ATI Radeon 9700 Video Card

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Now I’m neither a NvIdiot, nor a FanATIc, I just go with what is posting the best performance. If you’re looking for the fastest, most awe inspiring graphics card at the moment, look no further than the ATI Radeon 9700. ATI has pummeled the competition at the moment. They have hit a homerun like the one the Brooklyn Brawlers hit against Bugs Bunny. This screamin’ puppy ain’t stoppin’, even if Bugs climbs up the flag pole with stilts on. Seriously though, the 9700 one serious piece of hardware, and ATI is still workin the 0.15 micron core. I had it on good authority that ATI basically locked up their engineers, gave them a case of Krispy Kreme’s, some instant coffee, locked the door, and told them not to come out until they had something to make Carmack squeal like a little school girl. Well not really, but the thin line between my reality and fantasy is becoming distorted more and more with the new addition of the 9700 to my rig. 

Packaging and Contents: ATI doesn’t fail on the packaging either. The graphics on the box are just KICK ASS.

(Admit it, you love the box shot… hehe)

Upon opening the box, your greeted with the card, and manual/driver CD on top, and underneath the composite cable, S-video cable, S-video to composite adapter, and the DVI to VGA adapter. With the 8500 series you got the perk of Counter Strike, but no extra goodies here folks. Just raw power, and speed. 

 

I’ll list the specs as I’m sure you’ve all seen ‘em before.

Graphics Technology

1. RADEON™ 9700 PRO Visual Processing Unit (VPU)

Memory Configuration

1. 128MB of double data rate SDRAM, 256 Bit at 2.8ns

Display Support

1. VGA connector for analog CRT
2. S-video or composite connector for TV / VCR
3. DVI-I connector for digital CRT or flat panel
4. Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any two connected displays

Features

1. Eight parallel rendering pipelines
2. Four parallel geometry engines
3. 256-bit DDR memory interface
4. AGP 8X support
5. SMARTSHADER™ 2.0
   1. Programmable pixel and vertex shaders
   2. 16 textures per pass
   3. Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 128-bit floating point precision
   4. Vertex shaders up to 1024 instructions with flow control
   5. Multiple render target support
   6. Shadow volume rendering acceleration
   7. High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
   8. Supports DirectX® 9.0 and the latest version of OpenGL
6. SMOOTHVISION™ 2.0
1. 2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
1. Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2. 2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
1. Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
7. HYPER Z™ III
   1. 3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
   2. Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
   3. Fast Z-Buffer Clear
8. TRUFORM™ 2.0
   1. 2^nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
   2. Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
   3. Displacement mapping
9. VIDEOSHADER™
   1. Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video
   2. FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology
   3. Noise removal filtering for captured video
10. MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
11. All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
12. YPrPb component output
13. Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
14. Dual integrated display controllers
15. Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
16. Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant)
17. Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
18. Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon™ 3Dnow!
19. PC 2002 compliant

Basically, this card should carry you through a few upgrades. It’s DX9 ready, Smoothvision, HyperZ, and TruForm have been improved (you can run AA, and ansio comfortably now) and VideoShader just rocks. It makes streaming video smooth, and actually watchable now. Plus you get the old stand by’s of multi monitor support (I couldn’t go back to using a single monitor now), DVI for LCD’s, and TV out if you wanted to hook it up to your multimedia center. ATI has also introduced HDTV support on the 9700.

ATI has been know for 2D quality, and the 9700 doesn’t disappoint in the area either. Colors are crisp, and clear. Working normal everyday desktops is a pleasure, while DVD playback quality is also very nice. The included ATI Multimedia software package allows you to play DVD’s and VCD’s, and has a user friendly interface.

 

Next: Installation >>
 

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