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The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is advertised as supported by ATI's FGLRX driver. While its true that the card does work (I have it running at 8x on my PC) the driver is not without its problems. As of current (Nov. 4, 2003) the driver has problems with the latest 8x AGP chipsets and often some of the source code needs to be slightly modified in order to operate at 8x speeds. In addition the driver is considered buggy and somewhat unstable on many platforms with a VIA chipset. As of today it would be my recommendation to use an NVidia card until ATI's fglrx driver matures.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid? (in USD): $350.00 | Rating: 9
Kernel (uname -r):
2.4.23-rc2
Distribution:
ArchLinux 0.5
I'm using an nForce2 Gigabyte motherboard and the ATI driver works fine so long as I do not use the ATI internal AGP driver. Frame rates of around 310fps in fgl_glxgears @ 1280x1024 (Athlon XP 3200).
Have has no problems running Quake III and ut2003. The only area I've had problems in is the DGA extensions in xfree86 that some tv apps use. As soon as these apps start my monitor goes blank and then to standby as if there is no video signal. Machine is not locked up so I can swith to a console and reboot. tvtime is the only app I can use to watch tv.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid? (in USD): $400.00 | Rating: 10
Kernel (uname -r):
Distribution:
RedHat 9
Always has run excellently in linux for me, but no longer in use in favor of 9800. Once ATI got its act together and released XFree86 4.3.0 drivers, it ran flawlessly.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid? (in USD): $250.00 | Rating: 6
Kernel (uname -r):
2.4.26
Distribution:
Slackware 9.0
It worked fine after JPBartos hacks to the driver, but even after that, a few games (the ones i love, of course) have known issues to make illegal memory calls and lock up the system. Wasnt worth the headache in my opinion. Go with Nvidia
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid? (in USD): None indicated | Rating: 9
Kernel (uname -r):
2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
Distribution:
FC4
Had trouble getting 3D acceleration to work with ATI's drivers.
I went here and installed livna drivers
http://rpm.livna.org/livna-switcher.html
If you never used livna before, go here first
http://rpm.livna.org/configuration.html
Works great so far. No problems playing UT2004 and NWN. The games felt quite smooth.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid? (in USD): None indicated | Rating: 5
Kernel (uname -r):
2.6.9-1.667
Distribution:
Fedora Core 3
I had many issues with the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro running under redhat 7.1, redhad 8 and now FC3... The card runs great with 2D graphics, but I've run extensive testing on 3d Applications, and games, noting that... under windows 2000, 3d applications ran -perfectly- fine. Under redhat 8 I could never get the drivers neccessary to run 3D applications with agp 8X enabled. I could get simple 3D graphics to run for long periods of time, but no commercial games even came close to the compatibility that windows provided. I am NOT a windows enthusiast... I no longer run any version of windows at home. I refuse to purchase windows products any longer, but I think that the next generation Nvidia Ge force 7800 is the product for me. I won't invest any further disappointment in ATI products, as it has been a long expensive, disappointing process.
The problem with FC3 was that, when running the Radeon 9700 pro under FC3, the red wire on the power cable inside the case (red, black, black, red) actually -burned- out... just from playing neverwinter nights with the livna drivers... You might then criticize livna, but this is the wrong thing to do, as it is ultimately the hardware that could not withstand the punishment of 3D graphics that neverwinter nights gave the card. For a 128MB card, this is totally unacceptable. I could not get the default -supposed- 3D graphics drivers from ati to work by itself. The livna drivers were required for most gaming applications, even those that were tested under wine. The thing that shocks me is that most people give this card two paragraph reviews without backup on any of their points. It's great to say that a product is excellent... but it's awful when there is no proof. From now on, I vote nVidia!
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