9500-128 red no direct 3d acceleration no 3dmark

[tmpstuos]

I bought the tunable 9500 from allstarshop and I am trying to get it to run 3dmark 2001SE. It crashes immediately saying that it can't identify a card that will be albe to run the tests. I tried the normal ati drivers then the ones that came on the sapphire cd. No go. I checked the dxdiag and found that the 3d acceleration options were off and untouchable. I downloaded dx9. No go. I went to dxdiag again and noticed that it said the drivers might not be final??? So I went and got the last generation catalyst drivers same deal. I removed and reinstalled the card and now I am at the end of my rope. I believe that far from getting a deal on a near 9700, I got a POS that is somehow defective even before I attempt to unlock its supposedly true potential.

DAS:disgust:

 

[tmpstuos]

No help from you guys????

 

[Killrose]

Did you bios hack it before trying it in stock form? I've had the same sort of problem when trying different bios'es with out reloading the drivers. You get no 3d at all, games won't work. You don't have to do a total registry removal of drivers, as long as you are'nt going to another driver version, just re-load the driver again, and say replace all if it asks you.

 

[tmpstuos]

No (at least I don't think), I tried to get a stock reading with an install of catalyst 3.1 from the ati site. I never went to the fix until I had already tried 3.1, cd drivers, and 3.0. No go with any of them.

tmpstuos

 

[tmpstuos]

Apparently smartgart by ati was shutting the card down. I finally did the job right and achieved the hack. Of course the card (being deemed unworthy by smartgart to run at all) was a checkerboard champion, but I got respectable numbers in 3Dmark even though it was pretty hard to see anything. I am RMAing it to allstarshop.com and getting one from Egghead.

DAS

 

[Killrose]

I hope you did'nt use a 9700 Pro bios, but an un-locked 9700 non-Pro bios, because there is no way the card can handle the memory speeds of a stock Pro. Mine is artifact free upto 297MHz mem reliably, but try for anything over 300MHz and it goes straight to crap.

The core however is a champ, 360MHz is no problem.