- Mar 2, 2003
- 30
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I just upgraded my video card from a GF 4 Ti4200 128MB card to a Radeon 9500 PRO 128MB card for about $60 less Canadian then what they are asking for a 9600 PRO retail. I would have liked to stick with nVidia but the 5600's just are not good enough in my opion, and the Ultra's are too expensive. Anyway, its a Sapphire OEM Radeon 9500 PRO and has Infineon 3.0 ns RAM instead of the Hynix 3.6 ns. It has the stock ATI heatsink/fan on the card down to the ATI sticker, and uses a red PCB. I am very happy with the card's performance but noticed something odd. The card is not clock locked, which I thought all 9500 PRO's and 9700 cards were. It is a new card in sealed packing and I have not used the modded BIOS's available on the net to unlock it. This is the ATI bios info from the newest 3.4 drivers:
BIOS Version 8.004
BIOS Part Number 113-A05602-102
BIOS Date 2002/12/13
Under Adapter info it says this:
RADEON 9700 PRO
Adapter String: RADEON 9700 PRO
Bios Information: BK-ATI VER008.004.008.004
It does run at default speeds of 275MHz for core and 270MHz for RAM. Running UT2003 benchmarks with no AA or anisotropic filtering turned on and with V-Sync enabled at the stock speeds on my XP2100 + and A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 mobo with 512MB of Dual Channel DDR 333 Crucial RAM I get these scores:
Flyby : 127.880501 Flyby : 153.263916 Flyby : 162.281311
Botmatch : 53.529800 Botmatch : 53.655987 Botmatch : 54.027542
Resolution : 1280X960 Resolution : 1024x768 Resolution : 800X600
Using the Radeonater 2.0 Beta 2 software I overclocked the 9500 PRO to 9700 PRO levels, meaning a core of 325MHz and a RAM speed of 310MHz. Then I ran the same benchmark on my system and got these scores:
Flyby : 140.677444 Flyby : 160.655441 Flyby : 164.706726
Botmatch : 53.917728 Botmatch : 54.050762 Botmatch : 54.082180
Resolution : 1280X960 Resolution : 1024X768 Resolution : 800X600
I got no visual artifacts of any kind and the 13 frame rate gain in the Flyby test at 1280X960 was a welcome jump in performance. Pushing the RAM to 350MHz, roughly 40Mhz beyond the spec for 3ns RAM, on the other hand caused massive artificing until the RAM was turned back down. I got the same results using version 3.x of Powerstrip to overclock the card. I am just wondering if anyone else has heard of a factory unlocked 9500 PRO, as I thought all of them were clock locked even though ATI has never really said so officially. Just wondering. By the way, I tried out the Dawn demo on my Radeon and it looks fantasic.

BIOS Version 8.004
BIOS Part Number 113-A05602-102
BIOS Date 2002/12/13
Under Adapter info it says this:
RADEON 9700 PRO
Adapter String: RADEON 9700 PRO
Bios Information: BK-ATI VER008.004.008.004
It does run at default speeds of 275MHz for core and 270MHz for RAM. Running UT2003 benchmarks with no AA or anisotropic filtering turned on and with V-Sync enabled at the stock speeds on my XP2100 + and A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 mobo with 512MB of Dual Channel DDR 333 Crucial RAM I get these scores:
Flyby : 127.880501 Flyby : 153.263916 Flyby : 162.281311
Botmatch : 53.529800 Botmatch : 53.655987 Botmatch : 54.027542
Resolution : 1280X960 Resolution : 1024x768 Resolution : 800X600
Using the Radeonater 2.0 Beta 2 software I overclocked the 9500 PRO to 9700 PRO levels, meaning a core of 325MHz and a RAM speed of 310MHz. Then I ran the same benchmark on my system and got these scores:
Flyby : 140.677444 Flyby : 160.655441 Flyby : 164.706726
Botmatch : 53.917728 Botmatch : 54.050762 Botmatch : 54.082180
Resolution : 1280X960 Resolution : 1024X768 Resolution : 800X600
I got no visual artifacts of any kind and the 13 frame rate gain in the Flyby test at 1280X960 was a welcome jump in performance. Pushing the RAM to 350MHz, roughly 40Mhz beyond the spec for 3ns RAM, on the other hand caused massive artificing until the RAM was turned back down. I got the same results using version 3.x of Powerstrip to overclock the card. I am just wondering if anyone else has heard of a factory unlocked 9500 PRO, as I thought all of them were clock locked even though ATI has never really said so officially. Just wondering. By the way, I tried out the Dawn demo on my Radeon and it looks fantasic.