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

[Pneumothorax]

I was going to post pictures, but no use sucking up more bandwidth when the card I got is EXACTLY the same as the ones that newegg posts. It also comes with all the cables they feature in the pic. As an added bonus the fan on it is much quieter than the one that was on my ti4600. Only drawback is that my ram isn't the best since I can only go up to 290(580 ddr) before getting artifacts. (It's 3.6ns I think, need to look inside to get the brand) Core runs at 370 beautifully. Thinking about getting the Zalman heatpipe for this card. I believe the hack is working even though my 3dmarks should be about 1000+ higher than what I'm getting right now. I'm getting about 125+fps on the more bandwidth limited tests like dragothic high detail. I'm also getting about 110+ on nature. I'm gonna try getting my backup HD and installing a clean copy of winxp on that as I'm still using the crappy winxp home that has a bunch of background junk programs that came with my dell.

Overall, not bad for $156 shipped and that I sold my ti4600 for $220.

 

[Creig]

Mmmm.... This is perfect timing. I was going to reformat my main rig ANYHOW so I'll just hold off until I can get this card. I'll bench it, mod it and rebench it.


Main Rig

Koolance PC2-C w/CPU-100 waterblock, chipset waterblock, GPU waterblock and HD waterblock.
All fans replaced with PC Power & Cooling fans (for noise reduction)
Epox 8K5A3+ @ 180x10.5
T-Bred AIUGA 1800+ @ 1.9GHz
512mb Crucial PC2100 @ 180 (soon to be replaced with 512 PC2700)
2 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200 rpm 20 gig drives on Raid-0
Enermax 350watt PS

It's going to be interesting to see what kind of speed I can wring out of the card with my setup. I'm currently getting around 8500 with my GeForce3 Ti200 OC'ed to 245/520. Should give me a nice bump in speed.

 

[Allen7]

Originally posted by: Creig
Mmmm.... This is perfect timing. I was going to reformat my main rig ANYHOW so I'll just hold off until I can get this card. I'll bench it, mod it and rebench it.


Main Rig

Koolance PC2-C w/CPU-100 waterblock, chipset waterblock, GPU waterblock and HD waterblock.
All fans replaced with PC Power & Cooling fans (for noise reduction)
Epox 8K5A3+ @ 180x10.5
T-Bred AIUGA 1800+ @ 1.9GHz
512mb Crucial PC2100 @ 180 (soon to be replaced with 512 PC2700)
2 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200 rpm 20 gig drives on Raid-0
Enermax 350watt PS

It's going to be interesting to see what kind of speed I can wring out of the card with my setup. I'm currently getting around 8500 with my GeForce3 Ti200 OC'ed to 245/520. Should give me a nice bump in speed.

With your setup, I guess you should be getting 15000+ 3dmark score.

I bought two last night and tested one in a POS KT-266/Athlon 1.33G machine:

Unmodified: 8660+
Modified and 9700 bios: 9500+
Modified and clocked to 9700Pro core/memory speed: 9900+

Not too shabby with 1.33 Athlon.

Not so lucky with the other one, with any of the 9700 bios 3dmark images show artifacts. But no problem with 9500 bios. So, YMMV guys.

Any programs out their to verify 8-pipelines and 256-bit memeory are working according to the Russians?

 

[NFS4]

nm, I found it

 

[Pneumothorax]

Go to the vid card section. Select radeon 9500 for your chipset. It'll be the second down on the list. Good luck! (darn newegg raised the price by 4 bucks, unfortunately there are negative anandtech effect haha)

 

[Gooberlx2]

How does the unmodified 9500 performance compare to a Geforce ti4200, anyone know? I'm just curious.

 

[iLoveDivX]

anyone else can confirm this?

 

[Gooberlx2]

Is it confirmed that newegg's sapphire 9500's are the 256-bit one's....even thought they're labeled as 128-bit?

 

[EdipisReks]

the unmodifed 9500 is pretty poor compared to a ti4200.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Heh, well I'm going to try the Soft9700 trick when it's released (I practiced last night and today...my soldering skill SUX ). Either way, this card will blow my Geforce1 out of the water.

 

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by: Gooberlx2
Heh, well I'm going to try the Soft9700 trick when it's released (I practiced last night and today...my soldering skill SUX ). Either way, this card will blow my Geforce1 out of the water.

it'll certainly do that . if you go to the rage3d forums, there is someone who has made a script that does the same thing that the upcoming rivatuner will do. you might be able to get him to give you the script, if you ask real nice and say "pwetty pwetty pwease, nice mister smwarty hax0r".

 

[zephyrprime]

Alright, I thought of a way to do this mod with the pencil trick. This may not be so useful now that there's a software only mod available but here it is for the record:
Easy 9500 mod?

Also, I orderd a 9500 from banana pc today but before I did, I called to verify that the pcb for the Sapphire 9500 was the same as the 9700 PCB. They updated their picture of the Sapphire 9500 128MB just for me because of my call so I can vouch for the "freshness" of the picture they show on their website. The new picture (and the old picture too) clearly show the 9700 PCB.

 

[frustrated2]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Alright, I thought of a way to do this mod with the pencil trick. This may not be so useful now that there's a software only mod available but here it is for the record:
Easy 9500 mod?

Also, I orderd a 9500 from banana pc today but before I did, I called to verify that the pcb for the Sapphire 9500 was the same as the 9700 PCB. They updated their picture of the Sapphire 9500 128MB just for me because of my call so I can vouch for the "freshness" of the picture they show on their website. The new picture (and the old picture too) clearly show the 9700 PCB.

I am no expert on electronic circuitry but I will say this makes perfect sense to me. If the center terminal is + and the others are - that should work fine as the programming would see the proper voltage on the other terminal and open up the other 4 pipelines.

I ordered a card today so I hope someone will get this all worked out by the time my card gets here.

Also another option for alot of people is an electronics repair shop any of their techs should be able to move the resistor without any problems.

 

[ectx]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Alright, I thought of a way to do this mod with the pencil trick. This may not be so useful now that there's a software only mod available but here it is for the record:
Easy 9500 mod?

Also, I orderd a 9500 from banana pc today but before I did, I called to verify that the pcb for the Sapphire 9500 was the same as the 9700 PCB. They updated their picture of the Sapphire 9500 128MB just for me because of my call so I can vouch for the "freshness" of the picture they show on their website. The new picture (and the old picture too) clearly show the 9700 PCB.

Please see xbitlabs' most recent news on this subject. They proposed a solution similar to yours but not exactly the same:

RADEON Modifications: No More Soldering!

Do you think their method would work?

Just gave in and ordered one from Newegg today. Hope Newegg still has the right one. A few more guys posted at Newegg saying the mod worked for them.

 

[PCMarine]

Heh now I wish I had a Radeon 9500 instead of this TI 4200

 

[frustrated2]

Originally posted by: ectx

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Alright, I thought of a way to do this mod with the pencil trick. This may not be so useful now that there's a software only mod available but here it is for the record:
Easy 9500 mod?

Also, I orderd a 9500 from banana pc today but before I did, I called to verify that the pcb for the Sapphire 9500 was the same as the 9700 PCB. They updated their picture of the Sapphire 9500 128MB just for me because of my call so I can vouch for the "freshness" of the picture they show on their website. The new picture (and the old picture too) clearly show the 9700 PCB.

Please see xbitlabs' most recent news on this subject. They proposed a solution similar to yours but not exactly the same:

RADEON Modifications: No More Soldering!

Do you think their method would work?

Just gave in and ordered one from Newegg today. Hope Newegg still has the right one. A few more guys posted at Newegg saying the mod worked for them.

Everyone over at rage3d forums are not having very good luck. It seems only 1 guy got it to work.

 

[EdipisReks]

most people haven't gotten their cards yet, so i'm willing to give it a little more time.

 

[ectx]

It does looks like that the mod may cause some corruption in 3D. FAO: Those experiencing corruption after 9500 -> 9700 mod

Damn!! should have reseached more before ordering..... But the worst case is that I can get an OC'ed 9500 - good enough for a spare pc. But I probably would not have ordered it if I read about the thread. BTW, 80 left at newegg.....

 

[zephyrprime]

Please see xbitlabs' most recent news on this subject. They proposed a solution similar to yours but not exactly the same:

Their advice is bad. I specifically tell people not to do this on my web page. The thing is, the resistors are there for a reason: to prevent too much current from flowing. The pins in question are no doubt connected to some I/O pin on the R300 chip. I/O lines are only for communication and can't handle any significant amount of current so you need a resistor in line to choke down the current flow. By just shorting pins 1 & 2 like XBIT recommends, you'll probably putting WAY WAY too much current into the R300. The R300 voltage is 1.5 volt which is enough to potentially put several amps into the R300 if there are no other resistors inline. Unless theres another transistor in the circuit somewhere on the PCB or in the R300, you could possibly kill your R300.

 

[Chad]

I will not trust this until I see some fellow AnandTechers getting it to work. So let us know our brothers!

 

[Pneumothorax]

This is a follow up on my previous post on my hacked Newegg Sapphire 9500 128mb. I reinstalled winxp and now I'm gettin around 14500 3dmarks on my P4 2.4. Problem is that I'm getting checkboard artifacts also especially after the card is running for awhile. The problem with my particular card is the shim around the GPU and the imprerfect surface on the crappy HSF the radeon comes with create a gap. I've tried applying extra AS3 to the gap but as you all know it doesn't really help. The original TIM was much thicker that the AS3. I finally solved the problem by taking a thin clean sheet of aluminum foil and making it the size of the core and placing it between the gpu and HSF. Now I can run 3dmark,warcraft 3 and UT23K without artifacts. I'm limited to 260mhz core and 280 memory though.

BTW my card has Infineon 3.3 memory

 

[Allen7]

Got another SAPPHIRE 9500 128MB today, did some 3dMark unmodified but with different bios.

10736 - UNMODIFY 9500 128MB SAPPHIRE 1ST RUN This is the very 1st run I did, got some unreal benchmark

8581 - UNMODIFY 9500 128MB SAPPHIRE 2ND RUN 2nd run, went to the lowest score from this series of tests.

8749 - UNMODIFY 9500 128MB SAPPHIRE 3RD RUN 3rd run, little better

8713 - UNMODIFY 9500 SAPPHIRE W/9700 BIOS 4th run, approx. the same as 3rd run

9109 - UNMODIFY 9500 SAPPHIRE W/9700PRO BIOS 5th run, running 325 core/620 mem.

9111 - UNMODIFY 9500 W/9700PRO BIOS 2ND RUN 6th run, almost same as 5th run.

Will do the resistor trick tomorrow and post some results.

 

[Chad]

14,500 is certainly nothing to scoff at! That's a darn nice score! For $160 I think you got a great card, more than enought o run todays games and definately a great stop gap card.

 

[Chad]

Don't do the resistor trick! The next RivaTuner (do out in a week) will do this trick for you IN SOFTWARE! Do not do the soldering!

Also, I think you got it backwards... your first run is the accurate run. That card should get about 10,000 in 3dmark without ANY mods to it. Your other scores are the unrealistic ones, that card should not score that low! Especially the ones overclocked... somthing is definately NOT RIGHT! When you overclocked you got no benefit... so I don't think you really overclocked it... and yes, I remember, to actually overclock it you have to flash the bios to to your overclocked speeds, because the 9500 and 9700 cannot be overclocked normally, only the 9700 Pro I think. Correct me if I'm wrong... but this is what I've been reading.

 

[Allen7]

Originally posted by: Chad
Don't do the resistor trick! The next RivaTuner (do out in a week) will do this trick for you IN SOFTWARE! Do not do the soldering!

Also, I think you got it backwards... your first run is the accurate run. That card should get about 10,000 in 3dmark without ANY mods to it. Your other scores are the unrealistic ones, that card should not score that low! Especially the ones overclocked... somthing is definately NOT RIGHT! When you overclocked you got no benefit... so I don't think you really overclocked it... and yes, I remember, to actually overclock it you have to flash the bios to to your overclocked speeds, because the 9500 and 9700 cannot be overclocked normally, only the 9700 Pro I think. Correct me if I'm wrong... but this is what I've been reading.

I guess you didn't follow my posts. I've done the resistor trick yesterday, it is not easy but not impossible, but definitely need a magnifying glass. And you meant to tell me all 9500 128MB card should run 10,000 in 3dmark with an Athlon 1.33G/KT266 motherboard setup?? Then I think Pneumothorax's 14500 score with P4-2.4 is too low. All three card I bought was tested on this system (freshly installed WinXP SP1 and with all the neccessory via patches) couldn't hit over 8800 except for that strange 1st run I did with the 3rd card I got today.

Of the two we did, one of the was successful, 3dmark score was in the 12000's with P4-1.6@2.1/Asus P4B266/512MB DDR2100/DX9 using bios from 9700 PRO. Same card did 9900+ in my Athlon 1.33G/KT266 setup.

You must have a hell of 1.33G/KT266 system that no one at Intel or AMD knows about.