Which high end card should I get if I dump the 9700 pro?

dg wrote:

When I built my system, I really didn't care about having the top 8X AGP
card. I just wanted a decent card that was rock solid reliable. I went
with ATI as I know they have been around a while and have a good rep.
More
specifically, I bought the 9700 Pro. Well, the 9700 pro I bought has
issues
(which I have discussed below, garbled video upon cold boot). Nobody
wants to take responsibility for this error, and that is really ok with
me, I will
just get another card. I am going to first try another 9700 Pro
replacement, and if that one fails too, I will buy a better card. In
order from most important to least important, here is what I want:

#1 RELIABILITY. More than anything I hate flaky products, I will gladly
#pay
for reliability.
#2 Compatibility, I don't play a lot of games, but when I do I would like
them to play fast and take advantage of my video hardware.
#3 Hardware decoding abilities for DVD/divx/etc, I do deal with movies of
all formats for entertainment and the more load I can stick on the card
and not my CPU, the better.

My motherboard is an Intel D875PBZLK with 8X AGP port. Any suggestions?
Is
the 9800 Pro the way to go? Any tips are greatly appreciated, I really
feel behind the times when it comes to video cards.

Please forgive a stupid question, but (a) have you tried the board in a
different machine with the same results and (b) if so have you called (not
emailed) ATI's tech support and explained the problem to them?

The symptoms you're describing are either a configuration problem of some
sort in your machine or something broken, they are not normal behavior for
a Radeon 9700. Your board should still be under warranty if it's a
built-by-ATI board.

You're not going to get any major performance improvement by going to any
board currently on the market--the 9700 pro is current-generation
technology and was the fastest board on the market when it shipped, the
9800s are slightly faster but not radically so. Further, if a 9700 is not
working in your machine due to a problem with the configuration of the
machine rather than to the board being broken then a 9800 will probably
show the same behavior.

Thanks,
--Dan

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)