Radeon 9500 to Radeon 9700 Mod

[BavariaBlade]

Some russian guys have modded their R9500 to a R9700.
It seems to be no fake. Here is the manual

http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?20030105

some german people are going to test it, I will post if they have success.

servus Axel

[Ioman]

Thanks for the link, this is a pretty good read. I wonder how they figured out how to do this? Do you think that someone inside ATI gave the tip away? It looks like a hardware verus a driver change, so a warning for those that want to try this, it could ruin your card.

[BavariaBlade]

As you can see here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1041838349

The R9700 Pro, R9700, R9500 uses the same PCB,
only the PCB of the R9500 PRO is different !!

So it could really work !
You also need a 128MB version of the R9500 to get the 256bit connection to the memory!

[BavariaBlade]

you needn´t speak german for this picture:


http://www.jes-computer.de/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=12286

I heard this card would cost about 150 dollars in the us.In europe it is much more expensive (about 200€). :mad:

I also read that ATI is going to change the PCB of the 9500 to that of the 9500 pro in future.

But lets wait a few days and we will se the first Mod (or not ??) which was done by a normal PC USER!!

:( english typing is not my thing :sure


servus Axel

EDIT: I found that US link http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/4999-1.htm as i expected 153 dollars:mad: thats cheap:(

[BavariaBlade]

Some guy in a german forum postet this link

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/4999-1.htm

its a korean website ( :doh can´t read this) .
He said they found another resistor to unlock the GPU to the verry expensive professionel Fire Gl:D

It is getting really funny if they tell the truth:D

Look at this

[senoryoshio]

seems a lot like when people were turning there GeForce(s) into Quadro cards by soldering a resistor....so the performance etc. doesn't change but the card is recognized as something else by the OS.....guess its cool, doesn't seem much worth it though

[ECA]

Archon.
the markets in Europe and the US are Different.
Products have different names, and SOME even different options.

Ever play the game Archon from 20 years ago?
1 and 2 were great.

[Archon]

Originally posted by ECA
Archon.
the markets in Europe and the US are Different.
Products have different names, and SOME even different options.

Ever play the game Archon from 20 years ago?
1 and 2 were great.

Aye, this is true. However, not for 9500 cards, they are the exact same everywhere. (Even Canada, and they're all weird there ;) )

Archon was an awesome game.

[BavariaBlade]

AS you can see here (http://www.bananapc.com/Products/product_info.asp?product_id=7542&classif_id=) The R9500 is alive. This is the 9500 NON PRO because it has only 4 Pixel Piplines and not 8 how the 9500 PRO does. You can read this in the featuretext below.

servus Axel

[ECA]

Originally posted by BavariaBlade
AS you can see here (http://www.bananapc.com/Products/product_info.asp?product_id=7542&classif_id=) The R9500 is alive. This is not the 9500 NON PRO because the 9500 has only 4 Pixel Piplines and not 8 how the 9500 pro does. You can read this in the featuretext below.

servus Axel

BB.
Plz. Double negitives give me headaches.
"This is not the 9500 NON PRO " This is the 9500 Pro would work as well.

Double negitives tend to bother me, as sometimes Those that write them, may have lost there idea, and mis-stated waht they wanted.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by ECA


BB.
Plz. Double negitives give me headaches.
"This is not the 9500 NON PRO " This is the 9500 Pro would work as well.

Double negitives tend to bother me, as sometimes Those that write them, may have lost there idea, and mis-stated waht they wanted.

He said earlier in one of his posts that his english is bad. Give him a break man!

I guess everyones question is which US Radeon 9500 model can do this?

[BavariaBlade]

You are right ECA, this sentens doesn´t make any sense! There was a NOT to much.

I corrected it.

quote:

"AS you can see here The R9500 is alive. This is the 9500 NON PRO because it has only 4 Pixel Piplines and not 8 how the 9500 PRO does. You can read this in the featuretext below. "

servus Axel




Servus Axel

[BavariaBlade]

This model should be able: Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9500 OEM 128MB (http://www.bananapc.com/Products/product_info.asp?product_id=7542&classif_id=) .

IT has 128 mb , a R9500 chip (without PRO), and the old R9700 PCB

This model must be available in the US, isn´t it ?!?

Servus Axel

[DOA]

Originally posted by Archon
I say again, even if you modded the resistor on the 9500, it still only has 64mb of memory. :P The 9500 Pro, retail $154, has 128mb.


Firsthand experience:
There is both a 9500 Pro and 9500 with 128 Megs of memory. The difference is the amount of memory pipelines. The 9500 has 4 and the Pro has 8. They both have 128 bit memory bus. Since the 9500 Pro already has a 128 bit memory bus and 8 pipelines, there is nothing to mod. The 9500 Pro is its own design. The 9500 shares the same layout as the 9700. When you enable the extra 4 pipelines from the 9500, you effectively double the memory bus to 256, thus making it a 9700. Flashing the bios will enable the extra pipelines. And you cant flash the bios without first modding the resistors. So, in conclusion, if you want to get a 9700 from a 9500, you will need to get your hands on a 9500 (nonpro) with 128 Megs of ram. ATI is going to change the layout, so get them quickly if you are going to do it. Also, to get any chances of turning it into a 9700 Pro, which has a higher gpu and memory speed, you will need to get one with quicker ram like 3.3ns and below. Here are some links: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzc0 http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?20030105 http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?20030106 . Once I get some better system ram, I will post my own benchmarks if anyone is interested.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by mathisbr



Firsthand experience:
There is both a 9500 Pro and 9500 with 128 Megs of memory. The difference is the amount of memory pipelines. The 9500 has 4 and the Pro has 8. They both have 128 bit memory bus. Since the 9500 Pro already has a 128 bit memory bus and 8 pipelines, there is nothing to mod. The 9500 Pro is its own design. The 9500 shares the same layout as the 9700. When you enable the extra 4 pipelines from the 9500, you effectively double the memory bus to 256, thus making it a 9700. Flashing the bios will enable the extra pipelines. And you cant flash the bios without first modding the resistors. So, in conclusion, if you want to get a 9700 from a 9500, you will need to get your hands on a 9500 (nonpro) with 128 Megs of ram. ATI is going to change the layout, so get them quickly if you are going to do it. Also, to get any chances of turning it into a 9700 Pro, which has a higher gpu and memory speed, you will need to get one with quicker ram like 3.3ns and below. Here are some links: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzc0 http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?20030105 http://www.digit-life.com/archive.shtml?20030106 . Once I get some better system ram, I will post my own benchmarks if anyone is interested.

That would be great if you could post your own benchmarks. I would be very interested in seeing them.

[DOA]

I will be doing the entire process again next week for a friend. I will grab my camera and take some pics this time. I will also benchmark the stock 9500 and compare it to the benchmarks of the 9700 (modded 9500) at default and overclocked speeds. Wish I had a real 9700 pro to compare it too.

[BavariaBlade]

this is what i tried to say.

Some people in a German forum have done this mod, and they had sucsess. You can use 3dmark2001 to bench it, the biggest difference will be the fillrate.
But one guy hs got a problem after his modification. He tried out serveral bios files but the problem keeps staying. I suppose that one of the reactivated pipelines is corrupt. The speed is ok but the Image ...take a look.

servus Axel

[DOA]

Doesnt look like artifacts. What bios image file did he put on the card?

[BavariaBlade]

He has tried out all bios files he could get. At the moment he is using the CLUB3d 9700 BIOS.

[BavariaBlade]

some english guy has posted this for the one with the problem:

" We just modded two sapphire boards from newegg, and my brothers performs beautifully as a 9700, while i'm experiencing artifacts. Before I modded this card, it displayed a couple of glitches during POST(dashed lines part way across the screen), although it worked perfectly in 3dmark and UT, is this sometimes normal? Both cards were modded in exactly the same way, we left the resistor in place and put solder between pins 1-2. We made 3 attempts on my card 2 with careful solder jobs, and one try with conductive athlon unlocking grease but all yielded the same result. I've also tested several bioses, and curiously the 9500pro bios will barely function, while the club3d and delltx seem to be the best. Even underclocking to 250/250 does not get rid of the glitches. Since we recieved 2 identical cards, both with 3.3 infineon memory, this makes me believe that either there are actually bad pipelines on many of these cards, or just shorting the connection is not sufficient. Maybe I'll try moving the resistor tommorow. After going through this, I would definately recommend waiting for the software mod! I got quite a scare booting up to a blank display and BIOS beeps after one soldering session( although the solder line looked to be perfect)."

Servus Axel

[DOA]

Originally posted by BavariaBlade
some english guy has posted this for the one with the problem:

" Since we recieved 2 identical cards, both with 3.3 infineon memory, this makes me believe that either there are actually bad pipelines on many of these cards, "

Servus Axel

There maybe some truth in this statement. If Intel came accross a Pentium II that would have half the cache faulty, they would sell it as a cpu with only 128k L2. Thus the birth of the celeron. Maybe ATI is using some of the faulty boards with only half pipelines as the 9500.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Archon
I say again, even if you modded the resistor on the 9500, it still only has 64mb of memory. :P The 9500 Pro, retail $154, has 128mb.

I was a bit confused at first about which model number you meant. Thanks for the clairfication.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Ioman


That would be great if you could post your own benchmarks. I would be very interested in seeing them.

We could post in under the Computer Guides section for now. I can take care of the formatting if he wants to send me the text file and attach the pictures. I hope to see more articles with the actual performance of the product posted on our site.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by BavariaBlade
As you can see here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1041838349

The R9700 Pro, R9700, R9500 uses the same PCB,
only the PCB of the R9500 PRO is different !!

So it could really work !
You also need a 128MB version of the R9500 to get the 256bit connection to the memory!

What does PCB stand for again? How does that affect performance?

[DOA]

Originally posted by TecknoGeek


We could post in under the Computer Guides section for now. I can take care of the formatting if he wants to send me the text file and attach the pictures. I hope to see more articles with the actual performance of the product posted on our site.

Thanks but I think I am going to create the short article myself and publish it on my own web server. Once it is done, I will post the url in this thread and you can link to it however you want (or just snag the pics and text). Me and my friend are really into modding stuff now, so we are planning on taking pictures, documenting, and publishing anything we do from here on.

[BavariaBlade]

PCB of R9700 (pro), R9500 with 128 MB

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/images/2003-01/9700pro.jpg
This card is desinged with a 256bit memory bus, the GPU can send and recieve the datas faster to the graphic ram. (for the 9500 you must do the mod to use the 256 bit). That means you can play games in a higher resolution or with 6xAA. With 128 bit you will only see a dia show in higher resolutions.

PCB of R9500 PRO with128MB
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/images/2003-01/9500pro.jpg
this card has a 128 bit memory bus
servus Axel

[BavariaBlade]

Hier die 9500 (here the 9500)

RESULTS
3DMark Score 7832
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail 105.6 fps
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail 28.0 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail 150.2 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail 85.7 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail 100.2 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail 41.2 fps
Game 4 - Nature 58.7 fps
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 928.2 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 1113.9 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 47.7 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 12.5 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 134.5 fps
DOT3 Bump Mapping 113.7 fps
Vertex Shader 98.3 fps
Pixel Shader 94.8 fps
Advanced Pixel Shader 95.2 fps
Point Sprites 13.1 MSprites/s



Und hier die 9700 )))))))))) (and here the 9700 ))))))) )


RESULTS
3DMark Score 8514
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail 105.0 fps
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail 29.7 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail 159.6 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail 86.7 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail 100.5 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail 41.6 fps
Game 4 - Nature 85.3 fps
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1547.9 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2180.9 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 50.5 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 12.6 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 162.6 fps
DOT3 Bump Mapping 151.7 fps
Vertex Shader 97.9 fps
Pixel Shader 97.6 fps
Advanced Pixel Shader 172.6 fps
Point Sprites 33.9 MSprites/s

Schätze mal daheim wird die Karte schon mehr bringen !!
Und dies ist kein Fake !!!!!!

(suppose the card will run faster at home (he did this benchmark with his office PC) !!!
and this is no fake!!!! ) ===========>that´s what he said

Take a look at the fillrate not at the points, because this was tested with a weak cpu !!!

[BavariaBlade]

Quote:

"...Besides the hardware way of remaking RADEON 9500 128MB into RADEON 9700 by transistor re-soldering, discovered by our colleagues from Overclockers.ru, we, together with Alexey Nikolaychuk (aka Unwinder), the creator of RivaTuner , hoped to perform the same by software. Essentially, it was to find 4 missing rendering pipelines "hidden" by ATI, as R9500 has 4 and R9700 already 8 of them.

Alexey succeeded in finding the blockade and got through using RADEON 9500 64MB. As you know, this card has 128-but bus, so you can’t make R9700 from it, only RADEON 9500 PRO 64MB. But we’ve checked Soft9700 on RADEON 9500 128MB and, voila, we got a complete RADEON 9700.

So, we can state the 100% software pare-down of R300. This method of remaking will be available for everyone in the next version of RivaTuner..."

We just have to wait 1 or two weeks
servus Axel

[Ioman]

Originally posted by mathisbr


Thanks but I think I am going to create the short article myself and publish it on my own web server. Once it is done, I will post the url in this thread and you can link to it however you want (or just snag the pics and text). Me and my friend are really into modding stuff now, so we are planning on taking pictures, documenting, and publishing anything we do from here on.

If anyone is interested in reviewing computer hardware for the site, please Personal Message me. We are currently looking for a couple hardware editors. We can get you guys lots of hardware/

[llbbl]

What is the price difference between these two models? Modding is fun and all but if its only like $40 apart than I would just buy the 9700.

[DOA]

Originally posted by TecknoGeek
What is the price difference between these two models? Modding is fun and all but if its only like $40 apart than I would just buy the 9700.

You can get a 9500 128M for $150-$175, 9700 128M for $230-$250 and a 9700 pro for $275-$325. Do a search at www.pricewatch.com.

[BavariaBlade]

Mod your R9500 easy with this mod and without a loss of warrenty:

Read and download this (RIVA TUNER):

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

servus Axel

[BavariaBlade]

here are some results from german modders.

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/poll.php?action=showresults&pollid=478

in english:

Soft mod work
Hard Mod works
Soft Works but chessboard Artef.
HARD Works but chessboard Artef.
Hard modd doesn´t work...card is broken
Soft mod doesen´t work another corruption
I will never do this

servus Axel

[DOA]

Originally posted by BavariaBlade
Mod your R9500 easy with this mod and without a loss of warrenty:

Read and download this (RIVA TUNER):

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

servus Axel

Very nice. Was waiting for this to come out. Theoretically speaking, the software mod should give the same performance as the hardware mod. After I do my next mod, I will post benchmarks on -
9500 128M stock
9500 128M software modded to 9700
9500 128M hardware modded to 9700
finally,
9500 128M hardware modded and overclocked to 9700 Pro.

I will post thursday or friday. If anyone else want's an additional configuration benchmarked, or a particular benchmark used, let me know.

[DOA]

Originally posted by BavariaBlade
here are some results from german modders.

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/poll.php?action=showresults&pollid=478

in english:

Soft mod work
Hard Mod works
Soft Works but chessboard Artef.
HARD Works but chessboard Artef.
Hard modd doesn´t work...card is broken
Soft mod doesen´t work another corruption
I will never do this

servus Axel

Where is your sense of adventure?

[dang]

cool. eager to see your results mathisbr

[BavariaBlade]

Originally posted by mathisbr


Where is your sense of adventure?

I did only translate the text from that link

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/poll.php?action=showresults&pollid=478

At least I would try out the soft mod.

servus Axel

[Shadow 850]

just so i know, i want to buy this R9500 card with 128mb ram ok.

What bios exactly do i need to download im confused, my father will do the soldering but i need to know what bios to flash it, where i can get it and how if anyone could please tell me? also one last question can i use stock cooling and regular 9700 drivers when the card has been modded? also are there any glitches in most reports people have had on this mod? ok thanks for your time

p.s if anyone can tell me those short questions i will get this card, cheers

[senoryoshio]

I'd say use RivaTuner...it'd be the easiest

[ECA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
just so i know, i want to buy this R500 card with 128mb ram ok.

What bios exactly do i need to download im confused, my father will do the soldering but i need to know what bios to flash it, where i can get it and how if anyone could please tell me? also one last question can i use stock cooling and regular 9700 drivers when the card has been modded? also are there any glitches in most reports people have had on this mod? ok thanks for your time

p.s if anyone can tell me those short questions i will get this card, cheers

You might try the software short cut first. just incase.
ALSO, you might tell us WHERE you are. We have alot of persons here from around the world.

[Shadow 850]

Sorry, im from the united kingdom.

i want to buy this card, i tried newegg.com but it doesnt ship to the uk!! DOH!! i also tried banana pc.. im not sure where they ship to but now the site wont work coming up with some stupid error. someone please help ive wanted a brilliant graphics card for ages and now is my chance it all goes wrong again, cant find anywhere to get it :(

out of them 2 places both of them dont ship to the uk!!! god this sucks! SOMEONE HELP!! argh

also just found out i can use riva tuner to be much easier, but i still need to know where i can buy the right card.

the 128MB non pro = 256 BIT right? just so im not mistaken.

[Shadow 850]

Hey i just found a link with a very good price for UK! is this the right card to make into R9700? i need verification

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Graphics_and_Video_56.html

then

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9500 Atlantis 128MB DDR DVI/TV (AGP) - Retail (GX-007-SP)
The Radeon 9500 GPU features 4 pixel pipelines and utilises a 128bit memory interface providing superbly crisp 2D, 3D and DVD playback and much of the performance of the Radeon 9700 for a fraction of the price. The Sapphire 9500 features 275Mhz Core Speed and 540Mhz DDR Speed.

- 275MHz / 270MHz (540MHz DDR) clock speeds
- DVI Out / TV Out
- AGP 8x
- 128MB DDR memory

i have 4X agp but the card would still work?

[BavariaBlade]

First you should know that about 25 people which modded(hard or soft mod) their card ( in my favorite german 3D forum) posted their results.

ABOUT 50 % have chessboard artefacts after modding .
The other 50 % had no problem.

Second : Yes this card should work fine with the mod.

Third: AGP4x will make no problem, and the card should work fine.

A Tip:
First try out the riva tuner, If this doesn´t work use this Program: http://www.maxdownloads.com/~ian/wizzard/
( it will do the same). Don´t do the Hardware mod at first, you could get those artefacts and you can´t send the card back.

good luck

servus Axel

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
just so i know, i want to buy this R9500 card with 128mb ram ok.

What bios exactly do i need to download im confused, my father will do the soldering but i need to know what bios to flash it, where i can get it and how if anyone could please tell me? also one last question can i use stock cooling and regular 9700 drivers when the card has been modded? also are there any glitches in most reports people have had on this mod? ok thanks for your time

p.s if anyone can tell me those short questions i will get this card, cheers

Yes, definitley try the software mods first. The hardware mod is not for the faint at heart. I am doing it because I dont care about the warranty, and I am taking a chance that I too, will get the chessboard effect (see page 1 of this thread). Besides, there's Ebay, isnt there? I am starting to think now that ATI is selling their 9700's that do not pass QA as 9500's. My card will be here today and testing will begin!! A detailed procedure and pics to come!

[Shadow 850]

Thanks for your help.

What do you think makes the chessboard effect? maybe certain radeon cards have some bad chips, do you think the software mod would be just as powerful as a hardware mod or is this not yet known?

most people that have had errors is this through hardware mod or software mod?

there are only 2 choices for me, i want this card because i hope it wont mess up and if it comes out good i will have a card better than a geforce 4. However i could get a geforce 4 instead or risk the chance with the radeon, but if performance is good enough on just 9500 i would be happy.

il try the software mod first if i get radeon.

also no one has seem to have posted what memory and clock frequency they have gotten their card up to yet so i guess its just trial and error for anyone?

now that i think of it because so many people order their graphics cards off the internet they could be getting a bad chip now and then, in other words it could be better chance buying one locally? although i cant here because they dont have this card.

Steps correct?

Get card, install with drivers, use 3d mark first and write down how many points you would get by default, use rivatuner to add extra 4 pipelines and overclock, try 3d mark again and see how many more points you will get. and if i seem to get no extra points i guess il be stuck


What gives? this site says that this card has a crippled chip!!

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/sapphire-r9500-128.html#p12


to get this mod work all i do is use Riva tuner and i dont need bios or new card drivers or anything?

[DOA]

"Thanks for your help. "
No problem

"What do you think makes the chessboard effect?"
A mystery to me for now.

"do you think the software mod would be just as powerful as a hardware mod or is this not yet known? "
I am benchmarking both tonight, and will post results.

"most people that have had errors is this through hardware mod or software mod? "
Read reports from both. Doesnt matter.

"However i could get a geforce 4 instead or risk the chance with the radeon, but if performance is good enough on just 9500 i would be happy. "
Denpends on which Geforce4

"il try the software mod first if i get radeon. "
ok

"also no one has seem to have posted what memory and clock frequency they have gotten their card up to yet so i guess its just trial and error for anyone? "
I will post tomorrow. If you get the right memory chips, you can run 9700 pro speeds. I just got another radeon 9500 today and it has Infineon 3.3ns ram! Yeah baby!

"now that i think of it because so many people order their graphics cards off the internet they could be getting a bad chip now and then, in other words it could be better chance buying one locally? although i cant here because they dont have this card. "
Absolutley not. Electronics ship in ESD bags and (depending on which company) are usually packaged well. It is my opinion that ATI is selling 9700's that didnt pass QA as 9500's

"Get card, install with drivers, use 3d mark first and write down how many points you would get by default, use rivatuner to add extra 4 pipelines and overclock, try 3d mark again and see how many more points you will get. and if i seem to get no extra points i guess il be stuck "
I am going to write up a small article Thrusday or Friday with procedures. Check back.

"What gives? this site says that this card has a crippled chip!!
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2...00-128.html#p12 "
Havent read it yet.

"to get this mod work all i do is use Riva tuner and i dont need bios or new card drivers or anything?"
See above!

[BavariaBlade]

As DOA mentioned a few posts ago :D the chessboard efect could be the result of a reactivated but broken pipline. I think so , too.

If you use the 3d mark then take a closer look to your fillrate before and after the mod,there will be the biggest difference.

servus Axel

[Shadow 850]

Thanks, by the way how do i know which card has 3.3ns RAM? does this card have 3.3ns RAM? it doesnt seem to say.

link for your verification : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Graphics_and_Video_56.html it is the third card up from the bottom of the page.

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9500 Atlantis 128MB <-- as listed earlier.

it would be best to get this card if it has 3.3ns ram as i can overclock more without the need of additional cooling.

BTW the geforce card i "was going to or might get" was called gainward geforce 4 ti4600 GS ultra/750 XP

but as i know already if i can get this Radeon 9500 to be as much as benchmarks ive seen it will highly surpass the geforce 4, its a risk i have to take one way or another.. im just still uncertain

Thanks for your time again.

i need to know about this 128MB thing, if im right the 128MB card is actually 256 BIT right? i was confused because i read somewhere saying it was 128 BIT and not 256 BIT which is the one i need.. ok right this was definatly my last question. But for some reason the place i want to buy it is the link i showed you in this post in the description it says the card is 128 bit when its supposed to be 256??? :( but it is actually 128MB card which means it should be 256 BIT!! im so confused.. someone please get this right for me

Some guy posted this on riva tuner comments page

also 9500 PRO actually has 256bit memory because of the 128Mb DDR (8x32bit chips) so the patch makes it a fully fledged 9700!
(9500 only has 4x32bit(64Mb) chips so is stuck at 128bit memory)

i thought you had to use 9500 NON pro to get it to 9700? and i thought that the 9500 128mb was 256BIT anyway? this makes it all the more confusing for me.

if someone can tell me if this is the card i need that this is 256 BIT and i could possibly make faster than a 9700 pro and 3.3ns memory then thats all i need to know

[Shadow 850]

the online store says its 128 bit, then i read somewhere its supposed to be 256 BIT. i need the 256 BIT and 3.3NS ram, anyone know if that card has both?

the card is 128MB DDR which means it should be 256 BIT! but says its actually 128 bit, doesnt make any sense

as soon as i know i can order the card.

[Archon]

the 9500s are 256bit, websites are wrong.

[Shadow 850]

ah good, cheers i was waiting for someone to reply too :) do you know if this card has 3.3ns RAM or is there any way i can find out?

[llbbl]

You could always try calling the sales number and ask them if they know how fast the RAM is on the video card. I bet they will say something like, well it has 128 bit so you should have plenty of memory for all your gaming needs, do you want to go ahead and place an order now Mr Shadow85. Those pesky sales people always trying to get you to buy stuff. You would probably have to first get it straight that it is really 256 bit.

Make sure you don't get the amount of RAM and the size of the pipe confused. I wasn't aware that they had 256 bit pipes so you might want to double check that. Maybe we can find a link to the ATI site w/ specs on the 9500.

[Archon]

even newegg has it wrong, but many many many many many people bought their cards from there, and they are perfect

[Shadow 850]

But i cant order from Newegg as they dont ship internationally, is there anywhere anyone knows i can order one where they will ship to UK and definatly certain that the mod has at least 70% chance of it working? or even overclockers.co.uk as the site i posted? im still uncertain, i cant buy this card until im absolutely sure the mod has alot of chance of working to get it to 9700 PRO speeds.

[Shadow 850]

Basically i need to know what card and where i can buy even if anyone knows if the store i pointed out is the right one, and if i can ramp it up to 9700 pro speeds by which the card must have 3.3NS memory. if anyone here who has bought one and it has 3.3NS memory and have had sucess such as DOA with the mod can you please tell me where you bought it ( link ) and if they ship to the uk? thanks.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
But i cant order from Newegg as they dont ship internationally, is there anywhere anyone knows i can order one where they will ship to UK and definatly certain that the mod has at least 70% chance of it working? or even overclockers.co.uk as the site i posted? im still uncertain, i cant buy this card until im absolutely sure the mod has alot of chance of working to get it to 9700 PRO speeds.

How is this for speed of reply ?

I asked a friend and he said that you should check these three sites.

www.ebuyer.com
www.stak.com
www.aria.co.uk

[Shadow 850]

on stak trading i see ATI RADEON 9500 128MG DDR which is what the other site tells me, however it still doesnt say its 256 BIT or even have 3.3ns RAM ( i definatly need to know these facts off someone )

on aria i see only 9500 128MB PRO but i want the non pro as it reaches better speeds?

i see no 9500 on ebuyer.com

but thanks for trying to help.

some how i need to find out where DOA got his card that has 3.3ns ram and if they ship to uk as that would be useful.

if i knew overclockers.co.uk card had 3.3ns ram and is definatly 256 BIT then yes il order the card right now.

[BavariaBlade]

pls read my post on page 2 of this threat (about PCB)
you will find 2 pictures

the first ==> 256 bit

the second ===> 128 bit


Some people say that Ati will use the 128bit pcb for the 9500 non pro in future, but no one knows the exact date !!??

Buy it, look at the pictures and send it back or mod the card.



BTW :Radeon 9700 Pro + 512 MB RAM = £194.99 +£76.99

http://www.crucial.com/uk/promo/radeon9700.asp

servus Axel

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
on stak trading i see ATI RADEON 9500 128MG DDR which is what the other site tells me, however it still doesnt say its 256 BIT or even have 3.3ns RAM ( i definatly need to know these facts off someone )

on aria i see only 9500 128MB PRO but i want the non pro as it reaches better speeds?

i see no 9500 on ebuyer.com

but thanks for trying to help.

some how i need to find out where DOA got his card that has 3.3ns ram and if they ship to uk as that would be useful.

if i knew overclockers.co.uk card had 3.3ns ram and is definatly 256 BIT then yes il order the card right now.

I purchased it at www.26pc.com. I am not sure if they ship to UK. Check back in a couples of hours. I have an exstensive review on this mod and what is involved.

[Shadow 850]

let me get this straight 9500 128mb has 128 BIT until you enable the extra pipelines making it go into a 9700 which means it would then be 256 BIT, then you can overclock the card as it is and modded to be 9700 PRO speeds with hopefully no problems. would it behave exactly the same as a 9700 pro or would it be short of special features?

i can splash my money for the 9700 pro which is 220 pounds but i want to save my money and get this mod to work which will save me alot of money.

[ECA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
let me get this straight 9500 128mb has 128 BIT until you enable the extra pipelines making it go into a 9700 which means it would then be 256 BIT, then you can overclock the card as it is and modded to be 9700 PRO speeds with hopefully no problems. would it behave exactly the same as a 9700 pro or would it be short of special features?

i can splash my money for the 9700 pro which is 220 pounds but i want to save my money and get this mod to work which will save me alot of money.

NOT IF:
THE 9500 is a 9700 that didnt meet specifications properly, and it was a hardware problem.
The hardware is a corrupted 9700 made to work as a 9500.

Use the software mod FIRST. If it works, fine. If it dont, you can TRY the hardware hack, but that may be ALOT worse.
Do you have friends that OWN a business, go to them and ask to use there business licence to go to a hardware distributer and get it OEM and 25-40% less. Then you wont be out much if it DONT work.

[DOA]

Okay. Here is the article.

http://www.designtechnica.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=58&page=1

[ECA]

anybody got any Good hardware hacking locations??

[Shadow 850]

ok i ordered the card and should recieve it in 2-3 days ( tuesday or wednesday ) it is not OEM its the one off overclockers.co.uk but i believe it will work with this mod, i hope. <-- sapphire radeon 9500 atlantis 128MB

il try modding the card software wise, il let u guys know how i got on. /me mumbles.. gah i bet il be unlucky enough and il be playing chess on my screen :(

[Archon]

:( me too, but I like chess :)

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
ok i ordered the card and should recieve it in 2-3 days ( tuesday or wednesday ) it is not OEM its the one off overclockers.co.uk but i believe it will work with this mod, i hope. <-- sapphire radeon 9500 atlantis 128MB

il try modding the card software wise, il let u guys know how i got on. /me mumbles.. gah i bet il be unlucky enough and il be playing chess on my screen :(

So what will you do if the card doesn't overclock correctly? I would make sure to try the software mod to see if it can even run at the faster speeds before you try the permanent hardware mod.

[llbbl]

So let me get this straight. The idea is to take a cheaper card and make it as good as the more expensive one on the market., not to try and get the fastest video card currently sold. It seems that a lot of the cards performance will depend on your ability to mod the 9500.

[DOA]

Originally posted by TecknoGeek
So let me get this straight. The idea is to take a cheaper card and make it as good as the more expensive one on the market., not to try and get the fastest video card currently sold. It seems that a lot of the cards performance will depend on your ability to mod the 9500.

Well that is the idea right now anyway. But since the board design looks like it is going to change in the near future, the mod option may only be availible to those that have already purchased the correct one.

[Shadow 850]

Already purchased? hmm hope it works for me.

i need this card now just to see if it works ahhh :rolleyes:

yes il use the software mod first then try overclocking it a little at first, if that works then i will not need to mod it hardware by soldering the transistor as im afraid i might mess up the bios flashing part of it.

*twiddles fingers waiting*

/me uses geforce2 MX 64mb while waiting for card to arrive :sure

i have already blown up a 1500+ computer by accident ( switched wrong voltage power ) some months back and had my dads 1800+ and because of this i get the feeling computers dont like me any more, just got to pray that i dont see the chessboard effect

btw modding it the software way is very straightforward and easy from what ive read, you just use rivatuner and go into power user enable the 4 disabled pipes and restart. if that doesnt work then il try the hacked drivers on that other site

the one i ordered has a BLACK pcb or so it shows as a picture on their site, does this really matter? i read on another forum that people have had problems with black pcb's


there is one thing i do not understand, at the back of the boards you see 4 Blocks correct? right.. on some sites i only see 2 blocks with black chips in them and then you get other sites when all 4 blocks have chips in them, this has to be to do with it.. im not sure but it looks pretty strange to me. could someone take a closer look at the card ive ordered to see if its cpable of this mod. <-- the bit i mentioned there i could be wrong, it might have been 64MB version of the card i was looking at and not the 128mb version.

[ECA]

And if it works send me your OLD card.

[Shadow 850]

i have 2 old cards, Geforce 2mx 32mb PCI, geforce 2 MX 64mb AGP and i have a voodoo banshee somewhere i think.. heh ;)

it appears i was wrong about the card, he 128MB version has all chips in the blocks http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r9500-2/sapphire-r9500-128-scan-back.jpg

the 64mb version only has 2 chips in the blocks at the back
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r9500/r9500-scan-back.jpg

[ECA]

WELL, i got a 16 meg Viper 550.
Been looking at current cards and waiting for a decent price(limited income). They would probably work better with the current games and free up some resources.

[Shadow 850]

Depends what kind of card your after, if you have a cpu of at least 900mhz or higher and get a new graphics card you should be fine

[ECA]

You dont know me Very well do you. LMAO.
Im a believer in OLD tech and what it COULD do.
I belieave a Video card shouldnt RELY on the CPU.

[Shadow 850]

i know how you feel. i once thought that also, but now it isnt the case unless you have a decent cpu.

Does anyone know about the Black PCB? newegg different from the one im having. Neweggs card is red. ive heard reports black is bad.. for some reason unless it dont matter

[llbbl]

Look at all the page views !! We got / .'d and HardOCP'd.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/19/1526221&mode=thread&tid=126

[ECA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
i know how you feel. i once thought that also, but now it isnt the case unless you have a decent cpu.



Thats most of what I mean about TECH, going backwards. There used to be a few SMART cards that were independant of the CPU. Just thro data at it as we do a printer and the card did ALL the work.

[Shadow 850]

i was surprised to recieve my card this morning, plugging it in now and il let you know what happens.


OK i tested the card with the rivatuner patch mod and it works fine!, no problems. my 3d mark score did indeed go up and i had more 3d marks. in the nature demo i got 80 odd FPS, and in the dragothic ( high detail ) i got 90 FPS, in dragothic low detail i got 220 FPS. i tried overclockin the card and managed to get 93 FPS in nature.

i did notice one thing though which really isnt nothing bad, when i load up soldier of fortune 2 i see broken text at the bottom of the screen just before the loading screen comes up. that is all ive noticed glitch wise other than that the card runs superbly and im very happy with it, this card is very much worth buying!! that little glitch is nothing nor distracting its only there for a second of loading and there is nothing else, in fact it looks like a loading glitch :D

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
i was surprised to recieve my card this morning, plugging it in now and il let you know what happens.


OK i tested the card with the rivatuner patch mod and it works fine!, no problems. my 3d mark score did indeed go up and i had more 3d marks. in the nature demo i got 80 odd FPS, and in the dragothic ( high detail ) i got 90 FPS, in dragothic low detail i got 220 FPS. i tried overclockin the card and managed to get 93 FPS in nature.

i did notice one thing though which really isnt nothing bad, when i load up soldier of fortune 2 i see broken text at the bottom of the screen just before the loading screen comes up. that is all ive noticed glitch wise other than that the card runs superbly and im very happy with it, this card is very much worth buying!! that little glitch is nothing nor distracting its only there for a second of loading and there is nothing else, in fact it looks like a loading glitch :D

Ok so did you mod the 9500 or just test it out of the box in your system?

[Shadow 850]

i modded it with rivatuner and yes it did work because my fill rate doubled. i just overclocked it more and am getting a very high 101FPS in nature with brilliant stability :D it has basically doubled the cards power than what it originally was, 128 bit to 256 BIT = massive boost in speed. i am definatly landed with this card!! i even beat a friends score in 3d mark 2001 and he has a geforce 4 ti 4600.. my score was in the range of 11052 which is easily over 3000 more points of what you would get on a top of the range geforce 4, and for half the price!! once i say again this card totally owns!!

i played soldier of fortune 2 in 1280 by 768 from 1024 by 768 and i had no loss of speed at all, this is a very cool card indeed when modded.

before you mod the card your on par with a geforce 4 ti4200 and after you mod and overclock you simply blow any geforce 4 away on level with a 9700 pro.

at the moment im superbly stable at 337.5mhz core clock and 303.8mhz memory clock. DDR of course ;)

if i can get the memory to 320 without artifacts il have a card faster than 9700 pro.

P.S ( EDIT ) LOL! I CAN PLAY SOF2 AT 100 FPS ON 1600 by 1200 resolution MAX DETAIL AND 2AA SAMPLES!!!!!!!

[Archon]

once I get my card, and 9700'ify it, I'm gonna be getting a DangerDen watercooling kit, gonna throw the 9x00 block on there, and UBER OC it ;)

[Archon]

w00t! just ordered it (deposited a check for $800, might as well use some of that :) ). Rushed, should be here by Thursday (its Wednesday @ 6:00am.. holy shioooot.. its 6am, I thought it was like 2am..wtf, ahhh, damn you HBO!

[MentalPiracy]

I have hopefully ordered the same card; Sapphire ATI 9500 (http://www.cclcomputers.co.uk/specs/graphics/ati/9500/VGAATI95RTLSA.htm) from CCL as overclockers are out of stock. Hope I don't get a dodgy one...
I let you know if it works or not.

[IronSerif]

Welcome to Designtechnica MentalPiracy! :)

[MentalPiracy]

Cheers. I'll keep you posted on the graphics card.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Archon
w00t! just ordered it (deposited a check for $800, might as well use some of that :) ). Rushed, should be here by Thursday (its Wednesday @ 6:00am.. holy shioooot.. its 6am, I thought it was like 2am..wtf, ahhh, damn you HBO!

I just love those late night purchases :D

[Shadow 850]

Memory will not go over 315 ddr MHZ, going just over that causes a major glitch in graphics and needs to clock down 5mhz and reboot. 10mhz short of memory of a 9700 pro not much really is it, considering my core clock is at 337 ddr ;)

[Archon]

did you try fixing the heatsink?

I hear the stock sink sucks (or atleast the compound)

[Archon]

^ ^ ^ ^ wtf? ^ ^ ^ ^

[MentalPiracy]

I hope I get a card that performs as well as yours Shadow. I presume you got one with a black (http://www.sapphiretech.com/media/9500/9500boardshot.jpg) PCB.
I read about someone who resolved their artifact problem by installing the catalyst 2.5 drivers. There are also new catalyst 3.0a available. Maybe one of these will allow more overclocking.

[Shadow 850]

heh nah actually i had a nice sexy red card. it plays birlliantly in any game. stock cooling is good, ive overclocked from 275 core to 337. and thats crap stock cooling? :) also did wonders with the memoy clock.. originally you would get 40 FPS in nature demo, mod the card and get 80. overclock the card and i get 101.3 fps, nice increase of 20FPS by overclocking and no way is that something to argue about, stock cooling is all you need.

also when you change to very high resolution like i went to 1600 by 1200 max i could get with detail also, who needs anti aliasing? you should try it.. its awesome and crisp as hell actually the lowest i seen it drop to was when 4 people were using shotguns on the screen which was 55 FPS. other than that it stays at a very nice 120 in all spots or higher.

mental piracy that card should be fine, same as mine and same box.. the card is actually red not black as show on site :)
as long as it is the 128mb DDR version and not the 64mb version

i will be testing my modded card on - Doom III Alpha - soon, il let you know the results *waits impatiently*

IVE tested GTA 3 ( grand theft auto 3 ) at a very high resolution 1280 by 768 x 32, draw distance set to full and no lag ( except a bit when loading a radio station due to CD load ) i was superbly surprised how fast this game ran at such high detail and the games levels are massive lighting is brilliant too. i will be testing wolfenstein also soon.

the only bad thing ive noticed about this card is the lagging of 2D scrolling games, i dont know if its me but im sure its slightly jerky if this is the card or driver issue i have no clue.

i am back again and guess what? ive tried GTA 3 but this time i went completely crazy and drove the resolution right up to the max my 21" monitor will go, i set it to 1600 by 1200 resolution with every graphic and draw detail right maxed out, my game never slowed down once!! i absolutely love this card. It seems every game i try you can set it to any resolution with maximum detail and you really dont notice any speed loss.. this is lovely!! its like playing an x box 2 on your pc! Crisp and i mean CLEAR as hell! this card will last easily a year and then more, i urge anyone to buy it right now even at this cheap price. there are no games out which even put any strain on this card!!

[MentalPiracy]

Unfortunately CCL have e-mailed me saying that the 9500 is out of stock...
Everyone and their pet hamster must be buying these!
They say new stock will arrive in 2-3 working days. Lets hope for once this is actually accurate.

I hope that the new stock does not have a revised PCB or something...

(hmmm... the Sapphire 9700 (non PRO) is only £50 more... *contemplates*)

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
Memory will not go over 315 ddr MHZ, going just over that causes a major glitch in graphics and needs to clock down 5mhz and reboot. 10mhz short of memory of a 9700 pro not much really is it, considering my core clock is at 337 ddr ;)

Hey the memory clock on the 9700 pro is 310 (620)! You did reach Pro speed if you can get it stable at 310. Try some nice vga memory heatsinks, and a better cooler for your gpu. I managed to get my gpu to 365 now with better cooling. Memory will not go stable over 300 though :( Guess you got a card with some good memory.

[Archon]

just got my card!

Installed my new motherboard (the a7n8x dx), my new memory (corsair 3200), and the video card -- booted up, and all perdy - windows crashes while loading.

what does this teach you, kids?

- Dont replace all your hardware in 1 sitting.

The fix?

Im sure there is one, but I dont care.. Format :)

[DOA]

Originally posted by Archon
just got my card!

Installed my new motherboard (the a7n8x dx), my new memory (corsair 3200), and the video card -- booted up, and all perdy - windows crashes while loading.

what does this teach you, kids?

- Dont replace all your hardware in 1 sitting.

The fix?

Im sure there is one, but I dont care.. Format :)

Well if you are using a different kind of raid or scsi controller, then windows will have to be reloaded or repaired.

[Archon]

using neither, the problem is when you replace the motherboard, you lose all its drivers, and winblows doesnt like that.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Archon
using neither, the problem is when you replace the motherboard, you lose all its drivers, and winblows doesnt like that.

Hmm... Had this problem one time with windows 2000, but I ghost os's all day with different mb, snd cards, vid cards, etc and dont run into any problem. ONLY when there's like a promise controller, raid, or scsi and ah... you the drive has to be same partition.

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S

If you are using 2000, Microsoft has a utility called sysprep (can be downloaded from microsoft), that you can run before making any hardware changes. It will cause ALL the drivers in device manager to be uninstalled. Then the next time you boot with different mobo, it will just treat it as a new install and find all the drivers again.

Anyway, you may already know all this so I apologize in advance.:o

[Archon]

HMM seems nothing I do opens the extra pipelines. I can overclock the card fine, got +20FPS in Nature from overclocking, but thats it! I dunno whats goin on, why I guess the pipelines arent open...

and the the rivatuner FAQ and thread and everything say "you'll see a 9700 Pro driver in your display adapter" - yeah, okay, my driver said before, and now "ATI Radeon 9700 / 9500 Series"

Somewhat ambiguous, would you not say?

its gettin on 4am, Im tired of trying to figure this out, I'll ***** later ;)

[jedeye]

FAO Shadow

Just built new PC :-

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP 2100+ (running stock)
512Mb PC2700 (1 x 512)
Western Digital 80Gb 7200 "JB" Series IDE

I have been intending buying a 128Mb 9500 Pro for approx
£145 but having recently read about both the "hacked bios" upgrade by warp11 for the 9500 Pro and now both the software and hardware mod for the 9500 Non-Pro not sure what to do

Firstly I'm not sure if I've the bottle to carry out the hardware mod for the 9500 Non-Pro, However software mod for 9500 Non-Pro or even BIOS upgrade for 9500 Pro I'd be ok with

What's chances of receiving the 9500 Non-Pro only to find even the software mod won't work (ie the pipelines are knackered) as I don't want to settle for a stock 9500 Non-Pro

Sounds to me that the modded 9500 Pro will give nearly same performance as the modded 9500 (only slight drop in performance due to limiting 128bit DDR)

Where did you get your non pro from and did it pass the software mod ONLY

Cheers

jedeye

[DOA]

Originally posted by Archon
HMM seems nothing I do opens the extra pipelines. I can overclock the card fine, got +20FPS in Nature from overclocking, but thats it! I dunno whats goin on, why I guess the pipelines arent open...

and the the rivatuner FAQ and thread and everything say "you'll see a 9700 Pro driver in your display adapter" - yeah, okay, my driver said before, and now "ATI Radeon 9700 / 9500 Series"

Somewhat ambiguous, would you not say?

its gettin on 4am, Im tired of trying to figure this out, I'll ***** later ;)

While in display properties, click advanced. Click on adapter. It will say under adapter properties either 9500 or 9700.

Make sure you not trying to mod the ati2mtag.sys thats in the system32 folder. Extract all catalyst driver files to a folder, THEN modify the ati2mtag.sys file within that folder. Make sure you are using catalyst 3.0. Then go to device manager, and manually install the driver, pointing to the location of the newly extracted drivers. You should get a message that its not digitially signed.

Run 3d mark and look for 2200 texels in multitexture pass of fill rate test.

[DOA]

Originally posted by jedeye
FAO Shadow

Just built new PC :-

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP 2100+ (running stock)
512Mb PC2700 (1 x 512)
Western Digital 80Gb 7200 "JB" Series IDE

I have been intending buying a 128Mb 9500 Pro for approx
£145 but having recently read about both the "hacked bios" upgrade by warp11 for the 9500 Pro and now both the software and hardware mod for the 9500 Non-Pro not sure what to do

Firstly I'm not sure if I've the bottle to carry out the hardware mod for the 9500 Non-Pro, However software mod for 9500 Non-Pro or even BIOS upgrade for 9500 Pro I'd be ok with

What's chances of receiving the 9500 Non-Pro only to find even the software mod won't work (ie the pipelines are knackered) as I don't want to settle for a stock 9500 Non-Pro

Sounds to me that the modded 9500 Pro will give nearly same performance as the modded 9500 (only slight drop in performance due to limiting 128bit DDR)

Where did you get your non pro from and did it pass the software mod ONLY

Cheers

jedeye

Got a lot of questions by email too with "what are the chances that this will work". The chances are 50/50. I have heard just as much success as unsucess. (leaning more toward success). The bios mod that warp11 has graciously shared currently only allows unlocking of the fixed clocks of the card. So the moded 9500 pro will only overclock with 128bit bus. It will not compare to the performance gain acheived by the 9500 non pro mod. So its really up to whether or not you are a gambling man.

[Archon]

did that, extracted drivers to C:/ATI/....

patched ati2mtag.

"Browsing for file ati2mtag.sys... compressed file selected
Depacking ati2mtag.sy_... succeeded
Browsing for file ati2mtag.sys... selected 6.14.01.6255, 546560 bytes
0006e08e> matched sequence has been replaced
83 f8 40 0f 85 d8 00 00 00 66 81 bd 00 ff ff ff 02 10 0f 85 c9 00 00 00
66 81 a5 02 ff ff ff fe fe 66 81 8d 02 ff ff ff 00 0e 90 90 90 90 90 90
File has been successfully patched and saved as ati2mtag.sys
Backup copy has been saved as ati2mtag.old"

I goto device manager, manually install the driver, show ALL hardware (rather than compatable, because in compatable is still shows "ATI Radeon 9500 / 9700", search for the "ATI Radeon 9700" but it is not in the list, there is a HUGE list. "ALL-IN-WONDER 9000 -- through -- Tyan Tachyon G9000 Pro - Secondary".

So, I click show compatable again, and I get two drivers both "ATI Radeon 9700/9500 Series" I click one and install. Says the driver doesnt have the windows logo, continue...

and reboot... brb

back, and driver says in adapter, "Chip Type: Radeon 9700AGP (ND)"....

run 3dmark... brb

1547.9 MT/s in single
2174.3 MT/s in multi

had this last night, now let me try and run Nature (I kept crashing here)

brb...

PC crashes after .06 seconds ( I can see the timer in nature ;) )

going to turn off my overclock.... but there was no overclock, hmmm.... gonna try nature again, but then need to go out for a bit.

brb if it works, bbl if it doesnt.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Archon
did that, extracted drivers to C:/ATI/....

patched ati2mtag.

"Browsing for file ati2mtag.sys... compressed file selected
Depacking ati2mtag.sy_... succeeded
Browsing for file ati2mtag.sys... selected 6.14.01.6255, 546560 bytes
0006e08e> matched sequence has been replaced
83 f8 40 0f 85 d8 00 00 00 66 81 bd 00 ff ff ff 02 10 0f 85 c9 00 00 00
66 81 a5 02 ff ff ff fe fe 66 81 8d 02 ff ff ff 00 0e 90 90 90 90 90 90
File has been successfully patched and saved as ati2mtag.sys
Backup copy has been saved as ati2mtag.old"

I goto device manager, manually install the driver, show ALL hardware (rather than compatable, because in compatable is still shows "ATI Radeon 9500 / 9700", search for the "ATI Radeon 9700" but it is not in the list, there is a HUGE list. "ALL-IN-WONDER 9000 -- through -- Tyan Tachyon G9000 Pro - Secondary".

So, I click show compatable again, and I get two drivers both "ATI Radeon 9700/9500 Series" I click one and install. Says the driver doesnt have the windows logo, continue...

and reboot... brb

back, and driver says in adapter, "Chip Type: Radeon 9700AGP (ND)"....

run 3dmark... brb

1547.9 MT/s in single
2174.3 MT/s in multi

had this last night, now let me try and run Nature (I kept crashing here)

brb...

PC crashes after .06 seconds ( I can see the timer in nature ;) )

going to turn off my overclock.... but there was no overclock, hmmm.... gonna try nature again, but then need to go out for a bit.

brb if it works, bbl if it doesnt.

If you install the regular drivers, will it still lock up? Have you changed any of the riva tuner settings? If so, click on restore driver defauts and try the software mod again.

[Shadow 850]

Hmm.. well, i need to ask a question or maybe two. My games seem to lag after a short amount of time, whether i have resolution up too high i dont think it should matter because they run smooth, say your walking around in gta 3 after a minute or so you get the slight bit of jerk then it goes normal. i dont know if this is my system or if i have enough disk space left using windows? 1.45 GB ( other partitions are empty ) i have 512 DDR ram. and your answers please?

[ECA]

Net of single player?
Try this math.
DPIxDPIx Graphic res x the graphic DP
1024x768x 16 bit=786448 x Dot pitch 100.=78,644,800
Thats the general amout of ram needed to display 1 frame.
This dont consider any anti alias, or extra buffering.
What I think you are getting, is the REFRESH of ram.
Either cut the buffering size, or lower the DPI 1 notch.

NOW, if this is NET play.
You need to understand something about hardware. Are you using a dialup modem? If you are, then that could be a problem in HIGH res. As some progs dont consider it, and the data being sent back and forth Lags, and the video has to WAIT for the data to be recieved and rendered. In this case, it wouldnt really matter alot about the res.

[Unregistered]

hey sorry about that, i mean 256 DDR not 512. i have a fast connection 600k modem, GTA 3 is not multiplayer. i found out that if there isnt enough ram free it will use virtual memory from the hard disk.. this could be the problem as it takes up twice the amount of virtual memory if your low on ram. i free'd disk space. il see what happens.

[ECA]

Which OS you useing as wind 98 uses 10 to 1.
If it needs 1 med of video it will use 10 megs of virtual ram.

And yes that is dependant on how high you have your graphics set. 256 megs isnt alot in high res.
And I think I have only seen 1 card with more then 256, along time ago. there must be some out there, But, I DOUGHT we could afford them.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Unregistered
hey sorry about that, i mean 256 DDR not 512. i have a fast connection 600k modem, GTA 3 is not multiplayer. i found out that if there isnt enough ram free it will use virtual memory from the hard disk.. this could be the problem as it takes up twice the amount of virtual memory if your low on ram. i free'd disk space. il see what happens.

Hey Shawdow, this is getting a little off topic of this thread. If you are going to continue this conversation, could you please start another thread. Thanks!

:)

[Archon]

Well, its official - my card is stinky! I mod it, but it doesnt get artifacts or anything, it just crashes, all together ;)

It runs the fill-rate demo perfectly, but everything else is kaput. I tried RivaTuner and W1ZZARD's drivers, both dont work.

Im gonna use this card anyways, atleast until the R350 or R400 come out

10500 3dmark scores :(
better than my previous 1748 score! :)

[Shadow 850]

its ok i fixed the problem, got 4GB free disk space now no lag at 1600 by 1200 res on any game, graphics card is fine and working awesome.

p.s thx to DOA for helping me patch and install the drivers.

:)

[FloppyDisk]

Hi, im just wondering but you guys think this (http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=6164&ad=pwatch) card will work??? thanks :D :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

[DOA]

Originally posted by FloppyDisk
Hi, im just wondering but you guys think this (http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=6164&ad=pwatch) card will work??? thanks :D :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

If you get the card that's in the picture, then it can be modded

[Revenant]

I purchased a 9500 np from BananaPC.com. It arrived and I did the software mod. It worked fine. The fill rates in 3dMark were correct for a 9700 card. I get ever-so-slight artifacting in some games (Battlefield 1942, the Lobby scene in 3dMark). My question is, are these the artifacts that was caused by faulty pipelines being enabled on the card?? Or is there another solution I can try? I flashed the card's BIOS with warp11's Club 9700 BIOS to see if that would fix my problems, but it did not. Should I maybe try another BIOS?

Please help, my soldering iron is hungry for silicon :-)

[Shadow850]

i have no problems at all with mine now, card working brilliantly. The more you overclock the more your fillrate becomes bigger, i tried the card alone in Nature demo and got 53 FPS, modded : 83FPS, modded and overclocked 101FPS. i could not get any higher unless i get better cooling.. oh and to that other guy, i got my card off www.overclockers.co.uk 2 weeks ago about :D

[Unregistered]

hello,

does any one if this mod work for the club 3d cards??

thanx in advance

[DOA]

Originally posted by Revenant
I purchased a 9500 np from BananaPC.com. It arrived and I did the software mod. It worked fine. The fill rates in 3dMark were correct for a 9700 card. I get ever-so-slight artifacting in some games (Battlefield 1942, the Lobby scene in 3dMark). My question is, are these the artifacts that was caused by faulty pipelines being enabled on the card?? Or is there another solution I can try? I flashed the card's BIOS with warp11's Club 9700 BIOS to see if that would fix my problems, but it did not. Should I maybe try another BIOS?

Please help, my soldering iron is hungry for silicon :-)

If you are getting the artifacts with the software mod, then you will get them with the hardware mod also. They are caused by the faulty pipelines. Warp11's bios simply allows overclocking. Flashing with a different bios will not help. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. With this mod, you just have to be lucky enough to get a good card with all 8 pipeline functional.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Unregistered
hello,

does any one if this mod work for the club 3d cards??

thanx in advance

If the card has the 9700 pcb, then the mod will work. Compare the card you want to purchase with the layout of the card in the "9500 to 9700 mod" article under computer guides on this site.

[Unregistered]

thank you for your fast reply

it has the same L-shaped memory layout and it is a non pro

so it must work

lol


gonna buy it to night..

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
thank you for your fast reply

it has the same L-shaped memory layout and it is a non pro

so it must work

lol


gonna buy it to night..

Welcome to the forums man! Why dont you register so we can chat more! I would love to hear about your new card.:D

[Unregistered]

Shadow850 - You bought yours from Overclockers right ? And you have the L-Shaped memory layout?

Just bought one myself..the Saphire and it's the new 9500 in line design. So just a warning to others...check BEFORE you buy!!

Nomad

[Unregistered]

Just a thought. Is it still possible to turn the 9500 into a 9500 Pro ? I'm talking about the new 9500 layout 128mb to the 9500 Pro ?

Nomad

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Just a thought. Is it still possible to turn the 9500 into a 9500 Pro ? I'm talking about the new 9500 layout 128mb to the 9500 Pro ?

Nomad

Hi Nomad, welcome to the forums! Why dont you register so we can all chat with ya some more.

[Nomad]

Well, have bookmarked the site somay as well be registered :)

So anyone got any thoughts on the 9500 as they are being shipped now, i.e on the newer 9500 pcb and thus..not modifiable .

The 9500 only comes with 4 pipes active unlike the pro which has 8. Is it possible to switch in these missing 4 pipes or am i stuck with it as it is?

At the moment 3DMark 2001SE gives a score of 8310, which, although a hell of a lot higher than my previous GF3 is obviously way short of a modded 9500.

Oh and on a related subject. Does anyone else have problems running any of the ATI DX9 demo's ? If i try and run them i get the following message:

This demo requires support of DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shaders v.20 and Pixel Shaders v2.0.
The graphics processor and/or drivers in this system do not meet these requirements.

"If the graphics processor is an ATI radeon 9700 or newer, please visit ATI.COM to download the latest drivers.
If you do not have DirectX 9.0 or newer installed , visit Microsoft.com/DirectX.

this application will now exit"

I have DX9 of course and latest cats loaded. Anyone got a solution ?

Thanks

Nomad

[FloppyDisk]

Originally posted by DOA


If you get the card that's in the picture, then it can be modded

thnx dood, i'm either getting the card tommorow or saturday, ill let you know how it goes :D

buh-bye gf2mx :D

[Nomad]

Answered my own question about the DX9 demo's. Just ran the setup for the latest Cat drivers and everything works now. Still a bit gutted about getting a card that can't be modded but...it's not that bad really.

I'm changing motherboards soon for an Nforce 2 so that may help boost my 3DMark scores a little.

Running the core at 300 at the moment and memory at 287. Did have the core at 315 and was ok for a while but then kept getting sudden black screens and had to reboot.

Nomad

[shagnscoob]

so what do u guys think is the final verdict?


my take:
im going to buy a 9500 and attempt to software mod it, if it doesnt work, fine, ill just use it without modded, maybe overclock a lil but thats all.

is it worth the money to hope u have all 8 pipelines?

[Nomad]

Well.. IF you are lucky enough to get the 9700 pcb and you can mod it, you will have an absolute bargain. It's not actually a bad card as it is. As i said, in it's standard from it's faster than my previous GF3 and has the big plus of being a DX9 card.

I think someone mentioned that all cards will run DX9's etra features but that a DX8.1 card would just do it in software. Not so sure about that. Maybe an 8.1 card can run DX9 features in software...but it's going to be a hell of a performance hit if it can!

Anyway...as a cheap option. I'd definitly choose the 9500 over a Nvidia 4200 if only because of the DX9 feature. Plus of course you also get the best TV out of any card. ATI have always been way ahead in that area.

ATI drivers are still temperamental but i can live with that for the moment.

Nomad

[shagnscoob]

so yes or no? worth the chance?

[shagnscoob]

well ia sk because my friend said im better off just saving for a 9700 pro because its stil a 9700 pro and itll have more stuff than a modded 9500....

[Nomad]

That doesn't make sense though. The 9500...if you get the right one...is actually a 9700 but with certain features disabled. When you mod the card you enable those features and if you check the benchmarks you'll see that the modded 9500 is, in many cases faster than the 9700!

I agree it's a chance you take as to it working or not. But worst case scenerio is you end up with a standard 9500...like i did and still save some money.

What's your current system spec by the way ?

Nomad

[Archon]

for instance, mine doesnt work, but I dont care.. its still a VERY BIG upgrade, and a nice card all the same; besides, I'll just trade it up for the 9900 when it comes out ;)

[damiandimitri]

some info on the Connect 3D carD;


There are two way to softmod your 9500:
use the rivatuner 2.0 + 9700 softpatch (download)

This patch DID NOT WORK on the connect3D card.

Installation of SoftR9700 with Rivatuner:

Select Power User
Click on the Open Patch Script button
Browse to: /PatchScripts/ATI/SoftR9700/
Open and execute the scipt, You MUST agree to the license!
Hit continue and point the script towards thge spot where ati2mtag.sys is located(usually /Windows/system32/drivers/ and patch it.

Restart and start benchmarking
SoftR9700 only works with only 2K/XP, if you have a Win 9x/ME system the download the patch we released! For those those who cannot install SoftR9700!
Don"t try to patch the file in %windir%system32drivers if you"ve digitally signed driver installed and you don´t know what is Windows file protection and how to avoid it. OS tacks changes you"ve made in any digitally signed file and automatically replaces it with the original one if you´re trying to replace/patch it on the fly. I bet that it was exactly what you did.
The more correct way is the patch driver _before_ installing it, it will work for sure.

This guide is courtesy of hilbert@guru3D.com.


use wizzard´s patched drivers (download)

This patch DID WORK work on the connect3D card!


Put the hacked driver file into the directory "2KXP_INFBX_xxx" where the driver installer expanded the files to.
Rename it to ati2mtag.sys
Delete the "ati2mtag.sy_" file.
Then update your Display Adapter drivers via Device Manager...
Right-click on "Radeon 9700/9500 SERIES"...
Update Driver...
Install from a list...
Don"t search. I will choose the driver...
Click "Have Disk" and navigate to the "2KXP_INF" driver directory...
Click "Finish", then reboot
Run 3DMark fillrate tests - expect around 2500 in multitexture fillrate if it worked.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Archon
for instance, mine doesnt work, but I dont care.. its still a VERY BIG upgrade, and a nice card all the same; besides, I'll just trade it up for the 9900 when it comes out ;)

So you tried modding yours and failed? At least you didn't end up with a ruined card !! Maybe we should add a poll to this thread.

"Did your mod work?"

[shagnscoob]

thats a good idea cuz im still iffy about it, i dont really mind not having the best, but if its a pain in the butt AND buggy (the software mod) i wont wanna do it. and so far ive only heard mostly 3rd person reports, but w/e. maybe someone should make new thread with a poll

[damiandimitri]

i agrre,

we should really know how succesfull this mod is


at almost ordered one...but i am still not sure

i don't want a normal 9500

[Nomad]

Yeah do be careful if your ordering a 9500 now folks. All the new ones are on the 9500 pro type pcb and you won't be able to do the 9700 mod. Although you should be still able to change it to a 9500pro...i tried that but still not sure if it has worked.

Anyway..best solution is always to try the software mod first. At worst it won't work and you can revert to the normal unpatched driver. At best you'll have a blisteringly fast 9700 for very little money!

Personally i wouldn't do the hardware mod because it will invalidate your warranty. Wait until your 12 months is up and then give it a go...although we will have all probably moved on to yet another generation of cards by then.

Would like to hear from anyone who has the new type 9500 pcb and has patched it to a 9500pro. Did it work? What difference if any did you see?

atb
Nomad

[numbers]

Article - http://www.pimprig.com/modules.php?s=&name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=108

199.99 premodded pre tested cards. -
http://www.bulletpc.com/Qstore/p000293.htm

they pretest them at 350MHz / 290MHz but ship them at
330MHz core / 270MHz

the ram is 3.3ns versus the "real" pro's 2.86. So the overclock might be limited on the ram but bang for the buck...it's got it.

- Numbers

[shagnscoob]

omg im definately buying it now, pre-modded??? excellent, i wasnt gonna do it myself, but the 30 day warranty is a lil sketchy. does it include chessboard errors? cuz i dont want a card with that chessboard crap

[llbbl]

Originally posted by numbers
Article - http://www.pimprig.com/modules.php?s=&name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=108

199.99 premodded pre tested cards. -
http://www.bulletpc.com/Qstore/p000293.htm

they pretest them at 350MHz / 290MHz but ship them at
330MHz core / 270MHz


$200 for a premodded card. Can't beat that !!

[llbbl]

Originally posted by shagnscoob
thats a good idea cuz im still iffy about it, i dont really mind not having the best, but if its a pain in the butt AND buggy (the software mod) i wont wanna do it. and so far ive only heard mostly 3rd person reports, but w/e. maybe someone should make new thread with a poll

I thought I would include a link to the poll to make it easier on all you guys. :D

http://forums.designtechnica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1141

[Unregistered]

Where can I get the file soft9700w9x.rts file from? Basically I'm interested in converting a 9500 into a 9700 in Windows 98 and I am trying to understand all the steps...

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Where can I get the file soft9700w9x.rts file from? Basically I'm interested in converting a 9500 into a 9700 in Windows 98 and I am trying to understand all the steps...

I found this about it.


Soft9700
Now we are going to speak about the Soft9700. When we just starting examining the RADEON 9500 and found out that it was based on the same die R300, Aleksei Nikolaichuk (AKA Unwinder, developer of the RivaTuner) and me suspected that the chip was chopped at the software level. The situation with the memory buses is clear: the RADEON 9700/Pro and 9500 128MB have 256 bits, the 9500 64MB and 9500PRO have 128 bits. But it's was quite vague about normal 8 pipelines. I also mentioned about the way of using 8 pipelines on the hardware level by a bit of resoldering.

And now we have found a software way! Aleksei has been working on it for 3 weeks and has finally found the protection and the way to avoid it! With the patch for the RivaTuner you can modify one of the files of the distributive of the drivers and install the drivers from this distributive! We tested both cards - RADEON 9500 64MB and 9500 128MB, and got a positive result: the first one was almost the RADEON 9500 PRO, while the other behaved like RADEON 9700. The results differ from the original ones by a couple of tenths of FPS, that is why it makes no sense to show them on the diagrams separately. Note that both R9500 cards can overclock, that is why it's easy to get even RADEON 9700 PRO! The developer of the RivaTuner promises to integrate this patch into the next version of the utility so that everyone can use it.

A bit on connection between the hardware redesigning (resoldering) and software one. In case of the R300 PCI DeviceID is programmed in the BIOS. In case of the R9500PRO/R9700(PRO) - both high and low bytes are programmed, that is why if you flash the BIOS from R9500 into the R9500PRO the driver will identify the card as R9500 and use only 4 pixel pipelines. In the R9500 the resistor on the chip forbids programming of the high byte of PCI DeviceID making impossible to change the ID in the BIOS. But nothing prevents from forcing ID on the drivers level. That's exactly what we did.


http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/r9500-9700-dx9-p1.html




Here is the program


RivaTuner is the most powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA display adapters running under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME / Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of the Detonator drivers. All versions of the Detonator drivers have a lot of undocumented registry entries. Some of them don’t affect anything, but there are some that are very useful. In general, they cannot give you big performance boost but they can improve image quality and solve some compatibility problems. RivaTuner will help you to change all undocumented registry entries. It supports all versions of Detonators drivers starting from Detonator 2.08 under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME (Detonator 5.08 or higher under Windows 2000 / Windows XP).


http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

[shagnscoob]

so does the warranty for the bulletpc modded 9500 cover chessboard artifacting?

[shagnscoob]

nevermind im wrong, they test it beforehand for the checkerboard effect and other artifacts, so thast it, im completely decided that im going to buy it. thanks everyone for the input on this thread

[damiandimitri]

does any one knowd if the connect 3d cards can be modded with out artifacts??

[BavariaBlade]

A guy from switzeland has tested some of the connect 3d cards.
2 out of 6 have no artefacts.
Some other guys have that card to without a problem.

(with wizzard)

[damiandimitri]

2 out of 6 is very bad

i think i buy a 9500 pro and flash it with a overclockable bios.

[Unregistered]

I found this company selling the Sapphire RADEON 9500 128MB DDR DirectX9.0 OEM w/DVI ADAPTOR for $151 - http://www.dljsystem.com/detailsVidCard.asp?productID=1091

According to that picture it is a moddable card. I don't want to take any chances so I called them up. They told me that the memory is laid out with two on top, two on right of GPU. He answered it like someone had asked him that question before ;)
He said the PCB is red also. I asked him how long they've had that particular card and he said 1 1/2 weeks to 2 weeks. So all things point to the 9700 pcb design and a moddable card.

He told me there is 15-20 in stock left. I will let ya know what happens. In my opinion the possibility of getting a 9700 pro for $150 is almost better than paying $200 and getting the modded one. I'll at least try these guys first though.

- LilGator

[damiandimitri]

most cards accept the mod when they have the right memory lay out....but they still have artifacts..

i don't want a bad image on my screen, i better save some money to be sure i have a good card

but on the other side..i am not good in beeing patient

[shagnscoob]

i cant be trusted with soldering :o

[Unregistered]

The hardware mod works with some conductive glue, but I am still unclear about this. if you name the 3 resistors 1 to 3, 1 being the top one, how can this work if you now connect the middle resistor (2) with both 1 and 3?

and this sentence is not making sense (from the review)
"Simply connect the top resistor contact with the contact directly above it with conductive ink,"

anyone has a nice picture of this mod? I don't know how to solder electronics but I am competent enough to to the conductive glue mod!

thx

Satanic Vomit

[BavariaBlade]

USE the Software mod. It is much more easier and you wil not lose your Warrenty.

Use the Rivatuner or the wizzard patch (somewhere in this threat is a link)


conductive glue :
This is going to work because the current will follow the easiest way and this is through the glue and not through the 6K8 Resistor (arrghh..my english...hope you understand).

Picture:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/images/2003-01/lane.jpg

How to link:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1042058170

servus

[damiandimitri]

your English is good enough to explain it to us

thanx

[Unregistered]

@BavariaBlade: Right, but ATI will make sure that this software mod is not working in the new driver set... so the hardware way is the "once for all" way of dealing with that. no?

The gluing seems pretty easy. Any comments about which brand I should use?

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
@BavariaBlade: Right, but ATI will make sure that this software mod is not working in the new driver set... so the hardware way is the "once for all" way of dealing with that. no?

The gluing seems pretty easy. Any comments about which brand I should use?
Hey man, why don't you register so we can all talk with ya some more?

[Unregistered]

@Ioman: i will if I have the time, I am involved with other forums and I don't want to dillute my contributions too much.

Is this a reply you have somewhere on your comp and you just cut and paste it? it's not the first time I see this reply in this thread from you. :)

Satanic-Vomit

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
@Ioman: i will if I have the time, I am involved with other forums and I don't want to dillute my contributions too much.

Is this a reply you have somewhere on your comp and you just cut and paste it? it's not the first time I see this reply in this thread from you. :)

Satanic-Vomit

No, I don't cut and paste it....perhaps I should turn off the unregistered posting??

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Ioman


No, I don't cut and paste it....perhaps I should turn off the unregistered posting??

We are not good enough or something. He can't take 30 seconds to fill out a forum registration than something must be wrong.

/. and K5 don't have what this site does. HardOCP can't compete!

[ECA]

Im wondering..
Anybody know a lawyer??
could we ask them about this.
Just because we found that the Card can be upgraded, shouldnt mean they should change it. Also, that the difference in the cards is ONLY the cost. REALLY

[shagnscoob]

lol Ioman, u have 1337 posts, thast leet

[PRiME]

Hello, I'm down here in Australia and a local store Umart has a "ATI Radeon 9500 128M Pro" for sale, I'm planning to get it tomorrow morning, It be nice to get some info on this card but all I was told it was Some SUPER brand and everyone was happy with them? I also read this PRO 128mb one has faster ram so it should all be good, tho some of you are going on about how u need a NON PRO? hmm from all the articles I have read it should work with any 128mb 9500 card PRo or Non Pro.

The pro is ment to have better memory non the less, 2.8ns compared to 3.3ns the non-pros have.

So I read. Any feedback possible? should I be ok buying this card? I dunno the brand apart from the guy saying it was SUPER, I think its from ATi themselves, unsure.


http://www.umart.com.au/index2.phtml?bid=2 in QLD/Products/Video/AGP section.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by shagnscoob
lol Ioman, u have 1337 posts, thast leet

haha thanks, you wanna be LEET too? Get to posting!! LMAO:D

[PRiME]

I'll be picking this 128mb Pro up tomorrow, its a 9500. Perhaps its not a Pro and is just a typo on there page, or perhaps this is what they call the 128mb 9500 with good memory, another australian seller has some Saphire or something brand which is also 128mb PRo and according to people on OCAU they work with the mod as well.

Only time will tell, I be going to pick it up tomorrow, I will do testing with the software mod. Hope all goes well because if not then I won't be doing much of a upgrade over my Beefed up GF ti4200 running at 300/680. If It doesn't work then ell well, I will sell it sometime in the future and try again.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by PRiME
Hello, I'm down here in Australia and a local store Umart has a "ATI Radeon 9500 128M Pro" for sale, I'm planning to get it tomorrow morning, It be nice to get some info on this card but all I was told it was Some SUPER brand and everyone was happy with them? I also read this PRO 128mb one has faster ram so it should all be good, tho some of you are going on about how u need a NON PRO? hmm from all the articles I have read it should work with any 128mb 9500 card PRo or Non Pro.

The pro is ment to have better memory non the less, 2.8ns compared to 3.3ns the non-pros have.

So I read. Any feedback possible? should I be ok buying this card? I dunno the brand apart from the guy saying it was SUPER, I think its from ATi themselves, unsure.


http://www.umart.com.au/index2.phtml?bid=2 in QLD/Products/Video/AGP section.


My question is how would you go about checking to make sure you got the PRO instead of the normal card. They might make it easy on you and list it on the board somewhere. I doubt that a company would goto all the trouble of switching a PRO with a normal card, so if it comes with the right packaging, it is at least an indication that you got the right card.

It doesn't seem to me that having faster RAM is going to affect your ability to sodor or even for that matter affect the software upgrade.

[DOA]

Prime, where did you read that the 9500Pro works with the mod? I went to ocau and could not find it. Can you send me a link? And is $387 the same as $387 america dollars? Thats expensive!

[damiandimitri]

i think that the pro only can be overclocked with special firmware

but afther that it beats most geforces

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by PRiME
I'll be picking this 128mb Pro up tomorrow, its a 9500. Perhaps its not a Pro and is just a typo on there page, or perhaps this is what they call the 128mb 9500 with good memory, another australian seller has some Saphire or something brand which is also 128mb PRo and according to people on OCAU they work with the mod as well.

Only time will tell, I be going to pick it up tomorrow, I will do testing with the software mod. Hope all goes well because if not then I won't be doing much of a upgrade over my Beefed up GF ti4200 running at 300/680. If It doesn't work then ell well, I will sell it sometime in the future and try again.

Hi

Yes the NON PRO has the good Memory (256bit) !

It doesnt make any sense to mod a PRO because of the hardware limitations.

Servus Axel

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by Unregistered
@BavariaBlade: Right, but ATI will make sure that this software mod is not working in the new driver set... so the hardware way is the "once for all" way of dealing with that. no?

The gluing seems pretty easy. Any comments about which brand I should use?

In my opinion a patch will be available one or two weeks after the releas of this new driver set . To many modders are out there ;)

Servus

[BavariaBlade]

This was me ^^^^^^^^^^

:P :eek:

[damiandimitri]

It doesnt make any sense to mod a PRO because of the hardware limitations.


yes agree.....but the hacked bios on this card gives speed like the 9700 pro

many tests show that the 9500 pro with the hacked (read overclockable) bios beats every geforce

[DOA]

Originally posted by damiandimitri



yes agree.....but the hacked bios on this card gives speed like the 9700 pro

many tests show that the 9500 pro with the hacked (read overclockable) bios beats every geforce

Please list these site with test results of 9500 Pro oc'ed beating Geforce4 TI4600.

[damiandimitri]

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzk2LDU=

Conclusion (without overclocking..lol)



So what do we have here? Basically ATI is targeting the 9500 Pro to compete with the GeForce4 Ti 4200 GPU. However, in our tests the 9500 Pro is able to outperform the Ti 4200 in everything: no anti-aliasing, anti-aliasing, and anti-aliasing with anisotropic. In fact, it's close to the Ti 4600 with no anti-aliasing and no anisotropic. Once you enable AA or AF, however, the 9500 Pro just takes off and outperforms the Ti 4600!

In gaming the key is to strike a balance between image quality and performance. The DX9 feature support of the 9500 Pro will allow it to support unique pixel and vertex shader graphics. In that regard alone, the possibility is there for the 9500 Pro to display better graphics than the Ti 4200 or Ti 4600. In feature support alone, the 9500 Pro is superior to the GF4. Concerning performance is where it starts to get interesting. The 9500 Pro comes up right on the heels of the Ti 4600 with no AA and no AF. Once you enable AA or AF to increase image quality though, the GF4 takes a huge performance hit, whereas the 9500 Pro doesn't take as large a hit. The 9500 Pro is able to play games at an acceptable framerate with AA and AF enabled in current games, not to mention the better image quality of the AA on the 9500 Pro vs. that of the GF4. You can still go even further and have support for 6X AA and 16X Quality AF on the 9500 Pro to improve IQ more and actually still have it perform playable in some games depending on the resolution.

The absolute cheapest I have seen the Ti 4600 go for in OEM is around $200. The 9500 Pro’s MSRP is $199. Street Prices may be even lower, especially with third party powered by ATI implementations. All these factors combined: feature support, performance, and price, make it very easy for me to highly recommend this video card over a GeForce4 Ti 4200 and Ti 4600. You hear the term value talked about a lot. Many people say they want value in the hardware they purchase. It's indeed an ATI Christmas this year, and if you're in the market for a new card and don’t want to wait, the 9500 Pro is a great value. You're getting great bang for your buck.

[damiandimitri]

http://www2.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/3211_1549851__8


with out overclocking again



Conclusion
The Radeon 9500 Pro is an important release for ATI, and it finally gives the company a method of competing with NVIDIA across all buying segments. While this was obviously the intent, ATI has now presented a compelling alternative to the GeForce4 Ti 4600 and 4400 line of cards. The Radeon 9500 Pro not only performs on-par with the GeForce4 Ti 4600, but the card offers a richer feature set and support for DirectX 9. This is a very impressive video card release, and we can envision the Radeon 9500 Pro being a very popular item this holiday season.

[damiandimitri]

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/radeon_9500pro(2).shtml


Needless to say, even with a higher level of AA and Anisotropic Filtering, at 6X and 16X respectively, the Radeon 9500 Pro smokes past even the Ti 4600, never mind the "schooling" it gives to the Ti 4200.


One word... OUCH! Again, the Radeon 9500 Pro handily beats out both the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and GeForce 4 Ti 4600 product, even with 6X AA enabled. If you haven't already, you should take a look at one of the new Radeons running at 1280X1024 with 6X AA and 16X Aniso, in this game. It actually makes Quake 3 look somewhat up to date. Bring on Doom 3!

(UT2003)
With like AA and Aniso Filtering settings, the Radeon 9500 Pro is 44 - 57% faster than even the GeForce 4 Ti 4600, in these two tests. We're not sure how else we could slice or dice this for you. It's fairly easy to digest in any scenario. The Radeon 9500 Pro wins hands down by a huge margin, in this fantastic new First Person Shooter from Epic. We'll sound that GeForce FX bell again. Time to get a substitute into the ring NVIDIA, ATi is dealing a knock-out here.

[damiandimitri]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/radeon9500-9700/


Unreal Tournament 2003 is also not an exception here. All new graphics cards, except ATI RADEON 9500 based one, are faster than NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600.

Conclusion
Well, no doubt, ATI managed to design a very successful chip family based on R300 architecture. Already now the company boasts the whole set of solutions supporting DirectX9, while NVIDIA will be able to offer only High-End DirectX9 chips in the nearest future if everything goes smoothly.

Very good performance of new ATI chips (RADEON 9700 is faster than NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600, and RADEON 9500 Pro is faster than GeForce4 Ti4200) and simply excellent results with enabled anisotropic filtering and full-scene anti-aliasing will make these solutions really popular very soon. We shouldn't also forget about one more trump these chips boast, but haven't used yet: DirectX9 support.

So, it looks as if graphics cards based on the new ATI chips would be the indisputable hits of winter-spring 2003. It is only important that the prices could go down to an acceptable level as soon as possible. If the new ATI RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9500 Pro based solutions cost less than NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 and Ti4200, then the latter will hardly be selling well.

[DOA]

Originally posted by damiandimitri
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/radeon_9500pro(2).shtml


Needless to say, even with a higher level of AA and Anisotropic Filtering, at 6X and 16X respectively, the Radeon 9500 Pro smokes past even the Ti 4600, never mind the "schooling" it gives to the Ti 4200.


One word... OUCH! Again, the Radeon 9500 Pro handily beats out both the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and GeForce 4 Ti 4600 product, even with 6X AA enabled. If you haven't already, you should take a look at one of the new Radeons running at 1280X1024 with 6X AA and 16X Aniso, in this game. It actually makes Quake 3 look somewhat up to date. Bring on Doom 3!

(UT2003)
With like AA and Aniso Filtering settings, the Radeon 9500 Pro is 44 - 57% faster than even the GeForce 4 Ti 4600, in these two tests. We're not sure how else we could slice or dice this for you. It's fairly easy to digest in any scenario. The Radeon 9500 Pro wins hands down by a huge margin, in this fantastic new First Person Shooter from Epic. We'll sound that GeForce FX bell again. Time to get a substitute into the ring NVIDIA, ATi is dealing a knock-out here.

Sad. I used to be a big Nvidia fan.

[damiandimitri]

and the card (9500 pro) isn't even overclocked.
if i get mine i will use the bios to unlock overclocking
that will kick gforce ass for sure :D

[DOA]

Originally posted by damiandimitri
and the card (9500 pro) isn't even overclocked.
if i get mine i will use the bios to unlock overclocking
that will kick gforce ass for sure :D

Well, it will depend on what software ure using. Fillrate intesive tasks will be handled better with the Geforce4 due to its increased bandwitdh. Why not get a 9500 non pro and try the mod? I have done it with great success!

[damiandimitri]

it think it is to risky...what if i get a card that won't accept the mod
or i get artifacts

rather stick to a pro

[PRiME]

Originally posted by DOA
Prime, where did you read that the 9500Pro works with the mod? I went to ocau and could not find it. Can you send me a link? And is $387 the same as $387 america dollars? Thats expensive!


On overclockers.com.au forum people were talking about the 128mb Pro 9500 from Saphire which they got from gamedude.com.au.

And no Australian currency is very different, our dollar is worth 59cents USD so figure the difference.

I will be leaving to pick this card up soon, I will check it out and see how things go.

[PRiME]

Hmm so it only works on a non pro... Damn.. Now im confused, I dunno if they will ever reach Australian shores. I will look for one now but doubt I will find anything.

[DOA]

Originally posted by PRiME
Hmm so it only works on a non pro... Damn.. Now im confused, I dunno if they will ever reach Australian shores. I will look for one now but doubt I will find anything.

I wrote a how-to for the mod. You can check it out here to find out which one you need:

http://www.designtechnica.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=58

[PRiME]

Well I didn't get the 9500 Pro, as everyone says the mod does not work on them, and my old ti4200 was outperforming a ti4600 as it was a Special edition card with awesome overclockabilities.

So in the end I just bought a 9700 PRO (Sapphire Brand) because these 128mb 9500 Standard cards are all but gone in Australia for a while anyway. Add that up with the 50/50 chance thing it was all too much messing about for something that was so hard to get in the first place.

One thing about this Sapphire card is the heatsink fan, what a bodgy job they did I took it off and it had **** all thermal compound on it, it also was hardly touching the VPU (Chip) so in the end I had to take that silver square edge thing off with a bit of care and a standly knife.

Once that was off a ploped on some Silver paste and evened it out and put the heatsink/fan back on, this time it made full contact so im happy with that, however the memory sticks have NO heatsinks on them so there is something I will need to look at investing in the future. Kinda disappointing considering the price you pay for a PRO card these days, still all fixable with little cost.

PS. I have yet to do any overclocking, will post results sometime later, not like any of your are interested in a 9700 Pro thought.

[shagnscoob]

i actually asked bout that sometime earlier, i wanted to know how an overclocked 9700 pro stands up to the modded 9500, cuz maybe it is worth paying for a 9700...

[PRiME]

ok so far my testing has shown I can do 370-75mhz Core and 345mhz Memory, without artifacts, I believe the reason why memory won't go higher is the lack of Heatsinks, tho can't be sure.

Non the less I was surprized the core went so high, guess removing that silly square shim around the VPU helped allot.

I will do some more testing once I get some ramsinks, dunno when that will be tho. I'm happy with the results non the less.

[shagnscoob]

whats the stock memory and core mem?

[BavariaBlade]

Look s like OCSystems has some selectet GPUs that will run with a higher clocking:

GPU : 415 Mhz

Ram : 730 Mhz ( Real clock 365Mhz DDR )

and the best: This thing is passive cooled !!

Price: 459 €

Link : http://www.ocsystem.com/ocenrad97pro1.html


>>>> No good news for Nvidia´s Gf FX<<<<<

servus

[PRiME]

Ouch, you better off saving up for a Gf FX, even thought they are a bit of a disappointment from what I have seen of the reviews so far.

[Nomad]

So...this 9500 np I have here....the new PCB type ;( People keep saying I can at least mod it to a 9500pro. Which I have tried using RivaTuner. But then i get random black screen lock ups and re boots. sometimes not for hours, sometimes as soon as i open a program.

Someone mentioned perhaps flashing the card? Can that be done? If so...how?

I'm pretty much resigned to being stuck with the standard 9500 but would be nice if it at least was up to the 9500pro standard.

Nomad

[Shadow 850]

Argh. yeah, ok.. so my card isnt perfect ive still been testing it and now i only noticed something very small but can get irritating at the same time. ive managed to get around 105 FPS in the nature demo along with a very nice 3d mark score.

ive tried 2 FPS games and gotten the same artifacts but only in 1 area. the games that i tried were Soldier of fortune 2 and return to castle wolfenstein at full everything 1600 by 1200 res. BUT! when i get to see grass tiles on the floor you see little grainy dots on the graphic this happens in colombia 1 & 2 maps of SOF2 and also in wolfenstein's forest level but please know now that it only appears on very flat grassy textures and not on slanted or otherwise wall grass, it does not happen before modding it is after using rivatuner. there is however one thing i noticed, when you see grass on any other level you do not see those artifacts.

the card works fine apart from that minor glitch
Just thought i would report this.

[Shadow 850]

i seem to get it in the car chase benchmark on any surface discluding grass, i do not understand this though i never notice it in any other game maybe its the hacked drivers if there will be better ones who knows.

Final 3d mark scores : 11025

Game 1 Car Chase Low Detail : 125.4 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase High Detail : 42.0 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic Low Detail 213.0 FPS
Game 2 Deagothic High Detail 53.9 FPS
Game 3 Lobby Low Detail : 123.4 FPS
Game 3 Lobby High Detail : 53.9 FPS
Game 4 Nature 100.5 FPS
Fill Rate (Single Texturing) 1770.5 MTexels/s
Fill rate (Multi Texturing) 2631.0 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count ( 1 Light ) 60.8 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count ( 8 Lights ) 14.3 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 193.8 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 203.7 FPS
Vertex Shader 145.1 FPS
Pixel Shader 184.4 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 203.3 FPS
Point Sprites 39.1 MSprites/s

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
i seem to get it in the car chase benchmark on any surface discluding grass, i do not understand this though i never notice it in any other game maybe its the hacked drivers if there will be better ones who knows.

Final 3d mark scores : 11025

Game 1 Car Chase Low Detail : 125.4 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase High Detail : 42.0 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic Low Detail 213.0 FPS
Game 2 Deagothic High Detail 53.9 FPS
Game 3 Lobby Low Detail : 123.4 FPS
Game 3 Lobby High Detail : 53.9 FPS
Game 4 Nature 100.5 FPS
Fill Rate (Single Texturing) 1770.5 MTexels/s
Fill rate (Multi Texturing) 2631.0 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count ( 1 Light ) 60.8 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count ( 8 Lights ) 14.3 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 193.8 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 203.7 FPS
Vertex Shader 145.1 FPS
Pixel Shader 184.4 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 203.3 FPS
Point Sprites 39.1 MSprites/s

Excellent results. I notice from your scores that you are overclocking your card. How high did you get the core/mem and what was the speed of the memory on the card. Oh, and you did report your success here didnt you? :) http://forums.designtechnica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1141

[Shadow 850]

I only installed the card once ( inside the computer ) i am not sure what speed the exact memory is.

Right now i have my core set to 337Mhz and memory is at 305Mhz i can go slightly higher than that with the memory but im afraid because i did it once and got grain artifacts all over the screen.

Do you get those grain artifacts in SOF2/RTCW? i noticed when i quit a game and start it up i see it before the screen goes black then it dissapears before load. it is in fact in the form of a chessboard effect of what i seen i'll try to get a screenshot of it somehow, im also stumped of how it only happens on those games & just grassy textures but as i already said car chase seems to have it nearly all over some parts of the ground.
and the horse test ( point sprite test? ) when the horse turns you see little grains of dots in some places.
Nuff said.. everything is playable but this can get slightly distracting and im wondering if there is a way to get rid of it? it only happens in those i tried black and white and get no sort of artifact what so ever

My guess is that its either the drivers thats been hacked or actually some rendering system that those games use that the card doesnt seem to like once its been modified.

[Shadow 850]

i suppose i should be greatful that i got a 9500 with the old 9700 pcb and turned it into a 9700 then o/c to 9700 pro, and that i get no artifacts in anything except those grass tiles and buggy demo, it could have been much worse and not even worked at all or get those artifacts in any game all the time :)

[shagnscoob]

can u post your results on the poll?

[llbbl]

Originally posted by PRiME
Ouch, you better off saving up for a Gf FX, even thought they are a bit of a disappointment from what I have seen of the reviews so far.

Get a 9500 instead !! :D

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
I only installed the card once ( inside the computer ) i am not sure what speed the exact memory is.

Right now i have my core set to 337Mhz and memory is at 305Mhz i can go slightly higher than that with the memory but im afraid because i did it once and got grain artifacts all over the screen.

Do you get those grain artifacts in SOF2/RTCW? i noticed when i quit a game and start it up i see it before the screen goes black then it dissapears before load. it is in fact in the form of a chessboard effect of what i seen i'll try to get a screenshot of it somehow, im also stumped of how it only happens on those games & just grassy textures but as i already said car chase seems to have it nearly all over some parts of the ground.
and the horse test ( point sprite test? ) when the horse turns you see little grains of dots in some places.
Nuff said.. everything is playable but this can get slightly distracting and im wondering if there is a way to get rid of it? it only happens in those i tried black and white and get no sort of artifact what so ever

My guess is that its either the drivers thats been hacked or actually some rendering system that those games use that the card doesnt seem to like once its been modified.

Hey you can get a screen shot by clicking ALT + Print Screen. Then go to mspaint and do a paste. Then save it as a jpg. The little dots you see in the point sprite test are normal. I see them with geforce and ati cards. And as far as the other artifacts are concerned, they are a product of a faulty pipeline, and not the driver. The driver simply enables the pipelines to be activated. Now that I have used my modded 9500 for a few weeks, I too notice some strange things happening every now and then.

[binary]

Here are my results...

Sapphire Radeon 9500 128MB SoftR9700@331/297
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5850263

3DMark Score 11961 3D marks
Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 147.8 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 49.6 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 234.6 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 125.6 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 134.3 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 58.9 FPS
Game 4 Nature 105.6 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1738.5 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2578.1 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 light) 59.9 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 13.2 MTriangels/s
Environment Bump Mapping 196.9 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 223.5 FPS
Vertex Shader 159.4 FPS
Pixel Shader 207.2 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 202.5 FPS
Point Sprite 39.3 MSprites/s


How far have you guys clocked it?
297 is max for mem settings here.. anything higher produced artifacts in 3Dmark.
I haven't pushed the core clock to the max yet. Was just curious how far I can go.
Using Rage3D Tweak to overclock btw.

Binary

[DOA]

Originally posted by binary
Here are my results...

Sapphire Radeon 9500 128MB SoftR9700@331/297
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5850263

3DMark Score 11961 3D marks
Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 147.8 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 49.6 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 234.6 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 125.6 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 134.3 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 58.9 FPS
Game 4 Nature 105.6 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1738.5 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2578.1 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 light) 59.9 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 13.2 MTriangels/s
Environment Bump Mapping 196.9 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 223.5 FPS
Vertex Shader 159.4 FPS
Pixel Shader 207.2 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 202.5 FPS
Point Sprite 39.3 MSprites/s


How far have you guys clocked it?
297 is max for mem settings here.. anything higher produced artifacts in 3Dmark.
I haven't pushed the core clock to the max yet. Was just curious how far I can go.
Using Rage3D Tweak to overclock btw.

Binary

Got mine up to 340 core, and 300 mem. I have the Innovatek gpu water cooler that I have yet to try. I will be looking for 370 core speeds.

[Unregistered]

Hello i got the connect 3d card it has 3,0 ns infineon chips ...
so i put up the 95pro128 bios and get up to 370 core and 320 mem ... and 13563 3dmarks ....
on tweaked athlon xp 2000+ ( 170FSB with 10,5 multi) dual ddr on a7v8x deluxe semms to bee pretty good ;)

[Unregistered]

Got the 9500 old PCB type, tried the soft patch but it won't work! the fill rate is exactly the same in 3dmark. RivaTuner says it pathced it successfully but isn't not making any performance increase. Am I missing something? Grrr.

[Unregistered]

Okay, nevermind, I got it working now. No artifacts, but if i try to bring the ram past 295, it starts messing up bad. I have infineon 3.3ns. Still have to put some better silver-based heat-transfer compound between the vpu and the heatsink though. anyways, really really fast card!

[Unregistered]

you say that you cannot o/c a radeon9500 pro to 9700 standards, but can o/c a 9500 nonpro to 9700 standards.

Have u lost your marbles???????

The pro has an 8 pipeline arc (same as 9700)
The non-pro has a 4 pipline arc (half the propoosed bandwidth)

you o/c a 9500 pro with warp11's bios on guru3d.com, and you are left with a stock 9700 ready for a bit of o/c'ing

if u actually look at the pcbs they are identical on a 9500pro (sapphire/colour edition) as a 9700, just the bios algo is slightly different hence the warp11 bios to update the alo and u/l the pipeline restrictions

check your facts

[Nomad]

The 9500pro and the 9700 are different pcb's. The 9500pro is built on a different design which is most evident by the layout of the memory chips. In the 9500pro they are in-line along the top of the pcb. Whereas in the the first 9500 non pro's and the 9700 they are in an L-shape arrangement.

The 9500pro only has 128 bit memory bus which cannot be turned into the 256 of the 9700. At least not as far as i am aware? The 9500pro also has 8 rendering pipelines the same as the 9700 so nothing to mod there then.

The only think loading warp 11's bios will do for the 9500pro is to allow it to be overclocked.

Now...the problem for myself and many others is that the manufacturers obviously realised people were modding the plain vanilla 9500 and so they were losing sales of the 9700. To stop people doing that they have now started producing the standard 9500 on the same pcb as the 9500pro but of course with only the 4 rendering pipelines enabled.

SO...i'm still waiting to hear from anyone who has succesfuly loaded the 9500pro bios into a 9500non pro with the new style pcb ?

Nomad

[Unregistered]

Can this card be upgraded to a r9700?

It has the L shaped pcb u mentioned

[Unregistered]

Sine my CPU is only a 1.4 ghz t-bird, my new 9500->9700 doesn't benefit from overclocking it. infact, the results are almost the same. So until I acutally get a more powerful CPU, i'll just keep it vanilla. But it's still so @!(#&@ fast! everything max settings, vsync and its liquid smooth...makes you want to vomit.

[llbbl]

6 pages ! Man you guys are going to town on this thread. Keep up the good work. We will try to answer your questions the best we can. Please register if you have not already.

[Nomad]

Well the suspense was killing me so i decided to try and flash my 9500 np(new pro type pcb) with the 9500pro bios. Big mistake! wiped the original and now i have a dead card. :( That'll teach me.

Anyway..for the benefit of others stuck with 9500np on the new type pcb...leav it alone! It's a fine card as it is :)

Now just got to get a pci card so i can get back in and try and reflash my dead 9500. If anyone out there has a copy of the original 9500np bios, must be from the newer type pcb though! can you please help me out here?

Cheers

Nomad

[ECA]

Originally posted by Nomad
Well the suspense was killing me so i decided to try and flash my 9500 np(new pro type pcb) with the 9500pro bios. Big mistake! wiped the original and now i have a dead card. :( That'll teach me.

Anyway..for the benefit of others stuck with 9500np on the new type pcb...leav it alone! It's a fine card as it is :)

Now just got to get a pci card so i can get back in and try and reflash my dead 9500. If anyone out there has a copy of the original 9500np bios, must be from the newer type pcb though! can you please help me out here?

Cheers

Nomad

NEED TO KNOW:
ALOT of flash progs, SAVE the old BIOS. should be a file on the system. All the good flash progs do this, and should have an UNDO with them.

[Nomad]

I used ATIflash and no, it didn't save the old bios :(
Anyway...i think i have a pci card laying around here someplace. Will get back to the dos prompt with that and see what can be done.

Lukily i also still have my MX400 ! LOL

atb
Nomad

[shagnscoob]

i think we should all stfu in this thread, and make new threads for all the questions, or, make an FAQ about this whole deallio

[llbbl]

Originally posted by shagnscoob
i think we should all stfu in this thread, and make new threads for all the questions, or, make an FAQ about this whole deallio

Not all the problems have been resolved. One big thread is allright for now. It would be difficult for us to cut up all the questions into different topics. We can lock it so no more people can post, but that might leave people frustrated. It is pretty daunting now for someone who hasn't read the article or the thread to have to wade through all the material. Someone might work on a HTML FAQ of all the problems that you might encounter when doing a software or hardware upgrade to your 9500. Anyone want to volunteer?

[Shadow 850]

okay, here is an image that you "DOA" wanted to see i decided to take it of Tiger woods 2002 because it shows up most there. please make sure the image is full and you will see the effect. it is in fact in the form of a chessboard but thankfully it doesnt get in the way too much as instead of being one colour it blends in to what colour on the texture is being displayed.

Please note that this game is tiger woods and not pga as the file name, and the effect doesnt happen in every game but when it does its only at a certain part on ground textures. i tried black and white and no artifacts displayed at all, i found this unusual because its full of ground and grassy textures.

http://www.boomspeed.com/shadowuk/PGA.JPG


See where the effect shows most? you mainly see this when zooming close to the floor.

[Shadow 850]

Here is a shot of wolfenstein which seems and is fine and full everything and 1600 by 1200 res, 4 X aa and 4 X Anisotropic filtering.

http://www.boomspeed.com/shadowuk/Wolfy.JPG

here is doom 3

http://www.boomspeed.com/shadowuk/doom3.JPG

[shagnscoob]

i could never ever deal with that effect, nor a golf game

[Unregistered]

I just bought a Sapphire 9500 card, and I believe (from checking around) that it has the new form factor- the memory chip layout is similiar to the 9500 pro card, with four chips in a row, rather than 2 on top and 2 on the side.

What I would like to know, and this may be all things nobody has had a chance to look into yet, is this-

1. is it possible to 'unlock' the extra 4 pipelines in this card, or have there been changes in the new form factor that prevent this?

2. can I do this with modified drivers alone, or via a utility?

3. is there a modified version of the latest ATI driver? Since the new driver was just released, I would assume not yet, but one never knows ;)

[Nomad]

Well for god's sake don't flash your bios!!!! I have the same new type layout card as you and i tried to flash it with the 9500pro bios but it all wen't horribly wrong and now i have a dead card. Although i'm sure i can resurect it as soon as i can get access to the bios again.

Here's a thing though. Even though this card is supposed to be locked from overclocking. i used Radeonator to ty and tweak it and from the 3DMark results it was actually doing the job.

So it's a bit confusing as to weather this card is locked ot not.

Stick with software tweaks for now.

[shadow 850]

Nothing is wrong Shagnscoob, people have had that effect in any game and just one colour which is white. i consider my self very lucky to only get it in 1 game out of a bunch and only in a certain part even from the playing point its not distracting since their all blended in. Guess i got my card at the right time, noticed the thread not long after christmas :P my games run fine. top notch speed, and when i get a new CPU i'll be getting 3d marks in the range of 16,000 tops or what

[shagnscoob]

when my overclocked radeon 9700 pro kicks your ass w/o any artifacts, i think we will both know who the true winner is...

[shagnscoob]

btw, i wouldnt mind helping out on a faq, but i suck ass at html

[Unregistered]

Hello guys !

I'm an french customer (so, please, forgive me if my written English is awful - you never heard my spoken English ;) - and don't bother me with Iraq :D), who bought a Connect3D Radeon9500 128 MB.

RivaTuner can turn it into a Radeon9700 with the SoftR9x00 patch, and even into a Radeon9700 Pro after overclocking to 325 MHz for the core and 310 MHz for the RAM (despite th Hynix 3.6 ns DDR-SDRAM).

It seems to work almost perfectly. Why "almost" ? 'Cause I got quite green particles sometimes in the "Lobby" test of 3Dmark2001SE (during walls explosions under bullet impacts). Is it a bug related to the soft mod, or to the RAM overclocking ? I think the second explanation is th right one, but I'm far for being an expert...

I now have another problem : how to make a persistent mod ? Flashing th bios, is that the right solution ? And what tool(s) should I use ? And where could I download the bioses ?

Thanks a lot !

[DOA]

Originally posted by shagnscoob
btw, i wouldnt mind helping out on a faq, but i suck ass at html

If you want to start up a txt file FAQ, I could add to it and build it up in HTML. Even post it on the site.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Hello guys !

I'm an french customer (so, please, forgive me if my written English is awful - you never heard my spoken English ;) - and don't bother me with Iraq :D), who bought a Connect3D Radeon9500 128 MB.

RivaTuner can turn it into a Radeon9700 with the SoftR9x00 patch, and even into a Radeon9700 Pro after overclocking to 325 MHz for the core and 310 MHz for the RAM (despite th Hynix 3.6 ns DDR-SDRAM).

It seems to work almost perfectly. Why "almost" ? 'Cause I got quite green particles sometimes in the "Lobby" test of 3Dmark2001SE (during walls explosions under bullet impacts). Is it a bug related to the soft mod, or to the RAM overclocking ? I think the second explanation is th right one, but I'm far for being an expert...

I now have another problem : how to make a persistent mod ? Flashing th bios, is that the right solution ? And what tool(s) should I use ? And where could I download the bioses ?

Thanks a lot !

If you want a permanent mod, then do the hardware mod. Read the article on this site under "computer guides". There are links in there to bios' and flash utils. Flashing the bios with warp 11's bios will only unlock the card for overclocking, and nothing more (well to date).

[DOA]

Originally posted by Unregistered
you say that you cannot o/c a radeon9500 pro to 9700 standards, but can o/c a 9500 nonpro to 9700 standards.

Have u lost your marbles???????

The pro has an 8 pipeline arc (same as 9700)
The non-pro has a 4 pipline arc (half the propoosed bandwidth)

you o/c a 9500 pro with warp11's bios on guru3d.com, and you are left with a stock 9700 ready for a bit of o/c'ing

if u actually look at the pcbs they are identical on a 9500pro (sapphire/colour edition) as a 9700, just the bios algo is slightly different hence the warp11 bios to update the alo and u/l the pipeline restrictions

check your facts

OMG! What a tard. The 9500 Pro only has a 128 bit memory bus. Really now....who needs to check thier facts. :D

Mr Unregistered: Please read before you post, so you dont look like a fool. You can start here: http://www.designtechnica.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=58

It has nothig to do with oc'ing. It has to do with changing the memory bus to 256....which you cant do with a 9500 pro. Well not yet anyway.

[Shadow 850]

Shagnscoob you are a true idiot, i paid cheap for the card and the artifacts hardly happen in any game. and is hardly distracting. i now have 310MHZ memory core and 345MHZ ddr core clock. sorry but i win :p

[Shadow 850]

those artifacts arent bugger all. My games run fine. they dont crash, the artifacts NEVER happen in any other level apart from mentioned and when they do their hardly noticable. in the end i have a card faster than a 9700 pro and that will more than do me fine but if it doesnt you then tough who cares.

[Unregistered]

Just picked up a Radeon 9500 on the new PCB form factor. As I understand things (reading between the lines a bit) if I perform the resistor mod and reflash with a R9500Pro BIOS, I should have a R9500Pro. Would that be correct? I know the memory bandwidth is 128 so It'll never be a R9700.

[DOA]

Originally posted by Shadow 850
Shagnscoob you are a true idiot, i paid cheap for the card and the artifacts hardly happen in any game. and is hardly distracting. i now have 310MHZ memory core and 345MHZ ddr core clock. sorry but i win :p

LOL. You guys are funny. Do not start flaming here please. If Shagnscoob wants to pay double for no artifacts then he has that right. BTW, Shadow the core clock is the clock of the GPU...not the ddr memory. The speeds of the pro START at 325 core and 310 memory. The pro will have faster memory and will thus go higher than the 9500's...but you are going to pay for that faster ram.

[Unregistered]

OK. Spot of trouble here. I tried to flash the BIOS on my R9500 (new PCB) and managed to erase it. Turns out the BIOS is locked but that doesn't stop ATIFLASH erasing what's there. The next question has to be, can the BIOS be unlocked again?

[ECA]

Originally posted by Unregistered
OK. Spot of trouble here. I tried to flash the BIOS on my R9500 (new PCB) and managed to erase it. Turns out the BIOS is locked but that doesn't stop ATIFLASH erasing what's there. The next question has to be, can the BIOS be unlocked again?

I have NOT seen in these posts where it says to FLASH the new pcb. ONLY the old one, the 9700 style. If you did this you probably are ON YOUR OWN.

A lock can be erased, but there are a few different ways to do it. And many Q: to answer for.
1. WHY did the flash prog LOCK the chip, did you tell it to?
2. DID you read ALL the info on HOW to flash the bios, which bio, cards, and other hardware are affected.
3. have you ever done this before, IF NOT, HAVE LOTS of fun.
4, did you do it from DOS, no windows running.
5. what flash prog, and what bios update.
6. sence you are UNREGISTERED, you may not even get this note, and wont be notified when it is posted.

[Shadow 850]

i cant believe i even screw that up. Artifacts hardly happen. i havent even noticed them for weeks since i had the card.

I screwed up the last post. i mean my core clock is 345MHZ and the memory clock is 310MHZ. nuff said, faster than 9700 pro

[Nomad]

Originally posted by Unregistered
OK. Spot of trouble here. I tried to flash the BIOS on my R9500 (new PCB) and managed to erase it. Turns out the BIOS is locked but that doesn't stop ATIFLASH erasing what's there. The next question has to be, can the BIOS be unlocked again?

Hi m8. Well if you read the earlier posts you'd know i'm in the same position. However. You should be able to reflash the card. I'll let you know as soon as i find my old pci card.

If you have an old pci graphics card. Stick that in and leave your 9500 in the agp slot then boot up with a floppy. Your pci card will give you a screen to work with. YOu can now try and reflash. However i think it will only work with a copy of the original bios and if you have that then send me a copy ! :)

Failing all that...just send it back to where you bought it and plead ignorance :) After all...if it's possible to flash a bios on anything it's also possible for it to become corrupt...and of course that wouldn't be your fault...would it :)

Oh and by the way. The reason i tried to flash my bios is because in all the time i had posted on this subject no one answered my questions about this so I had to find out for myself. At the very least it may save some other poor bugger from trying and failing.

atb
Nomad

[DOA]

I said no flaming. I even said please. Have a nice day! :)

[shagnscoob]

hahaha lol

[ECA]

For those that AINT got the point.

THIS AINT,
the 9500 PRO.
9700
9500..non pro, NEW PCB
or any others.

As far as I see STATED by anyone.
this is FOR, the 9500...NON-PRO.
This is FOR, the OLD 9500...NON-pro BOARD,PCB

Conclussion....
THERE MAY COME A TIME, when others can and WILL be modded. CHECK the sites lised on the first 2 pages. WE are only discussing this HERE. (as far as I know) no-one here mad the Mods, hacks. ONLY tried them.

IF, at anytime, you MOD,hack your boards(ANY BORADS) in your COMP, this is YOUR problem. NOT anyone elses. DONT take others word about a MOD, unless you see it(FIRST).

If you aint into hardware modification, and DONT want to/ or CANT solder. DONT.
If you AINT added updated BIOS before DONT. I say this because its for THIS sites protection.
They are NOT liable if you MAKE a mess of your system, card, hardware, house. YOU do this of your OWN accord.
KNOW what you are DOING before you do it.

Ask 100 ppl what to do when something happens, and GET 100 answers.
IF you follow ANY of there suggestions, and FAIL, whose problem is IT.
YOU took there idea/thought/process and used it to FIX a problem YOU had.
WHAT works for others, MAY NOT work for you.

DT(designtechnica)
(You need to post this in these discussions.)
Takes NO responsibility of what you cause to happen. To hardware, software, system, your HOUSE, or your girlfriends house for FOLLOWING any of these tips. YOU add a MOD, upgrade, software, hardware to your system. YOU reap the rewards and the failures.

The 9500..NON_PRO was PROBABLY the 9500 PRO or 9700, that ?FAILED? to pass QC(quality control). YOU MAY be able to upgrade the card. BUT at what price. A failed card, a few bandwidths that didnt trace, Ram problems, WHAT EVER. YOU are responsible if anything BAD happens.
ESP....IF you DONT know what you ARE doing or have NEVER done it before.

[ToTo]

Hello, it's me again. Ooops, yesterday I was an Unregistered French Fool ;)

I actually read the article previously mentioned by DOA, but I did not see the link to ATI Bios and BIOS utilities, sorry, I'll pay further attention next time :o !

But I did not find answers to my whole set of questions, including :

flashing a BIOS voids warranty, right or false ?
is it possible to flash the BIOS of my Radeon 9500 without hardware mod (probably a stupid question, I think I can guess the answer ;) but I want to be sure) ?

I do NOT want to hard-mod my card, I'm not such a... hum ;) ! Okay, people who hard-mod their cards are not foolish, but they have more courage (who says "balls" ?) and probably more money ;) than I have. So I will stay in soft-mod, despite foreseeable difficulties for patching drivers...

what about my green particles in Lobby, under 3DMark2001 ? I tried to downclock my card to 250/250, green particles persist. I put standard drivers (Catalyst 3.1without any soft mod), green particles persist again. So what is the problem ? And is there really a problem, since I got no visual artifacts in any "real" game (including Warcraft III, Dungeon Siege, Jedi Knight II, Morrowind, Haegemonia) ?

Here is a desciption of the phenomena as accurate as possible : during the "Lobby" test of 3DMark2001, many bullets hit walls, thus resulting in a great number of particles bouncing everywhere. Some of these particles have quite green faces, and even really green faces. If someone could explain me how to take a screen shot of 3DMark, I could post a photo !

Thanks a lot !

[Nomad]

ECA - totally agree with that m8. Personally i always take responsibility if i mess up. Them's the breaks. If your not willing to take a chance then leave well alone. If you can't afford to lose that money you just spent on your shiny new card then don't even attempt a hardware mod...just put it out of your mind.

To modify this kind of thing in hardware is a risky business even for those of us who are used to soldering at this micro level. If i do some work for someone, weather it be on a PS2 an X-Box or PC.....they have insurance from me because I always have an equivalent to replace it with if it goes wrong. That's expensive for me but then it's ME who's being paid to do the work and as such people trust that i'm competent to do it and do it well.

If your going to try and modify anything yourself you must take responsibility for your actions. As ECA pointed out, what works for one person may not necceserily work for another. None of this is an exact science. It's all experimentation...there will be winners and losers but that's the nature of things.

I tried to flash the bios on my 9500np new version. No one here had tried it and no one even mentioned it so i took that risk upon myself and at least then we all learn from that and yeah, i may have a dead card but i knew that was a risk and it was one i could afford to take.

I'd say if you can afford the extra money for a 9700 then buy one. because at least you know the compnents are up to the job. If not, buy a 9500 and ONLY do the software mod..at least until your warranty expires and DON'T flash the bios unless your absolutly sure you can afford to lose the card if it goes wrong. If in doubt ask and if still in doubt leave it alone!

atb
Nomad

[DOA]

Well since this thread is 3 miles long, I guess a FAQ is in order. I will start working on it, and post a link to it in this thread when I am done. I will go through the entire thread and try to touch on every question.

[Unregistered]

Does anyone know if the sapphire black pcd boards work. It still has the L shaped momory, but just has a different pcs color. Thanks

[Archon]

dont see why not, just make sure its the right memory, etc...

... I havent been paying attention to this thread, I just visit every few days and get confused and post about the last topic ;)

[Nomad]

There's still a mix of boards floating about at the moment. I have a black pcb but it's the new type memory layout.

As far as i know all the L-type memory layout boards are modifiable to one extent or another. I heard the black pcb types were not as good but have not seen it confirmed.

I guess just try the sofware mod and see how you go. !

Nomad

[Unregistered]

I just did the hardware mod, but since my soldering iron't tip is so fat.. i just manipulated a tiny bit of solder to connect the two points that need to be connected. At first I thought I ruined my card because when I turned on my pc with the finished product, the screen was really messed up. upon further examination of the card, it revealed that i had accidentally dropped a little pool of solder on top of a a few resistors and such. so with the removal of that mistake, the card performs beautifully! The reason I did this is because the software mod for the cat 3.1 drivers kept rebooting my pc randomly! so now, no more reboots and an indefinate 9700 series card :)

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by ECA


I have NOT seen in these posts where it says to FLASH the new pcb. ONLY the old one, the 9700 style. If you did this you probably are ON YOUR OWN.

A lock can be erased, but there are a few different ways to do it. And many Q: to answer for.
1. WHY did the flash prog LOCK the chip, did you tell it to?
2. DID you read ALL the info on HOW to flash the bios, which bio, cards, and other hardware are affected.
3. have you ever done this before, IF NOT, HAVE LOTS of fun.
4, did you do it from DOS, no windows running.
5. what flash prog, and what bios update.
6. sence you are UNREGISTERED, you may not even get this note, and wont be notified when it is posted.

Yes I have done this sort of thing before. I've been in the tech side of IT for over a decade. Yes I read all the instructions. Yes, I was mostly curious about whether or not it would work. I'll admit that I didn't use the atiflash option to check the lock status before I started (has that been mentioned anywhere before?)but I did save my original BIOS. The first flash procedure failed just after the BIOS had been erased (a timeout of some sort) and subsequent flash attempts (after booting with a PCI card in place) hit the same error.

Knowing there are a few different ways to clear the lock is interesting but hardly useful. Have you fixed your caps lock problem yet?

[ECA]

Originally posted by Unregistered


Yes I have done this sort of thing before. I've been in the tech side of IT for over a decade. Yes I read all the instructions. Yes, I was mostly curious about whether or not it would work. I'll admit that I didn't use the atiflash option to check the lock status before I started (has that been mentioned anywhere before?)but I did save my original BIOS. The first flash procedure failed just after the BIOS had been erased (a timeout of some sort) and subsequent flash attempts (after booting with a PCI card in place) hit the same error.

Knowing there are a few different ways to clear the lock is interesting but hardly useful. Have you fixed your caps lock problem yet?

Most bois chips can be Grounded, on Pin 1, or the LAST pin, to rest them.
Pin 1 to the LAST pin can reset some.
But, beware, that reswting the chip can FRY the chip.

[DOA]

Originally posted by ECA


Most bois chips can be Grounded, on Pin 1, or the LAST pin, to rest them.
Pin 1 to the LAST pin can reset some.
But, beware, that reswting the chip can FRY the chip.

I am not sure I would recommend this. The bios chip is an eeprom. You have to flash it to place program code on it. The above users stated that they erased thier bios. You cant reset what isnt there. Can you post some links where we can get more info on this bios reset before someone tries this?

[ECA]

Originally posted by DOA


I am not sure I would recommend this. The bios chip is an eeprom. You have to flash it to place program code on it. The above users stated that they erased thier bios. You cant reset what isnt there. Can you post some links where we can get more info on this bios reset before someone tries this?

This is a hardware trick that works on Motherboards. When the Bios has been corrupted, or SOME smart person set a Password in there bios and FORGOT.
Finding this stuff on the NET used to be easy, but many Companies dont want you to know about it. Makes it easy to someone that STOLE your comp, to erase it, and reset everything.

[AMacdonald]

Drifting a bit OT here.............

You cannot reset or clear and sort of ROM (ROM, EPROM, EEPROM etc) by grounding a pin. You can clear battery backed RAM that way, but not any sort of ROM.

[DOA]

Ok. Put up a FAQ. If anyone wants me to add to it, let me know.

http://www.designtechnica.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=64

[Unregistered]

Hello designtechnica ppl.

I have a quick question.

Got the np 9500 oem atlantis saphire (L shaped mem).

patched it with catalyst 3.0a moded by rivatuner. the patching went well, now under advanced properties for my video adapter it does say 9700AGP (ND). But is there a way to verify if I am indeed getting performance/ fill rates and so on of a 9700pro? I tried mad onion's 2002 pcmark but it is not helpful...

I have nothing to relate my scores to.

I will try the 2003. anyone can tell me what I should be getting?

I have

winxp pro
amd 1ghz
1gig pc133
oem 9500np 128 (softmod 9700)
ata133 HDs

thank you


Satanic-Vomit

[DOA]

Yes you should be getting 2200+ in the mutitexture fill rate test of 3dmark01 if all 8 are enabled. Half this if only 4.