My experience with a Radeon 9500 Pro and Nba Live 2003

[bishibashiboy]

Well..so i finally decided to pick up an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro yesterday for around $300 CDN, and the first game i tried was of course nba live. After about 30 mins trying to figure out how to get the game to run faster I gave up. Right now there is NO way I can play at over 35 frames per second on Max details. I played around with it for a bit and noticed that the two most draining features are Player Detail (anything higher than "low" slows it down noticeably) and Reflections (putting it to "medium" immediately produces a slow down). By turning these down I can easily get around 60 fps. Keep in mind this is with both AA and AF turned OFF already. If anybody knows of any good tweaks for this card or this game let me know!

Oh and as for my specs..I am aware that maybe my processor may not be fast enough for this card, but I am still a little disappointed in its performance in this game so far:

Athlon xp 1800+ @ stock speeds
512megs DDR
Abit Kr7A mb
Radeon 9500 Pro - Catalyst 3.2

[Fan]

Yep i have to agree with you on this subject.I guess Nba live doesnt like Ati's cards very much.

[bishibashiboy]

hey Fan, which ATI graphics card do you have? I upgraded from my radeon 9000. The jump in performance is pretty good for most games, but this one in particular just sucks.

[Kobe8Rice41]

It is because the programming in this game is horrible. I have an ati radeon 9700 pro and get 40 frames but it is very jumpy so it feels like 20 fps.

[bishibashiboy]

Man..that's really sad only getting around 40fps on a radeon 9700!..stupid EA sports.
But anyways, anyone know of any good tweaks for the 9500 pro?..I heard from somewhere that you can overclock this card quite well..but I was just wondering if anyone has actually had any experience and luck with it.

[Kobe8Rice41]

Try the rage3d tweaker! That has a few additional options and an overclocker.
P.S. I get better frames in Splinter Cell and that game has mad lighting

[Cameron]

Here's my system:

AMD 2100+
256 meg SDRAM
Ati Radeon 7000

And I get probably as good frame rates as you guys. One thing I can't stress enough is to disable like everything running on your computer, like antivirus etc, anything running in the taskbar (at the lower right hand corner) of the screen, it improves FPS significantly for me. I think I was at 60 one time, and average about 40.

[bishibashiboy]

Try the rage3d tweaker! That has a few additional options and an overclocker.
P.S. I get better frames in Splinter Cell and that game has mad lighting

Oh I've tried Rage3d Tweaker before, but I'm not sure what options are good to play around with. Anything good to suggest??
Also, with the overclocker..is your card locked?? Because I know my old radeon 9000 was..and everytime I tried overclocking, my WinXP crashes.

Hey Qweet, yeah It's quite sad that a 7000 series can compete with a radeon 9500 and up in a game that theoretically should be going at over 60fps on either of our rigs.

Hey I was just wondering, but what kinda 3dmark scores do both of you get?..I honestly hate that program, but I'm just wondering if my scores are totally wack. I get just over 10,000 in 3dmark 2001.

[Fan]

I have an ATi 9700.I play the game with 2xaa and 4xaf 1024*768 low shadows medium enviroment and high player detail and i get 40-45 fps.What i have noticed in all the EASports games is that their games even at 30 fps dont seem smooth.Bad coding i suppose.

[bishibashiboy]

I have an ATi 9700.I play the game with 2xaa and 4xaf 1024*768 low shadows medium enviroment and high player detail and i get 40-45 fps.What i have noticed in all the EASports games is that their games even at 30 fps dont seem smooth.Bad coding i suppose.

Yeah I've noticed that too...but IMHO, the only way a game seems smooth is when it's running at at least 60fps.

I found a good balance for my card @1024x768 - 32bit color running at 60fps solid:
1. I run with low player detail (i honestly can't tell the difference)
2.low bench (same here..can't tell diff)
3.max environment
4.high lighting
5.high shadows
6.low reflections
7.low texture detail (somebody tell me the diff here too plz?)..

no antialiasing (too much of a performance hit)..no anisotropic filtering (i don't see the big deal a/b af..)
Good enough for me!

[Malignant]

hmm i have a 2.7ghz, 512 ddr, aiw 9700 and run max detail with 2xaa and 4xaf at 1280x1024. It has the same smoothness at all levels, i tried lowest too and its the same fps. Its a little choppy at all detail levels too, so yeah i think its just bad coding.

[bishibashiboy]

Hey just out of curiosity..can someone plz explain to me where i can actually SEE a noticeable improvement in the game by turning on anisotropic filtering???..because honestly, i just don't see much (if any) improvement in quality to warrant a large performance hit.
In fact, this applies for me and almost all games. Is it really worth turning on?