OT: Club3D Radeon 9500

Totally off-topic, but I want to buy a new gfx card and I was curious about your opinion about this card. It's the Club3D Radeon 9500 128mb, and it will replace my GF2 GTS in my P4 1.6. The benchmarks at Tom's Hardware site look very promising, especially when you consider the price of this card (120 euro / $135 !). I know that the 9700 or 9800 is better but I just got married and now I've got quite a lot of bills to pay :-/ so those cards are a bit out of my budget right now. I'm especially curious about driver experiences with this card. It's mostly used for sims like N2003, GPL and F1C so those games should work without problems with this card. Any comments or suggetions for alternative cards are mostly welcome :) Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > but I just got married Congrats Andre. I have no experience of the 9500, but the 9500Pro (now discontinued) seems to be the "best bang for buck" people have been recommending. The replacement 9600 is slower, I believe. What I will say though is that Ati have certainly produced some decent hardware recently. I bought a second hand 9700 Pro a month ago (in a moment of extreme weakness) and have been very impressed by its speed on a cheap AMD 1700+ overclocked to 2.2GHz. I can run with x4fsaa, x16aniso, all 42 cars drawn ahead/behind in N2003, 1280x1024, and never see the frame rate drop below 30fps. Ok, I don't have all the shadow/sunlight etc settings turned on, but it's really rather impressive to see in action with a full field, and 1600x1200 doesn't seem to slow it down much either. So it's been worth the money (150ukp) IMO and the only slight disappointment is that while the antialiasing *is* better than Nvidias, it's still not up to V5 standards. Being rather a lot faster than the V5 kind of makes up for this though! Anyway, I'm not sure I'm helping you much here, but maybe this *will help... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3065227.stm ;-) Andrew McP

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > I'm especially curious about driver experiences with this card. It's > mostly used for sims like N2003, GPL and F1C Oh, forgot about this. I haven't tried F1C yet (no money left after buying the 9700 Pro :-) but GPL works very well in d3d. In OGL I get some strange effects, but I was only checking OGL to see if it was faster/slower than D3D so it's no loss. Andrew McP

Andre Warringa wrote:

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> > Totally off-topic, but I want to buy a new gfx card and I was curious > about your opinion about this card. It's the Club3D Radeon 9500 128mb, > and it will replace my GF2 GTS in my P4 1.6. > > The benchmarks at Tom's Hardware site look very promising, especially > when you consider the price of this card (120 euro / $135 !). > > I know that the 9700 or 9800 is better but I just got married and now > I've got quite a lot of bills to pay :-/ so those cards are a bit out > of my budget right now. > > I'm especially curious about driver experiences with this card. It's > mostly used for sims like N2003, GPL and F1C so those games should > work without problems with this card. > > Any comments or suggetions for alternative cards are mostly welcome :)

I run a Club3D 9500 PRO in my gaming rig, no complaints, but then again I don't play as many games as I used to so my experience is mainly with N2002/2003 and even there it's somewhat limited Ati has cleaned up it's drivers, the 2D is heads above your current card, as is the 3D, but that's only to be expected AA and AF is better than nVidia's Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:27 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: >Congrats Andre. Thanks :) >I have no experience of the 9500, but the 9500Pro (now discontinued) seems >to be the "best bang for buck" people have been recommending. The >replacement 9600 is slower, I believe. Yes, the 9500 pro is a tad faster according to Toms Hardware site, but I must have called about 20 stores today and all of them told me it's not available anymore :( To my amazement I also read that the 9600 Pro is slower than the 9500 Pro, even though it's more expensive. I'm curious how the 9600 compares to the 9500, but I couldn't find benchmarks for that on the internet. >all 42 cars drawn ahead/behind in N2003, 1280x1024, and never see the >frame rate drop below 30fps. Ok, I don't have all the That's good.. 30 fps is about the max I get with 42 cars in 800x600 :) >Anyway, I'm not sure I'm helping you much here, but maybe this *will >help... >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3065227.stm ;-) LOL :) Well I allready found that out after 4 weeks.. but I must admit that the garden and my house look lovely now with all that new stuff in it ;) Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > all of them told me it's > not available anymore :( I was following someone's attempts to buy one in the UK on a different newsgroup, and it seems they're all gone in the UK as well. > To my amazement I also read that the 9600 Pro is slower > than the 9500 Pro I find this quite worrying, because it's exactly the kind of thing we've come to expect from Nvidia, playing games with the names to give the illusion of speed. Having said that, I haven't researched this properly and it's possible the 9600 is better in some ways. It would be nice to see a side by side comparison with the card it's replacing. > 30 fps is about the max I get with 42 cars in 800x600 :) 800x600? I didn't realise they still made pixels that big! ;-) Forget that garden, you need that new graphics card mate! Andrew McP

Are you willing to go the eBay route? There are a couple of new/sealed in the box 9500 Pro's for sale. "Andre Warringa" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:27 +0100 (BST), > [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: > > >Congrats Andre. > > Thanks :) > > >I have no experience of the 9500, but the 9500Pro (now discontinued)

seems

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> >to be the "best bang for buck" people have been recommending. The > >replacement 9600 is slower, I believe. > > Yes, the 9500 pro is a tad faster according to Toms Hardware site, but > I must have called about 20 stores today and all of them told me it's > not available anymore :( > To my amazement I also read that the 9600 Pro is slower than the 9500 > Pro, even though it's more expensive. I'm curious how the 9600 > compares to the 9500, but I couldn't find benchmarks for that on the > internet. > > >all 42 cars drawn ahead/behind in N2003, 1280x1024, and never see the > >frame rate drop below 30fps. Ok, I don't have all the > > That's good.. 30 fps is about the max I get with 42 cars in 800x600 :) > > >Anyway, I'm not sure I'm helping you much here, but maybe this *will > >help... > >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3065227.stm ;-) > > LOL :) Well I allready found that out after 4 weeks.. but I must admit > that the garden and my house look lovely now with all that new stuff > in it ;) > > Andre

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 23:21:03 +0200, Goy Larsen <[email hidden]> wrote: >I run a Club3D 9500 PRO in my gaming rig, no complaints, but then again >I don't play as many games as I used to so my experience is mainly with >N2002/2003 and even there it's somewhat limited Hmm... I planned to buy a Club3D 9500, but ofcourse I need to have better stuff than you.. so I ordered the 9700 today <g> I found an online shop which sells the 9700 for 199 euro.. couldn't say no :) Andre

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 16:08:04 GMT, "Fatbob" <[email hidden]> wrote: >Are you willing to go the eBay route? There are a couple of new/sealed in >the box 9500 Pro's for sale. Nah, I do buy stuff from Ebay, but not hardware. I want to be able to return to the shop and beat the shopowner when my card is not working :) Andre

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 08:04 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: >I find this quite worrying, because it's exactly the kind of thing we've >come to expect from Nvidia, playing games with the names to give the >illusion of speed. Having said that, I haven't researched this properly >and it's possible the 9600 is better in some ways. It would be nice to >see a side by side comparison with the card it's replacing. Check out this test at Tom's Hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030416/index.html For some games the 9600 pro is considerable -slower- than the 9500 pro, for some games it's just a tad faster. Weird :-/ >> 30 fps is about the max I get with 42 cars in 800x600 :) > >800x600? I didn't realise they still made pixels that big! ;-) Forget >that garden, you need that new graphics card mate! I ordered the 9700 today for 200 euro, maybe I can run in 1024x768 when I have installed it ;) Andre

Andre Warringa wrote: > > Hmm... I planned to buy a Club3D 9500, but ofcourse I need to have > better stuff than you.. so I ordered the 9700 today <g> > I found an online shop which sells the 9700 for 199 euro.. couldn't > say no :) Good fer you :-) I used to have a 9700 PRO though, Hercules, guy came into the shop, pointed at the box that I had on display and said I want that card, told him it was just an empty box and that I was all out, and he goes, well, where's the card that used to be in that box, told him it was in my personal computer and that he would be welcome to have a look at 3Mark2001 running on it, just so he'd know what to expect and I could order one for him He said he didn't mind that the card had been used and he was prepared to pay the full price, but he wanted it there and then...."only" thing I had lying around to replace it other than the odd GF4MX card was this 9500 PRO, never gotten around to replacing it and don't think I will until the next hot card comes around I think you'll be happy with your R9700, the first time you fire it up after you've installed the driver, have a good look at the 2D picture quality Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > I ordered the 9700 today for 200 euro Good price. Hopefully it'll be an up to date 9700 with mature hardware & bios, giving it some overclocking potential. My Pro is a rev1.0 Gigabyte (last version was 1.3 I believe) and overclocks very little before problems start to appear. Not that I need it to overclock at the moment, but when HalfLife2 & Doom3 appear I expect to be tempted. One word of warning before I forget, these cards churn out a lot of heat, so you may need to add a bit of extra ventilation to your case. I run with the side off mine and currently have the 9700 cooled by an 80mm fan and an old (and noisy!) CPU fan. This may be a bit over the top, as these cards are obviously designed to run hot. But I feel happier keeping it a bit cooler. Even at "only" 150ukp it's still 1.5 times what I usually like to spend on a vid card upgrade. The noise of the extra fans isn't really a problem in the middle of a pack of 42 cars though :-) Hang on, did I say middle? I meant at the back of 42 cars, obviously. Mmmm... it occurs to me I probably owe your wife a bunch of flowers for tempting you into spending more money than planned! ;-) Andrew McP PS I haven't looked at too many tech demos for the 9700, but I was very impressed (in the usual sad, silly little way) by the "Rendering With Natural Light" demo on http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/r9700.html If your 9700 box runs XP you might also be interested in... http://www.rage3d.com/articles/atidawning/

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > but of course I need to have > better stuff than you. Ah, good. That means Goy owes your wife the flowers, not me! :-) Andrew McP

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:11 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote:

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>In article <[email hidden]>, >[email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > >> I ordered the 9700 today for 200 euro > >Good price. Hopefully it'll be an up to date 9700 with mature hardware & >bios, giving it some overclocking potential. My Pro is a rev1.0 Gigabyte >(last version was 1.3 I believe) and overclocks very little before >problems start to appear. Not that I need it to overclock at the moment, >but when HalfLife2 & Doom3 appear I expect to be tempted.

Not a single shop mentions that there are different versions of the 9700, so I didn't even know there were different versions. I'll just have to wait and see. Where can you check the version of the bios? Thanks for the other tips ;) Andre

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:14 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: >Ah, good. That means Goy owes your wife the flowers, not me! :-) > >Andrew McP Persuading the wife was not such a big problem. I bought tickets for the Robbie Williams concert for her :) Problem is, tomorrow I'll get the card, but instead of installing it I'll be at Robbie Williams :-/ Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > so I didn't even know there were different versions Neither did I until I started reading around before it arrived. I think it's no different to motherboards or any other hardware. As they produce more units, initial bugs (firmware or hardware) get identified and tweaked. There shouldn't be any *huge* differences, and it might be that a bios update is the only difference. > Where can you check the version of the bios? No idea! I know my card's a rev 1.0 because there's a big white sticker on it saying "rev 1.0", and I've seen a review with a big white "rev 1.3" sticker. I missed my vocation, I should've been a detective ;-) Andrew McP

Andre Warringa wrote: > > Persuading the wife was not such a big problem. I bought tickets for > the Robbie Williams concert for her :) > Problem is, tomorrow I'll get the card, but instead of installing it > I'll be at Robbie Williams :-/ Well, it could have been worse, Justin Timberhead or something Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" "The Pits" http://www.theuspits.com/ "A man is only as old as the woman he feels" --Groucho Marx--

"Andre Warringa" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 16:08:04 GMT, "Fatbob" <[email hidden]> wrote: > > >Are you willing to go the eBay route? There are a couple of new/sealed in > >the box 9500 Pro's for sale. > > Nah, I do buy stuff from Ebay, but not hardware. I want to be able to > return to the shop and beat the shopowner when my card is not working > :) > > Andre

Yeah, that is kind of fun.

"Andre Warringa" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:11 +0100 (BST), > [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: > > >In article <[email hidden]>, > >[email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > > > >> I ordered the 9700 today for 200 euro > > > >Good price. Hopefully it'll be an up to date 9700 with mature hardware & > >bios, giving it some overclocking potential. My Pro is a rev1.0 Gigabyte > >(last version was 1.3 I believe) and overclocks very little before > >problems start to appear. Not that I need it to overclock at the moment, > >but when HalfLife2 & Doom3 appear I expect to be tempted. > > Not a single shop mentions that there are different versions of the > 9700, so I didn't even know there were different versions. I'll just > have to wait and see. Where can you check the version of the bios? > > Thanks for the other tips ;) > > Andre

Some manufactures will print the version number right on the card itself (I'm talking about the actual hardware revision, and not the BIOS). For example, my Epox mother board has the version number written in the corner of the board. So if you're buying your card at a store, ask the sales person if you can open it up and take a look at the board. This is one reason why I never buy a new video card or mother board right when it's released. Cost being the other reason. ;)

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:37:32 +0200, Goy Larsen <[email hidden]> wrote:

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> > >Andre Warringa wrote: >> >> Persuading the wife was not such a big problem. I bought tickets for >> the Robbie Williams concert for her :) >> Problem is, tomorrow I'll get the card, but instead of installing it >> I'll be at Robbie Williams :-/ > >Well, it could have been worse, Justin Timberhead or something

I'm going with her to a concert of Justin in August :-/ Andre

Andre Warringa wrote:

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> > On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:37:32 +0200, Goy Larsen > <[email hidden]> wrote: > > > > > > >Andre Warringa wrote: > >> > >> Persuading the wife was not such a big problem. I bought tickets for > >> the Robbie Williams concert for her :) > >> Problem is, tomorrow I'll get the card, but instead of installing it > >> I'll be at Robbie Williams :-/ > > > >Well, it could have been worse, Justin Timberhead or something > > I'm going with her to a concert of Justin in August :-/

You married a woman that drags you off to see Justin Timberhead ... are you nuts ??? Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 00:21:24 +0200, Goy Larsen <[email hidden]> wrote: >You married a woman that drags you off to see Justin Timberhead ... are >you nuts ??? I'm taking my revenge next week.. we're going to an 'the history of computer games' exposition where they even have the original computer on which Pong was programmed (it's about the size of my house :) http://www.gameonweb.nl/index.asp Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > I'm going with her to a concert of Justin in August :-/ You must love her *very* much, that's all I can say! Robbie I could cope with... just about, though maybe not for two hours. The only interesting thing about Justin is *possibly* his homemade porn collection :-) Andrew McP

Andrew MacPherson wrote:

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> > In article <[email hidden]>, > [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > > > I'm going with her to a concert of Justin in August :-/ > > You must love her *very* much, that's all I can say! Robbie I could cope > with... just about, though maybe not for two hours. The only interesting > thing about Justin is *possibly* his homemade porn collection :-)

Errr.....she's not *that* hot Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

Andre Warringa wrote:

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> > On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 00:21:24 +0200, Goy Larsen > <[email hidden]> wrote: > > >You married a woman that drags you off to see Justin Timberhead ... are > >you nuts ??? > > I'm taking my revenge next week.. we're going to an 'the history of > computer games' exposition where they even have the original computer > on which Pong was programmed (it's about the size of my house :) > http://www.gameonweb.nl/index.asp

Careful, you might get her interested in computers We used to have a customer who was into strategy/tactical games, one day they released a game called "Jagged Alliance", which he promptly came in and picked up as he had pre ordered it....2 days later he was back and bought another one, claimed his wife had nicked his copy and was playing it on her PC and refused to give it back Just imagine your computer hobby becoming twice as expensive ? And then there's this friend of mine go got his ass handed to him by his GF in a series of battles in "Panzer General" Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 06:37 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: >You must love her *very* much, that's all I can say! Robbie I could cope >with... just about, though maybe not for two hours. The only interesting >thing about Justin is *possibly* his homemade porn collection :-) > >Andrew McP Just returned from the concert and it was great to be honest :) Also received the 9700 card today. I'll install it tomorrow, but I just looked for the big white 1.0 or 1.3 sticker and I couldn't find any. Is there any other way to find out the version of the BIOS? Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Goy Larsen) wrote: > Errr.....she's not *that* hot Not even in pigtails? :-) Andrew McP

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > I just looked for the big white 1.0 or 1.3 sticker My card's a Gigabyte "Maya", I doubt all manufacturers have (or needed) the same revision policy. If there's no revision sticker on your card I guess that's because if it ain't broke you don't fix it. Enjoy your upgrade, fingers crossed you don't have any problems. Andrew McP

Andrew MacPherson wrote:

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> > In article <[email hidden]>, > [email hidden] (Goy Larsen) wrote: > > > Errr.....she's not *that* hot > > Not even in pigtails? :-)

Well, first of all I prefer "women" over "girls", but although I'll agree that she's good looking, the thought of Justin Timberhead popping into the picture would spoil it for me no matter who the female part was Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:42 +0100 (BST), [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: >Enjoy your upgrade, fingers crossed you don't have any problems. > >Andrew McP Installed the card within 10 minutes, downloaded and installed the latest catathingy drivers and no problems at all so far :) Blown away with the results, I used to run F1C with graphics set to low and it still stuttered like hell sometimes, now I have set all graphics to maximum, 1280 res, fsaa and aa on and I still have very nice fps of around 30-40 during a race :)) Have to tweak around a bit with all the settings to get an average fps of around 60-70, I think F1C plays better with a high fps. Strange thing is that I so far hardly noticed any difference fps when I changed the resolutions, turned on/off graphics or fsaa/aa. This indicates a bit that my cpu is the bottleneck now and not the gfx card anymore? P4 1.6 here. Allthough with gfx set to low and fsaa turned off, I did have an fps of over 100 at Suzuka in training mode. But I don't want to play games with gfx set to crappy anymore :) GPL runs like a dream with all the GPLEA cars installed (damn GPL looks beautifull now). N2003 also had an improvement in fps, but not as big as F1C. But man this fsaa and aa stuff really makes things look better! PS On that ATI demo url you have me, also download that music demo, it's great :) Andre / Who has a faster gfx card than Goy ;)

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > Strange thing is that I so far hardly noticed any difference > fps when I changed the resolutions I think you're right about your CPU being the limitation now. The 9700 really does churn out the pixels remarkably quickly. In fact I'm not sure why I still race at 1280x960/1024 when the card seems almost as fast at 1600x1200. > damn GPL looks beautiful now It's taken a while, but we finally have the hardware to run GPL at a solid 36fps with all the trimmings turned on. It was worth the wait, though the sad thing is that I no longer have a graphics Holy Grail to aim for. I suspect Doom3 may supply a new visual peak to climb towards though. > N2003 also had an improvement in fps, but not as big as F1C I think N2003 will still eat as much CPU power as you can throw at it. I guess in test mode, with you being the only car in the universe, the CPU ought to have some breathing room, giving you an idea what FPS the 9700's capable of in N2003. > But man this fsaa and aa stuff really makes > things look better! It certainly does. But it's not perfect yet, sadly. I was playing LFS for the first time in months last night (S1 release) and found ATI's fsaa struggling as badly as Nvidia's with things like the lines across the track at the start, and strobing textures in the grandstands etc. So I still find myself wishing 3dfx had managed to get its act together before they went under. Still, it hard to be too negative when ATI's fsaa runs as quickly as it does. > also download that music demo, it's great :) Wow! You're not joking. I don't know what's more impressive, the ATI card's ability to render it all in real time, or the guys who created it in the first place... I found myself just sitting there grinning. Thanks for that. > Andre / Who has a faster gfx card than Goy ;) Yea, but only because he can't be bothered to open his computer and evaluate another card for his customers :-) Andrew McP

Andre Warringa wrote: > > Andre / Who has a faster gfx card than Goy ;) LOL, true Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

Andrew MacPherson wrote: > > > Andre / Who has a faster gfx card than Goy ;) > > Yea, but only because he can't be bothered to open his computer and > evaluate another card for his customers :-) LOL, also true, a few years ago I was still going all gaga whenever a new and faster CPU family came out or a new Gfx card or whatever and would promptly order one for "demo" use :-), but when you have "free" access to the latest and greatest, after a while it's not that fun anymore, so while my computers are reasonably up to date, it doesn't give me the same "buzz" anymore It's a "drawback" I can live with though :-) Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy "goyl at nettx dot no" http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--