Sapphire 9800 Pro, 128mb

[Danny]

Hey everyone.

I've just took the plunge and ordered the Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb, I've
decided to see what all the fuss is about with these new ATI cards! I'm
currently running a GeForce 3 Ti200, whilst it has served me extremely well
over the years, it's getting a bit long in the tooth these days. So, first
question I want to ask is... did I make the right choice of ATI card, is the
9800 Pro 128mb by Sapphire considered a good card?! And what exactly do I
have to do to wipe all the Nvidia stuff from my comp, short of re-formatting
or manually going through the registry?! What I mean is, is there a utility
out there that will do it all for me... I'm lazy like that!

Thanks for all your help and I hope to be amazed by this new card very soon!

Danny

 

[John Hall]

You made the perfect choice. I don't think the XT version of the card is
worth the bucks right now. There is a utility for getting rid of all of
Nvidia's drivers. Its called the Detonator Destroyer. Look for it on the
net.

JK

 

[We Live For The One We Die For The One]

I upgraded from a Gf3 Ti 200 to a Redeon 9600 Pro and it was a big
difference, though i also upgraded my CPu froma celeron 433 to a Athon
xp 2000

Might do another upgrade to a Barton 3200 and a 9800 Pro, but maybe
ill wait tillthe 64bit cpus and PCI express cards come out.

Either way you made a great choice will do you for YONKS.

 

[Ben Pope]

Hey everyone.

I've just took the plunge and ordered the Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb, I've
decided to see what all the fuss is about with these new ATI cards! I'm
currently running a GeForce 3 Ti200, whilst it has served me extremely
well over the years, it's getting a bit long in the tooth these days. So,
first question I want to ask is... did I make the right choice of ATI
card, is the 9800 Pro 128mb by Sapphire considered a good card?!

Yeah, I got a Crucial (which I beleive to be a re-badged Sapphire) and it
flies.

What Chipset/CPU you running?

I can do 1600x1200 in Splinter Cell, CoD, NFSU:UG, Vice City and Prince of
Persia, so I think it could be considered a good card, but you do need a
decent Processor (2GHz ish) and fast RAM to fully appreciate it.

And what
exactly do I have to do to wipe all the Nvidia stuff from my comp, short
of re-formatting or manually going through the registry?! What I mean is,
is there a utility out there that will do it all for me... I'm lazy like
that!

There were a list of cleaners mentioned in a thread recently... Det
Destroyer (mentioned as DD) is the one I already knew of, but others might
be appropriate depending on your OS. If you uninstall the drivers from the
control panel you don't usually have problems.

Have fun with your new card.

Ben

 

[JLC]

Hey everyone.

I've just took the plunge and ordered the Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb, I've
decided to see what all the fuss is about with these new ATI cards! I'm
currently running a GeForce 3 Ti200, whilst it has served me extremely well
over the years, it's getting a bit long in the tooth these days. So, first
question I want to ask is... did I make the right choice of ATI card, is the
9800 Pro 128mb by Sapphire considered a good card?! And what exactly do I
have to do to wipe all the Nvidia stuff from my comp, short of re-formatting
or manually going through the registry?! What I mean is, is there a utility
out there that will do it all for me... I'm lazy like that!

Thanks for all your help and I hope to be amazed by this new card very soon!

Danny

Danny the easiest way to clean out the old drivers is to use add/remove.
Then just do a search for nv*.* delete anything that comes up and you'll be
good to go.
I just bought that same card two weeks ago and I went from a G4 Ti-4200 and
let me tell you, your mind will be blown! Make sure you turn on at lest 4x
AA and you can crank up the Anisotropic Filtering to what ever you want. I
run mine at 4xAA and 4x tri Aniso. You will not believe your eyes when you
see your games running with these setting. It makes all the difference in
the world.
I was so blown away last night I nearly had a seizer! I've played the hell
out of NFS Hot Pursuit 2 (I know, everyone thinks it stinks, but I like it)
I loaded for the first time last night with my new card. I'm not kidding
when I say that I didn't recognize the level I was playing! I total freaked
out! The game looks so much better it doesn't even look the same. With my
4200 all the colors where muted and the textures where blurry (Quincunx AA
at work) I played the game for over 2 hours trying all the different courses
and they all looks 100% better. So yes! You made the right decision! Have
fun! Oh and if you really want to see what your card can do go to ATI's site
and do a search for "demo" get "Chimp" and "Pipedreams" for sure but I have
them all and they all are fantastic to look at! JLC

 

[Sam Higgins]

Hey everyone.

I've just took the plunge and ordered the Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb, I've
decided to see what all the fuss is about with these new ATI cards! I'm
currently running a GeForce 3 Ti200, whilst it has served me extremely well
over the years, it's getting a bit long in the tooth these days. So, first
question I want to ask is... did I make the right choice of ATI card, is the
9800 Pro 128mb by Sapphire considered a good card?! And what exactly do I
have to do to wipe all the Nvidia stuff from my comp, short of re-formatting
or manually going through the registry?! What I mean is, is there a utility
out there that will do it all for me... I'm lazy like that!

Thanks for all your help and I hope to be amazed by this new card very soon!

Danny

I have had one for two days now and I think it's great, however the official
ATI drivers caused some problems in a couple of games so I de-installed
them. I found the Omega ones suggested in the newsgroup here to have worked
flawlessly.

http://www.omegacorner.com/index_ati.html

Everything I own, so far, I have kicked up the resolution to 1152 x 864 and
turned all game detail up to max. Radeon's FSAA is better than Nvidia's if
you take the time to look closely and compare. Anisotropic filering
sometimes helps games, sometimes it just kills your framerate. All older
games you can crank these to the max.

I find the 9800 Pro runs a little on the warm side so I would make sure your
PC has good airflow. I run an aircleaner right by my rig to suck up the
dust. It really helps keep it out of my fans.

Have fun!

 

[Danny]

...

Yeah, I got a Crucial (which I beleive to be a re-badged Sapphire) and it
flies.

What Chipset/CPU you running?

I can do 1600x1200 in Splinter Cell, CoD, NFSU:UG, Vice City and Prince of
Persia, so I think it could be considered a good card, but you do need a
decent Processor (2GHz ish) and fast RAM to fully appreciate it.

Thanks alot everyone for there replies, I'm glad I made the right choice!
I'm currently running a XP2500+ Barton on an Asus A7N8X - X mobo, with the
nForce 2 400 chipset. And 256mb DDR ram, which is soon to be upgraded to
512mb. So hopefully I'll have the system to back up the 9800!

There were a list of cleaners mentioned in a thread recently... Det
Destroyer (mentioned as DD) is the one I already knew of, but others might
be appropriate depending on your OS. If you uninstall the drivers from the
control panel you don't usually have problems.

Have fun with your new card.

Thanks, I'll do a search for that and see what it's like, I'll do the reg
clean as well like somebody else suggested, I wanna be sure I've got rid of
all traces of Nvidia... the last thing I need is instability with this new
card.

Thanks again for all the replies, it's put my mind at ease a great deal....
now I just wish the thing would hurry up and arrive!

Danny

 

[Ben Pope]

...

I'm currently running a XP2500+ Barton on an Asus A7N8X - X mobo, with the
nForce 2 400 chipset. And 256mb DDR ram, which is soon to be upgraded to
512mb. So hopefully I'll have the system to back up the 9800!

Well I got a 2500+ on an A7N8X Deluxe, so pretty much the same, I guess.

You'll be impressed with it.

Ben

 

[JLC]

Thanks alot everyone for there replies, I'm glad I made the right choice!
I'm currently running a XP2500+ Barton on an Asus A7N8X - X mobo, with the
nForce 2 400 chipset. And 256mb DDR ram, which is soon to be upgraded to
512mb. So hopefully I'll have the system to back up the 9800!

You should really consider going to 1GIG of RAM. 512 is really the minimum
if you're running XP. You will notice the difference believe me. JLC

 

[AlphaWoolf]

I just got this card as well, and it is a very good deal. I'm very
pleased with the performance. However, I'm experiencing some
weirdness in games that I * might* associate with an overheating video
card. My Antec case is sufficiently ventilated IMO, so I wonder if
I've received a marginal card. Is there a video card equivalent to
Prime95 that I can test this card with? 3DMark03 and Aquamark won't
loop (at least the free versions, correct me if I'm wrong), and the
ATI demos run so flawlessly I wonder if they really stress the card.


I really want to give this card a workout!

Jack
Remove your coat for email.

 

[Ben Pope]

I just got this card as well, and it is a very good deal. I'm very
pleased with the performance. However, I'm experiencing some
weirdness in games that I * might* associate with an overheating video
card. My Antec case is sufficiently ventilated IMO, so I wonder if
I've received a marginal card. Is there a video card equivalent to
Prime95 that I can test this card with? 3DMark03 and Aquamark won't
loop (at least the free versions, correct me if I'm wrong), and the
ATI demos run so flawlessly I wonder if they really stress the card.


I really want to give this card a workout!

Well tell us the problems...

Ben

 

[AlphaWoolf]

Well tell us the problems...

Ben

First, my system:

Antec case with 430W PS and side fan blowing on the video card
Asus A7N8X Deluxe/XP 2200+/1 Gb RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro/Cat 4.2
Win98SE (and yes, it is properly configured to use my RAM)

I just upgraded to the Radeon from a Geforce3. All the NVidia video
drivers appear to be gone (Det Destroyer found nothing after I
uninstalled them).

The problem is a huge loss in fps after playing games a while, an hour
or more. No graphics corruption. The problem is I've really only got
two games to test this with (or at least that exhibit the problem),
Planetside and the PainKiller demo. Now the Painkiller demo is new to
me, and it may just be some teething problems with the demo. But I've
been playing Planetside for months, and this slowdown is new to that
experience.

The slowdown can occur at graphically intense times, but continues
even after the action has settled down. Is this a symptom of an
overheated card (I was under the impression it was)?

The other more subtle problem is off and on flicker problems on the
desktop, despite having set an 85MHz refresh. I do have a cheap
monitor, though (KDS).

I'm going to be busy today, but things I've want to try:

1) Increase the side fan speed.
2) Adjust the AGP aperture. It was 64Mb with the Geforce, then I
upped it to 128Mb with the Radeon install. The ATI driver still only
reports 64Mb of AGP memory?

Thanks for any suggestions!
Remove your coat for email.

 

[John Hall]

Check the ATI support pages on their web site. I seem to recall an issue
involving ATI Radeon cards and 1 gig of ram. It seems to me though, that
you need to upgrade your operating system to make proper use of your
hardware. Win98SE is not going to use all of your ram whereas XP will use
it all very efficiently, and 32 bit drivers for all of your hardware will
ensure the best possible performance.
It could be that 98se is not cleaning up after itself when running your
games.

JK

 

[AlphaWoolf]

First, my system:

Antec case with 430W PS and side fan blowing on the video card
Asus A7N8X Deluxe/XP 2200+/1 Gb RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro/Cat 4.2
Win98SE (and yes, it is properly configured to use my RAM)

I just upgraded to the Radeon from a Geforce3. All the NVidia video
drivers appear to be gone (Det Destroyer found nothing after I
uninstalled them).

The problem is a huge loss in fps after playing games a while, an hour
or more. No graphics corruption. The problem is I've really only got
two games to test this with (or at least that exhibit the problem),
Planetside and the PainKiller demo. Now the Painkiller demo is new to
me, and it may just be some teething problems with the demo. But I've
been playing Planetside for months, and this slowdown is new to that
experience.

The slowdown can occur at graphically intense times, but continues
even after the action has settled down. Is this a symptom of an
overheated card (I was under the impression it was)?

The other more subtle problem is off and on flicker problems on the
desktop, despite having set an 85MHz refresh. I do have a cheap
monitor, though (KDS).

I'm going to be busy today, but things I've want to try:

1) Increase the side fan speed.
2) Adjust the AGP aperture. It was 64Mb with the Geforce, then I
upped it to 128Mb with the Radeon install. The ATI driver still only
reports 64Mb of AGP memory?

Thanks for any suggestions!
Remove your coat for email.

The problem is definitely heat. I have RMA'd the card. >:-(

Jack
Remove your coat for email.

 

[AlphaWoolf]

Check the ATI support pages on their web site. I seem to recall an issue
involving ATI Radeon cards and 1 gig of ram. It seems to me though, that
you need to upgrade your operating system to make proper use of your
hardware. Win98SE is not going to use all of your ram whereas XP will use
it all very efficiently, and 32 bit drivers for all of your hardware will
ensure the best possible performance.
It could be that 98se is not cleaning up after itself when running your
games.

JK

Thanks for the suggestion, but as I originally said my Win98
installation is properly tweaked to handle the RAM. Further testing
has led me to conclude that the card is overheating and I'm sending it
back to NewEgg. I don't think a stock card should be so marginal that
it overheats with better than average cooling and no overclocking.
Now I get swap my old Geforce back in and wait a couple of weeks.
Yea. :-(

Jack
Remove your coat for email.

 

[Wblane]

This might be your problem right here. I'm running 98SE like you on an Nforce2
board (NF7-S v2.0). I noticed that some levels in certain games ran
unbeleivably slow until I increased the AGP aperture size to 256MB and then
512MB (I have a gig of DDR 3200 though).

2) Adjust the AGP aperture. It was 64Mb with the Geforce, then I
upped it to 128Mb with the Radeon install. The ATI driver still only
reports 64Mb of AGP memory?

Thanks for any suggestions!

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[dale.hall]

Funnily enough i also had a GF3 TI200, and have just got my new Radion
9800 Pro today. Have say this a mega card, certainly the best upgrade
i've ever done. At last i can start playing current games at 1024x768
with max settings

Bliss

dale h