Feedback From 9600 XT Owners

**TheFlightMan** · 12-02-2003, 01:21 PM

Couple of questions, just placed an order for a 9600 XT/TVD from Asus. I wanted to know how the owners of 9600 XT are doing with their cards..?? I've looked at the 9700 Pro but it is at least an extra $80 to $100 from what a 9600 XT will cost me.

If you gives can provide some feeback regarding your experience with this card, it would be extremely helpful. I'm upgrading from a 5600 Ultra, would also like to know what you guys upgraded from.

TheFlightMan

**ant_1984** · 12-02-2003, 04:31 PM

Hi there, I upgraded from the GF4 MX440 not to the 9600XT but to the 9600Pro. The card is fantastic. My frames used to drop down to about 4 in havy clouds and with the new one I havn't seen them below 20. My maximum Framrate with the old card was about 30 and that was with no AA or AF switched on. Now I can have AA & AF switched on and get around 50fps and occasionaly I've seen them jump to 80 and even 100 momentarily.

So to sum it all up, image quality is better FPS is better and you should be real happy. Your card being the 9600XT you should see about 3 or FPS more than I do at the moment providing you have a similar system.

My system is:
P4 2.8Ghz
Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro
1GB Kingston PC2700 RAM
60GB HDD
XP Pro

**TheFlightMan** · 12-02-2003, 05:34 PM

Thanks for replying, I have a P4 1.8 with PC133 RAM but I'm already looking at the next set of parts to upgrade my system. Until the holiday's blow by, I will be using my current parts.

I previously purchased a 5600 Ultra and I am still using it, waiting for the 9600 XT to arrive. All the reviews seemed positive and I even thought of getting the 9700 Pro. However, you can't find it anywhere nowadays, wonder why..??

There is not that many people out there with the XT version of the 9600, hope this is not a bad thing. With my 5600 Ultra if I try to turn up AA/AF to anything above 2X, the FPS hit the floor. I heard with the 9600 family you can crank them up and not see any difference in FPS, is that true..?? What settings are you currently using with the card and on the FS9 side of the house..??

TheFlightMan

**gary2** · 12-02-2003, 07:36 PM

Just set up a P4 2.8 ( waiting until the 3.2 price drops).. upgrading from a 900mhz Win98SE and Nvidia 128 4200. I have put in a 9600 Pro 'cause there are no 9800 Pro's around here until Dec 11. My first look using the 9600 is that aside from all the improvements you might imagine boggled my mind but the scenery was fully of jaggies and even after D/L the newest driver. Hope the 9800 will get rid of those otherwise it's going back. Great FPS but the scenery is the pitts! :-irks

**Bigshot** · 12-02-2003, 08:35 PM

You should see no jaggies. Make sure you're running in 32 color and you need to open the ATI control panel and set up the AA & AF. Recommend you start with 4xAA & 16xAF running the anisio in performance mode. Then set the texture & mipmap to max.

**TheFlightMan** · 12-03-2003, 10:59 AM

Bigshot,

Since this will be my first time using the latest ATI drivers, what settings do you recommend for the 9600 XT using the following platform:

P4 1.8
640 Ram PC133
40 Gig WD Drive 7200 RPM
Windows XP Pro SP1 Plus all other patches
McAfee 8.0

Thanks,
TheFlightMan

**Bigshot** · 12-03-2003, 11:38 AM

I use Chris' FSW clouds. I also use both autogen fixes. Trust me, they both make a considerable positive impact on framerates with little effect on eye candy. I actually like Chris' clouds better than the defaults. I run with terrain mesh at 90%. No ground shadows. I max everything else except for AI. AI set very high will kill your processor and when that happens you're video card will starve for data. You'll just have to experiment. Don't be afraid to move them sliders to the right. I've found that AI and Terrain Mesh both use the processor resources bigtime. The rest is eye candy. While a 9600 only has a 128bit bandwidth with only 4 pipelines compared to the 9700/9800 256bit bandwidth and 8 pipelines, it should still do a good job for you. It's a good match for your processor. Just make sure all the Nvidia drivers are gone.

**TheFlightMan** · 12-03-2003, 12:40 PM

Bigshot,

Thanks, I might tap you again once I get the card going. I just got a call from the place where I am getting it from and they should have it in stock tomorrow. I plan on reformatting my system once the new card arrives, like that I get rid of anything old.

I tried to get a Sapphire 9700 Pro but they wanted almost $300 bucks for it and with the holidays here, other things have priority. Besides, the 9600XT should do much better than my 5600 Ultra. we will see how it goes, keep you posted.

TheFlightMan

**ant_1984** · 12-03-2003, 05:08 PM

Ok well there will be a drop in FS when you crank AA and AF to the max but it's far less of a drop compared to the drop I got with my GF4 and probably less than what you'll get with that 560 of yours.

At the moment I try and get a balance between quality and performance so AA is set to 4X and AF to 8X. Settings in FS9 are maxed completely except Autogen is on very dense (I hardly noticed any difference and it improved frames) and mipmap settings are at 5. otherwise textures would shimmer (I had that problem with the old card too, so it's not card related). When you're coming n to a busy airport with 100% traffic frames can drop to around 18 or something but thats not so bad.

Oh by the way in my opinion you were better off going with the 9600 because it supports dx9 and as far as I know the 9700 doesn't. Just means that you'll be more compatible for newer games that utilise dx9. I have seen the 9700 Pro around still, thought about getting one myself but they were too expensive.

Anthony Young

**TheFlightMan** · 12-03-2003, 05:59 PM

Anthony,

Thanks for the feedback, my card should arrive tomorrow and it should be in my box and ready to go by Friday. As for the 9700 not supporting DX9, that is not the case, it does support DX9 according to ATI.

If the holidays were not here, I would spend a bit more to get the 9700 Pro. However, 99.9% of the reviews I read give the 9600 XT positive results and everyone liked it. I originally wanted to get the Asus model but the vendor that I get it from does not have it in stock and might not have it until early next year.

I have my 5600 Ultra sold so I need get rid of it as soon as possible, within the next couple of days. I managed to get a hold of the 9600 XT for $175 and it includes the HL2 voucher.

I went over to www.rage3d.com and looked through their forums, it left me a bit worried, a lot of end users were having a ton of display problems ranging from artifacts to rendering. I hope I don't run into the same conditions with my soon to be new card.

TheFlightMan