I finally got a Radeon 9700 Pro, and fortunately have not had any installation or compatibility issues. I do have some performance concerns however, but I'm not sure how well founded they are. To start, my 3DMark2001/03 scores are pretty well in line (11009 and 4378 respectively), but in many cases, actual game performance is less than I expected. All OpenGL games I've tried run silky smooth (>80 fps) at high res and with 4x FSAA and 16x AF. UT2003 also runs quite well, usually at around 90 or so fps in-game. Now here's the problem: Dungeon Siege, Unreal II, and Rainbow Six: Splinter Cell, all run at relatively poor performance levels. DS and Unreal II usually hover around 30-40 fps and Splinter Cell usually around 20-30, sometimes dropping into the teens! This all at 1024x768 with no FSAA or AF! Can anyone with any of these games and a R9700PRO attest to this kind of performance, especially Splinter Cell? I tried both the Catalyst 3.1 and 3.2 drivers, made sure fast writes were disabled, and updated the VIA 4-in-1s. I have a hard time believing that an Athlon 1800+ with a Radeon 9700 PRO and 512MB of RAM should be producing this dismal performance.

I have an ATI card, but an older one, so this may no longer be applicable, but one issue I had to resolve was whether to install the ATI AGP driver (GART driver) or continue to use the motherboard AGP driver. The GART driver was an option during the driver install, so I opted out and stayed with the motherboard AGP driver, which seems to have been the right decision as I`ve never had a problem with the card.