Radeon 9700 Pro versus 9800 Pro

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psiu
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Radeon 9700 Pro versus 9800 Pro

Post by psiu » Mon Mar 26, 2007 10:44 am

Hello, here's my question to anyone who has hopefully used *both* of the above cards.

My wife's computer currently has the 9700 Pro in it, with a ZM80D-HP cooler on it. Semi-passive operation, as I have a front mounted Yate Loon angled at it with a Fanmate 2 for speed control. Wife's computer is an Athlon XP 2600, 1GB Ram, Barracuda 7200.7 80 GB drive.

I just picked a 9800 Pro with VF700-Cu already attached to it with the intent of putting it in her brother in laws computer I've put together for them. An Athlon XP 2200, 512 MB Ram, some old junker of a 20GB drive for now, he has a 100GB Maxtor he will replace it with.

Looking at older reviews of the time when the 9800 Pro was released, it certainly seems to have some speed advantages over the 9700 especially with AA/AF enabled.

So here's the question:
I wonder how noticeable an upgrade it would be in the real-world, and especially regarding newer games--the 2 most graphics intensive games she plays at the moment are Age of Empires 3 and Company of Heroes, and those both need some lowering of the graphics detail to get a fairly smooth frame rate. However, I don't know that a 3 year old card vs a 4 year old card would make much of a difference....but if it would, I might go through the trouble of swapping coolers...or not...

*sigh*
*not happy with idea of disassembling and reassembling that ZM80D*

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Mon Mar 26, 2007 11:22 am

9800 pro is renamed 9700 pro. Their specs are almost identical as is their performance like if you would run two identical cards made by different manufacurers. So swapping 9700 pro for 9800 pro would do next to nothing in terms of performance.

In benchmark difference is just few hundred points at the best. And in games you should not be able to see difference when running both at the stock speeds.

sjoukew
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Post by sjoukew » Mon Mar 26, 2007 11:27 am

If I remember correctly, the 9800 pro is 10% faster then the 9700 pro. The 9800 pro is the 'improved version' of the 9700 pro with some minor adjustments to make it 10% faster, and probably cheaper to produce. But the chip design is almost the same, the features are the same, so a rough 10% performance is really all there is, as far as I know.

kernel32
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Post by kernel32 » Mon Mar 26, 2007 2:39 pm

Umm... excuse me, but am I the only one who thinks the 9700pro doesn't support shader model 2.0, and the 9800pro is the one that does?
I have a 9550... which isn't an improved 9500, it's a completely different core, the 9500 doesn't support shader model 2.0, just like the 9700, these are same generation cores, same families... the 9800 is the bigger core of the same family which the 9550 is a member of...
I think this is a pretty significant difference, much more than simply 10% faster.

psiu
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Post by psiu » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:42 pm

Well so far in my reading the 9800 Pro was indeed quite an upgraded core--some of the reviews show not just expected clockspeed improvements, but even when setting the 9800 at identical speeds it has a significant advantage at anything with AA/AF enabled.

I don't think I will be bothering with swapping those coolers though...just leave my wife's computer with the 9700.

*little screws, wobbly heatpipes, thermal goo everywhere--NOOOO*

Thanks for the suggestions!

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Mon Mar 26, 2007 11:15 pm

the 9800 pro kicks the 9700's ass

but, one could get a 100 dollar 7600GS and go like 3x the speed o_O

still, the 9800 is superior and can play most modern games on lower settings.

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:49 pm

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art ... RodXNpYXN0
Here's detailed comparision. Yeah, 9800pro seems to be have some upgrades but their performance is almost identical. Then 10% difference seems to be more in theory than in practise.

geforce1
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Post by geforce1 » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:48 pm

BTW the Radeon 9550 does supports shader model 2.0.

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