Upgrader 0 Posted November 12, 2000 I've been looking for a decent forum, void from the basic plague of 12 year olds that tend to flock like geese. Anywho, Ive been a avid fan of the actual ntcompatible site ever since I first used NT on my home pc back in 98 or so, and this site quickly became my homepage back when the.. umm... complete betas of windows 2000 came out. I enjoy Counter-Strike, although version 1.0's models look like TFC (no offense if you like TFC) which made me puke, and enjoy typing the usuall /timedemo 1 <- /demo demo001 in quake3 to test out what is the latest and greatst configuration on my: p3-700@875 Radeon 32ddr 192-256 megs of pc100 (ya i know) abit BE-6 II w/ hotrod ata/66 controller onboard uhh... ok... now onto some bullsh!tin before I go pass out.... I work in tech support for one of those idiot ISP things becuase im too lazy to get any certs besides A+ so ive been getting to talk to all the newbies about winME. Most are old blue haired ladies who just want to email thier 15 sons/daughters, who its my responsibility to know each of thier names, and blah blah blah. Ok, before I snore ya to death, how about I talk about my radeon since its a very underapriciated card? Woot, lets get it on. Please note that I just tested out DX8 with the new 7020 drivers for the radeon, and those will be addemun to this. ======================================== begin old review I did ======================================== First off, let me say how much I totally detest the windows 9x kernel, even writing about, and worse, having to boot into it, makes me puke. Crashes, reboots, and corruption! OH MY!! Obviously I am a fan of the NT kernel. Especially with NT 5. However, with the ATI Radeon, I did not have a choise of what operating system to use. I got a Radeon 32 DDR and I expected it to out perform my voodoo3 3000 by a wide margin. This was NOT the case in windows 2000. I will start in the order of things I noticed, and then head to the benchmarks! After all, this is more of a critque, rather than hardware stats that won't mean a thing to the average (and above average) hardware enthusiast, and I definatly will not pretend like they mean anything to me like one of those 40 page articles by some sites that are probably paid off by the hardware companies. I care about image quality and framerate, so you wont have to worry about any extraneous circumstances hidden by crappy reporting and benchmarking. Now that you know (you love me!) a little about me, lets do this. PIII 700@875 Abit BE6-II w/ HighPoint 3.66 ATA/66 controller 192 megs PC100 (I know, I know) Aureal Soundcard ATA/66 Maxtor 15 gig I ripped out my v3000 and slammed in, sweating with anticipation, a video card with over 20 times more ram than my first computer did. WOOT!! BOOT!! Always a good thing. Installed the new drivers and reboot. After making sure everything was was configured correctly, I quickly hit my never tedious shortcut for the realm of Quake3, and it too, started up without issue. Begin rant. (In 16bit Mode) Upon the first screen, where the id logo comes crashing through with a vengence, I could immediatly tell something was amiss. The graphics looked very *pixelated,* meaning that neighbooring pixels were not blended together like the voodoo cards I had previously owned accomplished with great success.. This effect was throughout the whole screen, and reminded me of a brides face, covered by her veil, at a wedding. This was disheartening, to say the least. So, I figured I would try out 32bit mode. It looked to me just like the voodoo graphics I grew up with. Ok.... you win some you lose some. So I tried some FPS tests. If only tomshardware would have posted thier radeon results a day earlier.... Horrendous. It bearly broke 100 in fastest mode where my v3000 would cap out at 125. ATI said nothing about crappy performance in windows 2000, so I assumed (like a dumbass) that they would have rightous drivers. Not the case at all. The good thing, is that the 32bit color IS beautiful, and as you will see in the benchmarks, it doesnt take the hit that other cards do. But, on Win98se we got these (rocking) results.... //Lame attempt at a chart This is with my p3 700. ----------Normal-----Normal(32bit)-----H.Q.------HQ@1024x768---HQ@1280x1024---- _______________________________________________________________________ FSAA 76.3 70.7 46.4 27.1 no thanks noFSAA 95.6 95.4 92.2 72.7 48.0 _______________________________________________________________________ Not bad.... Very clear where ATI was hitting for here. And let me say that after playing with FSAA enabled, it is tough to go back. Ive been playing some Counter-Strike at 800x600, and its incredible with FSAA enabled. And for the overclockers out there..... P3 700@875 ----------Normal-----Normal(32bit)-----H.Q.------HQ@1024x768---HQ@1280x1024---- _______________________________________________________________________ FSAA 98.3 84.2 54.4 noFSAA 118.7 118.4 crashed _______________________________________________________________________ Very acceptable results. Im really not even intrested in anything but the FSAA@ 800x600. Its quite a sight to see. Reminds me of playing software quake, getting a voodoo card and finding out about GLquake. Kinda like that transition, but you get the idea. addenum to the article with the dx8 and new drivers............... Im pretty happy with this.... As you can tell, im pretty set on my 800x600 FSAA ways... that aint gonna change ANY time soon... im addicted. So, I cranked my coppermine up to 875 (which is rock stable with the radeon, unlike my v3 3000, which was about 90% stable with a fsb@133 = 933). Installed a fresh copy of win2k, the brand spankin new drivers, and sp1 of course. Also, I decided to give powerstrip a try, becuase this radeon runs COOL, and I decided that it could stand a little stress. SOOOO, I cranked it the memory clock speed up to 195 and did a HQ test in q3 with a fresh install of quake, with the default settings enabled. No com_hunkmegs, or cg_gibs 0, or anything. Makes that a bit easier eh? 55fps. I was happy. Over 50fps with fsaa is spectacular. So, I went ahead and did the deafult speed for the card and did the test again. 45fps!!!!!!!!! Wow.... Obviously to say, im running this card oc'ed right now, and writing this as we speak (that didnt make sense did it?) it is... (/me touches card) a tad above the ambient room temp. Thats a huge jump from the v3, and especially from those GTS's which have to have heatsinks on thier ram. Ive never had the opportunity to try one. Ok, my sleeping pills have kicked in, so I will bid you adu. Ill be glad to answer any questions re: any holes in my report, as Im scatterbrained as a drunk blonde. Not that there is anything wrong with drunk blondes mind you Share this post Link to post
iGGy 0 Posted November 13, 2000 hmmm Upgrader, sure I've seen you post on another great board. Anyway, I enjoyed the message. It's always good to have narrative rather than just (and yes, sometimes boring) benchmark posts. Cheers, iG. Share this post Link to post
