Need help chosing 9700

**Bob The Great** · July 7th, 2003, 12:35 PM

Ok, I HAD my new system planned out perfectly.

Antec Sonata case
AthlonXP 2500+ Barton Core/AS3/IGLOO SILENT BREEZE
512MBs PC-2700 DDR
EPOX 8RDA+ nForce2
Radeon 9700 AIW PRO (refurb)
52x24x52 MSI Dragon CD-RW
16X Sony DVD
usual assortment of cable ties, t-shirts, and leds.

Any way I'm ordering today and I see the 9700 AIW that has been there for nearly 3 weeks is GONE!!! Augghhh...

Well anyway I need to pick a new 9700 PRO out now (from newegg.com) because I AM going to order the rest tonight. I already have the burner and case sitting at home (and they are buetiful). Stability/speed/quiteness are what I'm balancing out for this build. My Sonata case, and heatsink, should keep this baby quite but a tad warm during the summer, so I need a 9700 that can take the heat. I don't want to OC at all. I'm looking for a straight card, but each review I read at newegg for hte 9700's that are in stock have things where people say how his overheats or has kittens or something. So personal experience is good. Right now my budget for this card is about $300. That'll be tough to pull off though, it means dropping some of the minor pieces like floppy and cable ties (I'll use rubber bands for now I guess)

edit: I was thinking of going non pro with the saphire for $215. Will that really hurt preformance badly?? I'm checking 3dmarks at futuremark.com right now to see what people with that card and my system get.

**tony_j15** · July 7th, 2003, 01:16 PM

The Pro versions are a bit more fine tuned and clocked a bit higher. Its easy to take a 9700 and clock it up to the Pro speeds. The difference between the 2 isnt that much.

**Bob The Great** · July 7th, 2003, 01:27 PM

cool, yeah at futuremark I was seeing people with non pros getting about 15000 3dmarks with similiar setups. Any one have anything bad to say about saphire 9700's??