*Now get rid of artifacts* Turn Your RADEON 9500 into RADEON 9700 !

[lzpoof]

Originally posted by: j@cko
well.. i have no luck.. mine has artifacts in both 2D and 3D...

A poster in hard forums said artifacts went away if he UNDERclocked the core. It's possible the pipes may not be compeltely bad and it might just not be stable at 9500 stock core. Try underclocking your core and post results plz.

 

[AnMig]

Can anyone recap whats going on here.

I am planning to buy a 9500 pro since I cant stomach the $100 difference between the 9700 pro.

I know there are two types of 9500 (non-pro) and newegg buys both kinds.

Question 1. should I buy a 9500 (non pro) since the software hack MAY result in a 9700.
2. should I buy a 9500 (non-pro) since even if the softawre hack to 9700 fails you are still guaranteed 9500 pro speeds with the hack?
3. Is the 9500 (non-pro) overclockable to 9500 pro anyway so I shouldnt buy the 9500 pro?

please help clarify these questions as I ma totally brain warped from following these 9500 to 9700 threads here and at rage3d.
My wifey want s to get me a gift for my B-Day in 1 week so I want to get these issues clarified thanks.



peace

 

[bluemax]

Originally posted by: lzpoof

Originally posted by: j@cko
well.. i have no luck.. mine has artifacts in both 2D and 3D...

A poster in hard forums said artifacts went away if he UNDERclocked the core. It's possible the pipes may not be compeltely bad and it might just not be stable at 9500 stock core. Try underclocking your core and post results plz.

LOL!! Underclock the core and you lose the gain you just got by hacking the card and voiding the warranty!!
Just buy a darned 9500 Pro to begin with and get a heck of a lot MORE performance!

 

[bluemax]

No comments?

 

[bluemax]

No more 9500 hacking, eh?

 

[human2k]

Buy it...........look at it this way, its only gonna cost you $24 (15% of $160) to return the card back to newegg for refund if it doesnt work smoothly. My card should be here thursday or friday and if my card is a no go ill just exchange for a 4200/9500 PRO. Its a win/win situation actually.

 

[jps2000]

I just purchased the 9500 Pro 128mg from Newegg and it should arive by next monday...
Then I have to try overclocking this puppy...

 

[jpbushido99]

I got my 9500 128MB from newegg Saphire OEM, it the riva hack worked great, I was scoring 10,090, now I get 13,000 to 14,000 depending on how much I push my fsb. And I have oced the card to 9700 Pro speeds works flawlessly. 160 for a 340 dollar card is unbelievable. I love it.

 

[ShinGouki]

Does this only work with the Sapphire cards.........

Has anyone heard of any other brands working with this mod...

Im in the UK and found this

scroll down to Connect 3D Ati Radeon 9500 128Mb OEM

as you can see its on a red PCB

Im currently running on a Geforce 2 MX 32mb card and this is a seriuos bottleneck in my new system

*Epox 8RDA+, 2x 512mb PC2700 RAM, Athlon 1700+ Tbred, 120GB western digital SE*

So ive bought it any way ill let you guys know what happens, just so that you have some extra info
wish me luck

 

[mchammer187]

do this instead

its a lot less risky though it will cost more

$236 for sapphire radeon 9700 non pro at newegg

 

[Achilles97]

Originally posted by: j@cko
9500 PRo only has 128bit Memory Bus.

Does the non-Pro has a 256? I don't understand how the non-Pro can be made to have a 256 bus but the Pro cannot.

 

[Achilles97]

Originally posted by: chizow
LoL...all this reminds me of trying to find errors on baseball cards......

Billy Ripkin Fvck Face card.....$500!!!!

Chiz

I remember that!!! I have the whited-out version!

 

[Chad]

Got my Saphire card from newegg.com, did the w1zzard softMod and used RivaTuners low level overclock utility (core: 324 memory: 594). Did not have to flash any bios. Everything runs perfect (going on two weeks now). No artifacts or problems anywhere, anytime or any place. Everything ran/runs perfect. 3dMark scores 13,500 with my P4 1.6a @ 2.4 and 512 ram.

WOOT!

 

[Achilles97]

Did you get 3dMark scores before the mod?

Thanks

 

[tart666]

For the unlucky punters that are getting the artifacts: How to get rid of them here

 

[tbates757]

Originally posted by: SexyK

Originally posted by: tart666

If you look at a retail version of the cards, you can see that the memory is lined up all accross the top of the card, and not around the top and side like the 9700. This is not an official retail card thats been modified

Well, the trick is to get a Saphire 9500 128MB, which has the old layout, identical to 9700

Even if you do that, I swear that I read that the 4 pipelines are not even physically on the die of a 9500. Without those, you'll get nowhere near 9700 Pro speeds. Looking for reference now.

I swear this homeless guy told me the other day elvis is alive! I swear!!!!11

 

[XBoxLPU]

So should I sell my GF4 4400 for $165

and pick up

This

or just wait for the R350....

?

 

[tart666]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
So should I sell my GF4 4400 for $165

and pick up

This

No, no and NO!

First of all, no selling 4400. That's just silly, it's a perfectly good card for another 6 mo or more.

Second, that's the wrong PCB on that newegg card, if you trust the pictures. The correct PCB is red and has two RAM chips on the top and two on the side.

 

[CZroe]

How much does performance suffer when disabling HZ to rid yourself of artifacts? Can you still call it a 9700 Pro?

 

[gregor7777]

Once again about transforming Radeon 9500 into Radeon 9700: artefacts - Cormac @ 16:46
Returning to the discussion about remaking ATI Radeon 9500 into cards equal to ATI Radeon 9700 I?d like to remind that (as our review ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO, 9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0 also shows) the reason of unsuccessful remakes of 9500 into 9700 (causing visual artefacts) is the Hier.Z-buffer disabled in 9500 GPUs and enabled in 9700.

Perhaps, ATI Radeon 9500 is partially made of chips with defects in this block, causing visual artefacts in 3D when enabled.

Soft9700 software remake just makes 9500 look like Radeon 9700 for drivers. At that, it enables all 8 pipelines and HZ. Now this problem is solved as well and you can force HZ off via RivaTuner. As the RivaTuner creator, Alexey Nikolaychuk aka Unwinder, posted in our forum, "OpenGL driver was extremely disassembled and the encrypted key for disabling HierarchicalZ in OpenGL was found. Now those unlucky can get rid of artefacts in both OGL, and D3D".

The method is: RivaTuner's creator has disassembled the OpenGL driver and found a way to disable HierarchicalZ via an OpenGL registry key (ATI encrypts registry keys like NV).

The key name is "An6aYj2vwKuKd9brxl7", type "REG_DWORD". Changing algorithm: 0 disables HZ, 1 enables HZ, strictly setting to 0 enables R9500 mode.

The key is located in \OpenGL\Private branch. If you are sure you can do this yourself, just add the necessary parameters, otherwise, try using RivaTuner database (about 300 bytes) that will correctly set HZ for D3D/OGL for Catalyst 62xx under Windows 2000/XP. You will have to load this file, open it in RivaTuner's PowerUser tab (Open button in database), and edit it in HZ key in the PowerUser tab.

After this all remade 9500-9700 should work fine.

C&P for all to see!

 

[neilm]

I just bought one for my new computer (can't test it until the sis655 motherboard comes out ffs), hopefully it is artifact free though..

 

[madthumbs]

The fix doesn't work for me. I get subtle dotted checkerboard on the dot3 bumpmap test in 3dmark2001, white dots on the wannabe max payne's glasses, and subtle dotted checkerboard on the water in the unpatched version of BF1942. The card I had before had more pronounced green dot checkerboard patterns.

 

[Chad]

That link you gave has nothing on it about the Radeon... NOTHING.

 

[neilm]

Originally posted by: Chad
That link you gave has nothing on it about the Radeon... NOTHING.

Yea it did though, look here at the bottom of the page (it's just moved from the main page to archive).

Here's what it says if ya still have trouble finding it:

Returning to the discussion about remaking ATI Radeon 9500 into cards equal to ATI Radeon 9700 I?d like to remind that (as our review ATI RADEON 9500 64MB, 9500 128MB, 9500 PRO, 9700 and 9700 PRO in DirectX 9.0 also shows) the reason of unsuccessful remakes of 9500 into 9700 (causing visual artefacts) is the Hier.Z-buffer disabled in 9500 GPUs and enabled in 9700.

Perhaps, ATI Radeon 9500 is partially made of chips with defects in this block, causing visual artefacts in 3D when enabled.

Soft9700 software remake just makes 9500 look like Radeon 9700 for drivers. At that, it enables all 8 pipelines and HZ. Now this problem is solved as well and you can force HZ off via RivaTuner. As the RivaTuner creator, Alexey Nikolaychuk aka Unwinder, posted in our forum, "OpenGL driver was extremely disassembled and the encrypted key for disabling HierarchicalZ in OpenGL was found. Now those unlucky can get rid of artefacts in both OGL, and D3D".

The method is: RivaTuner's creator has disassembled the OpenGL driver and found a way to disable HierarchicalZ via an OpenGL registry key (ATI encrypts registry keys like NV).

The key name is "An6aYj2vwKuKd9brxl7", type "REG_DWORD". Changing algorithm: 0 disables HZ, 1 enables HZ, strictly setting to 0 enables R9500 mode.

The key is located in \OpenGL\Private branch. If you are sure you can do this yourself, just add the necessary parameters, otherwise, try using RivaTuner database (about 300 bytes) that will correctly set HZ for D3D/OGL for Catalyst 62xx under Windows 2000/XP. You will have to load this file, open it in RivaTuner's PowerUser tab (Open button in database), and edit it in HZ key in the PowerUser tab.

After this all remade 9500-9700 should work fine.

 

[j@cko]

doesn't work for me either.