereas the Radeon 9500Pro was based on the 9700.

Manufacturers and builders decide what card ought to be mid-range. The price is then set and voila.

However, there is a set of variables which are often out of control of builders and which help deciding what is the best mid-range card for any player. Remember, it is your money. The first of these variables is the games that people play. Second variable is the availability of refurbished and second hand ex-champ cards at very good prices and the last one is the ability of gamers to renew their computers quite often to stay in pace with the latest games.

Based on this set of features, we've found out that the best mid range card available was the Radeon 9700 or its pro version for a number of reasons. Firstly it is a DirectX 9 compatible graphic card, secondly, its clock speed is quite low which augurs well for some overclocking, thirdly its memory interface is 256bit, twice that some of current mid-range cards and lastly, the card is available at very low prices, less than half what it used to be. Benchmarks as we will see do not lie. In most, if not all benchmarks, the Radeon 9700 and its pro version crush similarly priced competitors.

The card
Even by today's standards, nearly two years after the card came out, the Radeon 9700 Pro is still impressive. The former R300 used 150nm manufacturing process. It was technologically much more advanced than anything else at that time. Eight rendering pipelines, 110 million transistors, more than 1000 pins, DDR-2 compatibility and more importantly, a 256bit width memory channel. The Radeon 9700 supports Smartshader 2, Full Stream and Smoothvision as well as Videoshader. It is capable of delivering 325Mhz and 310Mhz for core and memory speeds respectively. This explains the high fill rate of 2Gpixels/sec, comparable to a 9600XT which has a much higher core engine and also the nearly 20GB/s of memory bandwidth - the 9600XT has only half that bandwidth.

Furthermore, the Radeon 9700 Pro clocks 325Mtriangles as compared to the 250MTriangles of the 9600XT. This is partly explained by the 256-bit memory interface which places it firmly in the 9800Pro territory, in front of the 9800SE which it handily beats. In fact, the Radeon 9800Pro seems to be an improved R9700 Pro rather than a totally new product. The power connector is still present, as is the ability to use the adjascent PCI slot. Finally, the card has all the goodies like a superb TVO function and one DVI connection.

In the marketplace
As you might guess, the availability of the Radeon 9700 is much less limited as compared to the Geforce FX 5900 for example. You can bet though that you will find them at Ebay for example. In the UK, the PRO version is currently available for £82 as it is in France. In the US, Compu-terra has one FIC-A97 Radeon 9700 on sale for $145 while at Newegg, you will find a Sapphire Refurbished PRO card for $157 and an ATI R9700 AIW for only $195.

We therefore heartily advise you to buy the R9700Pro from Newegg over the plain 9700. Even better, for $38 more, you would get a Radeon 9700 All in Wonder card. More Cards are bound to come on the market following the mass parts upgrade that should follow the release of Doom III and HL2.

Performance and Overclocking
You will always be able to push its performance using new CATALYST drivers or Drivers like OMEGA and by pushing it still using software like Radeonator. Furthermore, the Radeon 9700 Pro will sensibly improve if you upgrade your machine. Going from an AMD XP 1500+ to a Sempron Core and changing your Geforce Ti 4200 card to a Radeon 9700 Pro will dramatically increase your frames for a reasonable amount of money.

Overclocking though is not that much impressive, techwarelabs achieved only 375Mhz core and 333Mhz memory o'clocking, 50Mhz and 23Mhz more than normal speeds. The 150nm process has shown its limits and the memory used was powered by a low voltage. This according to some might explain the quasi impossibility to overclock memory in fair amounts. As for the answer to the question regarding whether it will be able to play Doom III, the answer is definitely yes, probably better than most people think. Even though benchmarks are not readily available on the internet, one can infer from comparisons between the Radeon 9800 Pro, the Radeon 9700 Pro and the Radeon 9800XT.

For other games, the R9700 Pro smokes the mid-range competition. It is quick even with all the fancy lights on. AntiAliasing and Aniso Filtering barely make it blip. Try Quake III or UT2003 and watch this baby fly. You will find a list of benchmarks carried out on some of the most commonly used software and games at the end of this article

The future
We are currently living in a situation of uncertainty. Software tweaks and hardware improvements meant that a card that was once top of the range - 5950Ultra or 9800XT can overnight barely sustain demanding Gamers' hunger for top performance with superb images. Furthermore PCI express and Scan Leave Interlacing - SLI for short will probably change the way gamer's play.

Basically, you will be able to pop one card in and later on, just add another to get more "juice", a little like a Dual processor. Also be aware that unlike a CPU, a graphic card can see its performance drastically improve through the use of updated drivers. The Radeon 9700Pro as such though has no real future, it will leave for some time in the ATI Mobility 9700 Pro and might even feature in a probable nForce competitor.

In conclusion
The Radeon 9700 Pro will slowly sink into oblivion but for some years to come it will still rank amongst the better cards, probably displacing the Radeon 8500 from entry level favs. After having received numerous awards and after being the first card to offer full DirectX 9.0 compatibility, something some new cards can't even offer. The card allowed ATI to recapture its lost crown after the 8500 apparent debacle by making reviewers jaws literally drop on seeing competitors like the Geforce 4 Ti4600 fall like flies.

You can find the comparison in this worksheet, here µ

See Also
Nvidia GeforceFX5900 XT compared, contrasted