OMFG!!!11 Radeon 9500 rox0rz!!

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

Get yourself one of these little babies if you fancy the best value for money graphics upgrade...EVER part II.

I picked one up from Novatech and for £113 inc. delivery and used the software mod to turn it into a 9700. Overclocked it PAST 9700 pro speeds and got a very meaty 3Dmark score. Can play games with full AA & AF with no slowdown. Looks very very sweet and will let you play UT2k3 & Doom 3 (I imagine) with max detail super smooth.

Wayhey. I'm chuffed.

[[DW]LoneGun]

got one of those cards on order from novatech already, can you post details of were to dl the hax from pls

[Defragmentor]

Seriously considering it

[The_Chojin]

FS and i just bought a Geforce TI4200 for £140 :/

[[SCW]Nessie]

h4x from here:

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

[MaNuAl_OvErRiDe]

Feck that, GF FX on release date

God I love parents

[noopz]

..............and for all those without rich parents who buy them everything, theres the radeon 9500

[eni]

this works for any Radeon 9500 ?!

[noopz]

nah eni, has to be the 128 meg version.

[[scw]proud]

"software mod to turn it into a 9700"

thought this was make your 9500 into a 9700 via a emulation mode.

if so u can do this with geforces, usually slow tho ;/

have heard of 9500 being turned into 9700 with soldering and stuff on the pcb also

anyhow im quite happy with my albatron ti4200P Turbo , which is running at Ti4600 speeds and above


sooo wat 3dmark score u get anyhow

[eni]

swish

i think i will get one then!

can anyone tell me the exact model and place to buy it from, linkage would be class (is novatech the cheapest?!)

ta!

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

Nah it's not to do with emulation.

Here's the deal:

Ati for some reason decided to make the Radeon 9500 NON pro 128mb version out of the same pcb as the Radeon 9700. The funny thing is - it's EXACTLY the same card (slower memory than the pro though) with 4 pipelines disabled VIA DRIVERS! So the hacked drivers unlock the 4 pipelines and give a massive boost. With hacked drivers the radeon 9500 is a 9700 and mine overclocks to a higher speed than the 9700 pro (costing £270). They won't clock higher than a 9700 pro can go (because of slower memory) BUT they get very close for a stupidly small price.

Here's a very useful link to a madonion post: http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/...=5&o=0&fpart=1

I used that to mod mine.

The only thing to worry about is that there isn't a 100% success rate. It's a risk worth taking for a 110 quid card though. Even if you don't manage to mod it it's worth the money.

Just to confirm the card requires no hardware mod. There is a seemingly 75% success rate. There is NO RISK. You will not damage the card, you simply might get artifacts are doing the mod - at which point you just reinstall drivers and you're fine.

My score went from 10500 @ stock speeds/no mod to 12800 modded & overclocked. This was with a fairly duff cpu so I'm hoping to get over 14k, near to 15k with my new cpu that's arriving soon.

[[scw]proud]

not bad, still its ATI tho

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

ATI drivers suck.

ATI IQ = TEH WIN!

[[scw]proud]

this not work with the 128meg Pro versions?

[[SCW]Nessie]

If an unlocked non-pro goes from 4-8 pipe lines and the pro is already 8, does this make the cards EXACTLY the same or is there other differences?

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

The PRO card has 128-bit memory and will be slower than the 9500 when the 9500 is modded to a 9700.

AFAIK the 9500 modded to a 9700 is exactly the same. Different companies may use different memory so this is probably gonna be the only difference (and things like vivo, coolers etc. that different companies might add). The 9700 pro has faster timings on the memory so you can overclock this higher.

[The_Chojin]

I heard this mod only works on windows 2000/XP ?

[eni]

Originally posted by The_Chojin
I heard this mod only works on windows 2000/XP ?

can anyone confirm?!

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

Not sure...doubt it though.

Check the thread out that I posted, see if it mentions anything there.

[eni]

Files:

Driver (unmodified, for WIN2K/XP only)



you got a direct link to the one you bought on novatech btw?

[[WiZ]Prodigy]

Think they're out of stock now:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?NOV-A9500

[Smallfoot]

Originally posted by The_Chojin
FS and i just bought a Geforce TI4200 for £140 :/

u suck u can get them for £100

[Rex-Kramer]

The Hardware mod works for all Operating Systems.

If you have any soldering ability you can mod the Radeon no problem. You just have to move one of the resistors on the core.

Not for the faint hearted, but then again if you go soldering perfectly good bits of kit in the search of Mhz you arent faint hearted

In the last month i have killed 2 x gf 4 ti 4600 ****ing about with them. Oh and one Hercules Radeon 9700 pro

Not to mention an N-Force motherboards, oh and a stick of RAM.

Time to stop overclocking me thinks

Here's a link to the Russian Site that dicovered the Radeon Hardware mod:

http://www.overclockers.ru/news/news...&id=1041715156

Its in Russian obviously but it shows good piccies of the Radeon core and the Transistors that need moving.

I've got some more info somewhere, if interested find me on irc

Rex

[pinkeh]

just orderd myself one , they dispatchin it on 21st hopefully
been lookin at this mod thing for a few days seems worth it even if it dont work, just hope the new batch they get is still on the same pcb as 9700