Originally posted by: Skibby9
I am selling my 8500 as soon as I receive the 9700 Pro. Cost me a bit more than I expected, as I spent the few extra $ on a real ATI retail model, and mwave (love 'em) wants almost $20 to ship APO. At least I know I will have it in a week. Man I am looking forward to running EVERYTHING not just maxed out (8500 is fine for that) but anti-aliasing and aniso filtering, too. Man JK2 is gonna look sweet on this bad boy! (oh vrap i should have checked to see how my 8500 handles all that right now. Naaa it got pretty choppy in MOH:AA with AA+aniso)
actually...count me in too. im an 8500 -9700 pro guy but because it was my bday recently and a bunch of my friends chipped in $300 to get me it.
the cheapest i found for a retail Built BY ATi was $335 by
www.nutrend.com, but their processing time scared me off. their ratings were pretty good though. however, i cancelled the order and went with
www.googlegear.com cuz they had it for $335.50 + $1.50 fedex 2 day shipping. how sweet is that? $337 for 2 day. im still waiting for them to ship the thing though.
at any rate, the 8500 was just a tad slower than i wanted. it ran wolfenstein like a dream though. my goal was 1024x768x32 everything maxed and it played at around ~90fps. that was just awesome (ok some scenes in SP with trees got me down to 20-30fps but it was still playable). I didnt like it too much for MOHAA though. i had to actually drop it down to 800x600x32 everything maxed. I think ditto for jedi 2. this sorta performance was subpar for me so getting the 9700 should be a worthy upgrade. now, i will finally get to relish AA and aniso in games instead of envying others.
but getting back to the original Q....I say it really depends on if you think you need/want it. if u are happy with your games, then no. but if u felt like me or Skibby9, then go for it. i mean, ive looked at the numbers and it will basically do 2x the performance of an 8500 (depending on res). that is enough to warrant an upgrade right? (also im selling my 8500 64MBer to a friend for $80 so im actually getting back part of the original investment on the 8500 which was $280 with S&H).
oh btw, i cant wait to go back through some of my games. it will bring new life to them. woohooo!