I remember it well, bought the 9700 pro on release to go with a Asus a7v333 and it would hard lock randomly, literally replaced everything bar motherboard. Turned out the 9700 pro had massive compatibility issues with the VIA KT333 chipset. It was about 3 months after buying that card that I really saw what it could do after plenty of help from this here forum. I remember being pretty amazed.
That was before the post cull back in 2002 I think.