High-end performance is always a nice thing to have, but driver support and quality are also very important factors. ATI has improved in this area quite significantly, and while their Catalyst integrated drivers may not be at the same level as the NVIDIA Detonator's, to even put them in the same sentence is testament to ATI's new-found dedication to driver support.
Throughout our benchmark and game testing, we didn't have a single stability or compatibility issue with the Radeon 9700 Pro. This is actually quite different from other "new generation" video card releases and shows that ATI is working hard in this area. While the drivers are quite good, we did find the usual difficulties switching between AA modes without rebooting the PC. Other than that quibble we are extremely impressed with the initial Radeon 9700 Pro driver release, and can't wait for future revisions and performance boosts.
The current pre-order street price for a Radeon 9700 Pro is in the $365-$400 range, depending on the vendor. This compares to the $250-$275 range for a name brand GeForce4 Ti 4600 card, and around $200 and $150 respectively for a GeForce4 Ti 4400 and 4200. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is certainly the top dog in 3D video cards and naturally has an enthusiast-level price tag. Only the end-user can make the final call, but if the budget is there for a $400 video card, then the Radeon 9700 Pro is the easily the best choice.
When a new video card is announced, there is usually some level of skepticism regarding its performance and feature set. With the Radeon 9700 Pro hardware in hand and fully tested, it is apparent that ATI has delivered on their "paper release" promises and produced an incredibly powerful video card. ATI has also performed the unthinkable and leap-frogged over the GeForce4 Ti 4600 both in terms of performance and features. The only possible issue we can find is that the Radeon 9700 Pro may actually be too fast for current games, and with Doom III still a long way off, it might be a while before we have a game that really shows off its upper performance limits.
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