New drivers for your cards people, reporting more performance and stability than before...here's a snip-

RADEON(tm)9700 - Anisotropic Filtering and OpenGL performance on the RADEON(tm) 9700 series of cards is up substantially across several applications. - A performance improvement between 20 and 40% is noticed in UT2003 Flyby.

RADEON(tm)8500 - The following section provides information on performance improvements noticed on the RADEON(tm) 8500. This includes: Anti-Aliasing scores rise 15-35% across various benchmarks.

Get em over here.

You know I was just going to post this, I had it all typed up ready to start a new thread and you go and beat me to it :(

Ati have released new official Catalyst Drivers 3.1!

Win2k/XP Drivers:
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/wxp-w2k-radeon-7-83-030120a1-007447c-efg.exe
Win9x Drivers:
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/wme-radeon-7-83-030120a1-007447c-efg.exe
Control Panel:
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/control-panel-7-83-030120a1-007447c-efg.exe
WDM capture driver:
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/tv-capture-wdm-6-14-01-6178v1.exe

A couple of the fixes;

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 no longer hangs when running in maximum detail levels
Mafia no longer flickers or suffers from display corruptions
The RADEON 9500/9700 series cards now support Anti-Aliasing in 16 bit applications
Performance boosts

Full change list:
http://pdownload.mii.instacontent.net/ati/drivers/Catalyst_31_Release_Notes.html

Read about them here at rage3d:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33665621

Sweet, I've been meaning to upgrade the drivers for my AIW8500DV and these will serve as incentive.
Doubt they will fix my overlay problem though :(

ATI keeps getting better and better

go on Hermitech... you know you wanna

go on Hermitech... you know you wanna

no he doesn't want an ati card :P

20-40% increase in a UT2003 flyby..s*** these guys are doing their homework.

Makes me almost want to go out and buy a 'pro' card...waiting ..waiting to see what an R350 can do.


*Nvidia you better get your act together..you're going to lose your best customer!

:D

dais - check out the readme, they report fixes with the video overlay. Especially on secondary monitors. You might be in luck :)

Psycho, it's going to be very interesting to see what the 350 can do. They're reporting 25%-40% improvements over the 9700 so that'll be pretty damned quick :)

Psycho, it's going to be very interesting to see what the 350 can do. They're reporting 25%-40% improvements over the 9700 so that'll be pretty damned quick :)

Probly by the time its out Raedon will have another card anyway :P

Satisfying to know. I gambled on getting a 9700pro instead of a 4600 and im glad i did.

My 9700pro should be coming back from warranty within days no more of this POS MX440 :D

no he doesn't want an ati card :P

.

Your right !
Why would i want another Radeon 9700 Pro?

hmm will nvidia go the way of 3dfx and ATI rise to the top?

I still reckon 3dfx glide was awsome.

I still reckon 3dfx glide was awsome.

Err .. why? the fact that it was proprietry and copyrighted?

Interesting little report at TechConnect. They expect two new radeons to be released this year - the Radeon9900 and 9900Pro. I think it's safe to assume that the 9900 will be the RV350 (the "value" or budget card) and the 9900Pro will be the R350 (the next high end card).

What I find really interesting though is they suggest the Pro will be using the .13 process not .15 like the current 9700 and the "value" 9900. This is at odds with a lot of the other reports which suggest it'll be a .15 process card. Interesting indeed...

I agree about glide, Unreal Tournament running glide on a Voodoo2 looked awesome for its time.

I think it's safe to assume that the 9900 will be the RV350 (the "value" or budget card) and the 9900Pro will be the R350 (the next high end card).

i disagree, i think that they will either release a lower speed card, or move the 9500 as the new 'low end'. the difference between ATi pro and non-pro models isn't usually that drastic

woohoo! just in time for my R9700 that's coming in a few days :)

hehe yeh Orbitor I posted that with you in mind...like waiting for a birthday pressie isnt it?

Oh and Unreal in glide on my old SLI combo (2x12 meg Orchid Righteous) cards was awesome..

skrybe..if the R350 is that much more powerful performance wise I reckon Nvidia will have to produce a miracle in their NV35 chipset..

nothing short of a card with embedded dram in it that cost gazillions, SLI multichip technology on the card, vapour cooling as standard, separate power source..blah..blah..thats what'll take! :P

goodonya Psycho :) It sure is like a Bday pressie!

In fact I've got a whole new system in the build: 2100+ Tbred B, Epox 8RDA+, 2 x 256MB PC3200 (dual channel), R9700, Water cooling....should be sweet :D

sounds very sweet indeed...we may have to start our own 'Hardware addiction' help group/therapy sessions.

:P

Can someone please mail me some money? I need more of it.

we may have to start our own 'Hardware addiction' help group/therapy sessions

Hahah, that would fail miserably :D

of course when orb gets his 9700 its more then likely going to push me into ditching my gf4 for one as well. As long as i stick with my current cpu+mobo i can still claim im not as addicted to upgrading as him though :P

i feel sorry for the guys that spend so much on computer hardware.. maybe i'm getting sick of computers, but i don't know thats just me.

anyone know how to tell the diference between diferent revisions on the 9700pro?

my 9700 just came back from warranty and i wonder if it is a 1 or a 3

yeah there is Darius but I can't remember it...maybe just ask Creative or GB? I'm sure they'd be able to tell you.

One thing I believe the new revisions have is the backplate is attached via pushpins instead of whatever crappy glue they used to use...so it actually stays there now :)

There should be a sticker on your vid card which actually says. I believe you can also check by bringing up the information in display settings. I think it displays some hardware info as well as driver info (can't check cos I'm at work).

i disagree, i think that they will either release a lower speed card, or move the 9500 as the new 'low end'. the difference between ATi pro and non-pro models isn't usually that drastic

*shrugs* Who knows. I was making a guess based on the fact they're talking about the 9900 being a value card and the 9900Pro being the high end. But you could be right. If that's the case then we might see a 9800/9800Pro and a 9900/9900Pro. Cos they were talking about RV350 and R350 (heck there are also really early rumours about the R400).

Psycho - whatever happened to Bitboys? They were spruiking embedded memory. Makes you wonder who nVidia may have bought up ;)

I have both the gf4 4600 titanium and r9700 atlantis pro, r9700 doubles performance over gf4- 15500 3dmarks on default settings!
One awesome card.
Orbitor you might need an xp 2400 and r9700 from me, see how cheap I can go:)
I can build you a high quality system consisting of epox 8rda+, xp 2200, r9700 pro full custom neon case with cold cathode tubes, caviar 80gb h/d , DVD Drive, 2x 256 pc2700/3200 ram and Flatron 17" monitor + cherry keyboard and optical mouse for under $2000.
Eat s*** Dell

Nah dont think he'll be going for that. Hes already got hold of an epox 8rda+ and a 2100+ (b core). A 9700 nonpro is currently on its way over from Japan and ram should be arriving soon too. Hes already got a 21" dell trinitron so i cant see him wanting a 17" either :D

Just waiting on the watercooling gear to arrive before putting it all together.

Dais, Do you use the TV tuner, TV record and TV-out capabilities of your AIW 8500DV? If so, whats the quality like?

I have seen a lot of mixed reviews on these cards. But most of them have been reveiwed outside of Australia, so they may not be a good indication of what they are like to use in this country. Specifically TV reception picture quality.

Im thinking of picking one of these up to use in a PC specifically built for use as a Digital VCR. Sick of having to muck around with VCR tapes and having to remember to set the VCR to record. With a PC setup as a Digital VCR I can set and forget.

Cage