Conclusion
If you were to ask me, a casual gamer, what it is that I look for in a high-end graphics card, phrases such as "fantastic 2D quality", "stability", "future-proofing", "outstanding performance" would spring to mind. On these counts, and several more, the Radeon 9700 Pro delivers, and delivers in spades.
2D quality, a long-standing hallmark of ATi cards, once again is top-notch. The vibrancy and definition of text, on both a classic CRT and a new TFT, were excellent as I scaled through the resolutions. That's not the say NVIDIA's Ti 4600 has poor 2D, it's just that the Radeon's image is that little bit better.
I know a vast number of users are sometimes swayed against ATi-based cards in fear of receiving an outstanding hardware product let down by relatively poor drivers. I've been using this sample R9700 for a few days now, and have probably played more games in that time than I had for the previous few months. I encountered no anomalies in that time that could be attributed to the card. The only time it did crash was purely self-engineered as I tried to find its limits.
The R9700 is a DX9-class of card. Even now we can't fully test just how good it will be in the future due to a shortage of DX9 benchmarks or games. What we can say, however, is that it is currently the best-placed card to take advantage of eagerly-awaited titles like Doom 3. That kind of goes without saying, though.
Performance exhibited by the Radeon 9700 was nothing short of spectacular. You expect it to perform well once you digest its impressive specifications, but theory and reality, as ATI only too well know, are two different things. In a standard benchmark mode, the R9700, helped with almost 20GB/s bandwidth, advanced bandwidth-saving optimisations via the use of Hyper Z III, simply overhauls the GeForce4 Ti 4600 by brute force alone. I think it is safe to say that the Radeon 9700 can run any current game at 1600x1200x32 with options set to maximum.
Not all of us are blessed with huge displays. Some of use value efficient anti-aliasing and effective anisotropic filtering at lower resolutions, as this helps us maximise our gaming experience. Once we apply these visually-enhanced settings, the Radeon 9700 pulls away from the Ti 4600 in a show of sheer dominance. Just look back at the Serious Sam 2 and MOHAA results to reacquaint yourself of just how impressive the Radeon can be. In cases of a high degree of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the Radeon can be as much as 300% faster than the Ti 4600.
The on-line hardware community knew that the R9700 would be good, I'm pretty sure they're surprised just how good it is. Our overclocking efforts topped-out at around 355MHz core. We've seen reports of other branded Radeon 9700s hitting 400MHz core with slightly enhanced cooling. I'm pretty sure we'll see a R9700 SE in the not too distant future, especially as the VPU can take the faster DDR-II memory. Anyone for a 450MHz core / 1GHz memory R9700 ?.
ATi have perhaps taken a leaf from NVIDIA's book by contracting out production to a number of other companies. This should ensure healthy competition amongst manufacturers and keep prices relatively low. I've already seen the ATi, Sapphire, Powercolor, and Connect3D brands on sale in the U.K.
I've sung the praises of the R9700, as it's exceeded my expectations. I thought I was quite happy with a Ti 4600 until I used a R9700. The Ti 4600 now makes for a nice paperweight.
In this industry there is nothing quite so motivating as your rival stealing a march on you. NVIDIA, the darling of the high-end graphics community for the past few years, is not sitting idle right now. Their next iteration of graphics card, the much-vaunted NV30, is gearing up towards production soon. I've been privy to certain specifications, and if they hold true, the NV30 may just do to the Radeon 9700 what it has done to the Ti 4600.
Highs
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The fastest graphics card in town, no question
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Exceptional image quality
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Runs amok in our benchmarks with FSAA and Anisotropic filtering applied
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Solid initial drivers
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Makes you want to dig all your favourite games out again
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Widely available right now for under £300
Lows
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Is an extremely hot card, make sure you have adequate air flow
Overall rating, 9.5/10
You can pick these cards up from the guys over at Chillblast
