9800 vs 9700...

[iroc409]

i've got a 9700 pro 128mb, is it worth the upgrade to the 9800 256mb pro?

i've heard the 9800 isn't a whole lot of improvement over the 9700 besides clock speed, the gpu itself isn't really different.

so, is it worth it, or is there something else coming out from ati in the near future that would change things? i probably won't buy one unless i find someone to buy the old card, no sense in wasting cash. but it doesn't really seem all the necessary to get a 9800 128mb, i doubt i'd really be improving much an overclock couldn't fix.

just curious on your thoughts.

[msv]

You will gain a couple of FPS, but really not much to talk about.
If You can have a 9800 Pro for free, accept it, but I can´t recommend You to pay for it. It´s darned expensive and don´t give much performance boost over it´s predecessor.
No, I don´t own one, I have no personal excperience from any of the two, I´ve just read a couple of reviews.
regards
Mikael S.

[airspirit]

No. There isn't enough of a gain, especially since most 9700 Pro cards can overclock to 9800 Pro speeds. Also, the extra 256MB RAM does absolutely no good on that card except to jack up the price.

[joeyd]

THe 9800pro has the f buffer and some bug fixes for the shaders. At this time its not a good move to get the 9800pro . The tx line is coming out but i'd say wait longer and buy the next series of cards which should come out after xmass . Rumors have it that they will have 3xs the shader performance of current cards. Games like half life 2 are shader limited and not fillrate limited.

[iroc409]

all this basically confirms exactly what i was thinking, including the memory bit. makes me feel better to hear it from somebody else. you know that urge to always get the fancy stuff....

my card is all bone-stock, so i think i might start playing around with making it run faster. although i guess i'm not entirely sure why... better 3dmark score i guess. it plays everything i own game-wise thro ut2k3 at 1600x1200x32 flawlessly...

[sevisehda]

I'd wait until the TX model comes along. Even then most people are able to softmod there 9800np into a pro,.

[mrmoustache]

i've read the tx is supposed to be slower, seeing as how it aparently will retail at $399 and is also supposed to be bundled with hl2.

[joeyd]

its only going to be 10% faster and its supposed to be cheaper to make than the 9800pro 128meg that is why it will cost less. Because ati can make it for less.

[DarkEdge]

Not to be nit picky, but its the XT, not TX. lol Anyways, yeah like the others have said hold off. I'm in the same boat as you with a 9700. Want the 9800, but its not worth it when I can put that same money towards a card and get 25%-50% improvement with the next line.

[joeyd]

actually i have a 9800pro 256 meg card . I have updated yet. But my uncle gave me 200 for my 9700pro and I had 200 in change floating around so i was like what the hell. I figured i was updating my cpu and everything else so i should just go all the way

[iroc409]

well, i'm going to be building a new work-only box here in the next month or so, and i had a guy that was kinda interested in buying my 9700. then i thought that my workstation could inherit a lot of my gaming box parts, i'd build a pimp gaming box.

but, i doubt it's worth spending a lot of money on my gaming box with the whole opteron thing coming out, so, i figure i should just leave it for now, at most replace the 2400 with a 2500 barton, but i'm not sure it's really worth it.

kinda sucks tho, i've got this fancy mainboard and everything, and i'm probably just going to end up making it a unix workstation (which i most likely won't use all that much power with, a 2.0 celeron would probably be more than sufficient).

i think i'm going to get either a p4 2.6 or 2.8 (c), 1gig ram, prolly like that gigabyte ati card that's like $100, and a samsung 1100DF. i'd like to go lcd, but there really aren't any usable lcd's for what i want that are affordable right now.

i'll wait and see what i come up with when i build the new toy box, go from there.

[airspirit]

You would get a better bump from swapping to a Barton. That extra cache makes your system's response a bit more buttery than the old chips ... I don't know how else to describe it.

If you do upgrade, please wait for the XT series on ... TODAY (release date), and make sure you're going to dump less than two hundred dollars difference from your old 9700 Pro (i.e., sell the bastid to fund your upgrade ... and sell the 2400+ while you're at it before it is worthless).

[joeyd]

benchmarks on the 9800tx can be found here beyond3d.com . Its a little faster than the 9800pro. But it seems that is shaders are more powerfull. We will have to see on that though .But i can tell you this much. IN 3 or 4 weeks the 9600s will hit 100$ with the 9600tx hitting 150$ . The 9600pro would be a great pick up at a 100$ . Esp since january or febuary should bring us the r420. Which should be a major step up from the r350 core we have now .

[iroc409]

maybe i shold just wait for the new core, and just not worry about it.

i thought about upgrading the 2400, i suppose i could put a barton in it, and use the processor for a server or something. i was planning on building a new lan server instead of using the old abit board, was probably going to use a celeron. but, it really doesn't matter.

it's correct that opterons need registered memory, right? i was thinking about upgrading to some xms, but if it's only going to be usable in this board, not sure how worth it it is.

[joeyd]

only the fx needs registered memory , the normal athlon 64swill run on the normal one

[iroc409]

Originally posted by joeyd
only the fx needs registered memory , the normal athlon 64swill run on the normal one

for some reason i'm not real attracted to the a64, i would most likely be moving to a fx or the opteron.