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Poll: How did your 9500 mod turn out?

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Originally posted by: MadHatter0
My ram = teh poop! Even if I relax settings and up the voltage it craps out.
Click to expand...

Then get that conductive paint out, connect the L1 Bridges, and set your multiplier to 11.5 🙂

 
JuicyFruit, try underclocking your 9500 to see if the noise goes away. My guess is you're drawing too much power.

jaybee
 
Got my new Antec TruePower 550 installed. Nice quiet PS. AND it stabilized my voltages and got them back to where they should be. Waterblock on GPU. Currently benching 1800+ @ 1870MHz and 9500 w/Soft9700 @ 380/610. No artifacts, totally stable. No checkerboards/artifacts in Bear Demo, Paint demo or Animusic. The quest continues!
 
Well, until I can get some faster ram I think I've about reached the end with my current system.

T-Bred 1800+ "A" core at 2.0GHz (174x11.5) @ 1.9v
9500 w/Soft9700 @ 380/600
2 x 256 PNY Samsung TCB0 at 2.9v

14,308 3DMarks

It was fun getting there but I think I'll back it off a bit for everyday use. Those voltages are a bit too high for comfort.



1.955GHz (170x11.5) @ 1.85v
Memory at 2.8v

14037 3DMarks. I can live with those voltages. And so can my equipment.

 
I only see 2 of these cards selling on ebay right now. I thought there would be hundreds being auctioned by now. Here's a quote from one auction:

"You are bidding on an ATI Radeon 9500 (NOT PRO). It has been tested and supports the newest AGP8X and DirrectX9. Awesome video performance!"

In other words:

"You are bidding on an ATI Radeon 9500 (NOT PRO)" = this card can be unlocked with rivatuner to unlock 4 extra pipelines and 128 bits of bandwidth!

"It has been tested and supports the newest AGP8X and DirrectX9" = It has been VERY extensively tested by running 3dmark 2001, changing drivers, hardware mods, bios flashes, and overclocking to stress the core and memory.

"Awesome video performance!" = This card blows. I got artifacts and the stock speed sucks. Give me $160 so I can buy another one from Newegg.
 
Originally posted by: jaybee
JuicyFruit, try underclocking your 9500 to see if the noise goes away. My guess is you're drawing too much power.

jaybee
Click to expand...

Jaybee, thanks for the help. Tried underclocking and it still has that sound. I guess I shouldn't worry about it too much. It's very minimal but it just bugs a little. Can't complain with the performance though.

What are the success rates with red pcb vs. black pcb? I had no troubles with my red one. Very quickly done. No hardware mods necessary.

EDIT: I usually run with 4x AA and 8x AF in UT2k3 but I turned everything up, 6x/16x and I still got the same frame rates. Weird.
 
So, I'm thinking about this.. but I don't know which one to buy for best chance to get good results!

On this page: Newegg. Which one should I get?


Here's what I found:

ATI OEM RADEON 9500 128MB DDR BULK
*Out of stock!

Is that the one?
 
Originally posted by: LucJoe
So, I'm thinking about this.. but I don't know which one to buy for best chance to get good results!

On this page: Newegg. Which one should I get?


Here's what I found:

ATI OEM RADEON 9500 128MB DDR BULK
*Out of stock!

Is that the one?
Click to expand...

yea
 
Well, the good thing about them being out of stock is that the new batch they get in will probably have a better chance of a successful Soft9700 mod than the earlier ones as long as they're still being built on the 9700 PCB.

1) As the process matures they will have lower and lower failure rates on their dies

2) Because of the Soft9700 mod I'm sure that demand for 9500 non-Pro's is heavier than ATI anticipated so their supply of rejected 9700 cores is being depleted faster. Therefore they would have to supplement good 9700 cores to build enough 9500 boards to fill demand.


Just an educated guess.
 
Originally posted by: Creig
Well, the good thing about them being out of stock is that the new batch they get in will probably have a better chance of a successful Soft9700 mod than the earlier ones as long as they're still being built on the 9700 PCB.

1) As the process matures they will have lower and lower failure rates on their dies

2) Because of the Soft9700 mod I'm sure that demand for 9500 non-Pro's is heavier than ATI anticipated so their supply of rejected 9700 cores is being depleted faster. Therefore they would have to supplement good 9700 cores to build enough 9500 boards to fill demand.


Just an educated guess.
Click to expand...

Sweet! I need a new vid card, but there's no HUGE rush.. next shipment supposedly comes in 2/3/2003 so i'll wait till then!

btw.. if the worst happens and it won't mod at all, how is the performance on these things?
 
Originally posted by: Creig
Well, the good thing about them being out of stock is that the new batch they get in will probably have a better chance of a successful Soft9700 mod than the earlier ones as long as they're still being built on the 9700 PCB.

1) As the process matures they will have lower and lower failure rates on their dies

2) Because of the Soft9700 mod I'm sure that demand for 9500 non-Pro's is heavier than ATI anticipated so their supply of rejected 9700 cores is being depleted faster. Therefore they would have to supplement good 9700 cores to build enough 9500 boards to fill demand.


Just an educated guess.
Click to expand...


OR they could produce 9500 non-pro in new PCB layout.
 
Correct. That's why I said as long as they're still being built on the 9700 PCB. If they start being produced on the 9500 PCB that means you better find one of the 9700 PCB models QUICK! 'Cause all our fun will be over at that point.

 
newegg 9500 non pro

soft mod using riva tuner-- succesful no artifacts--overclocked to 320/290

"I had a hard time installing the patched drivers though, xp keeps on installing non patched drivers. The only way I was able to install the drivers was doing it manually (do not search for best drivers/ use let me choose driver option). Running the setup.exe at the unzipped folder after patching did not work even though the riva tuner faq stated you can do it this way."


I am glad I took the chance and bought this card. Could not stomach shelling out $300 dollars for a video card.(although I did buy a 8500 64mb for $220 last year)

peace
 
Originally posted by: jaybee
JuicyFruit, try underclocking your 9500 to see if the noise goes away. My guess is you're drawing too much power.

jaybee
Click to expand...

My psu has 2 4 pin floppy power cables. I didn't use the power cord that came with my video card. Could it be that it needs more juice that my floppy 4 pin can't bring?
 
I got mine from mwave.com. It is part no. A19810

here.

With Soft9700 my 3dMark2001 score increased from 8900 to 11600. So I'd count that as a successful mod!

-Baz
 
Originally posted by: JuicyFruit
Originally posted by: jaybee
JuicyFruit, try underclocking your 9500 to see if the noise goes away. My guess is you're drawing too much power.

jaybee
Click to expand...

My psu has 2 4 pin floppy power cables. I didn't use the power cord that came with my video card. Could it be that it needs more juice that my floppy 4 pin can't bring?
Click to expand...

Nope. It's gotta be getting enough power anyway, or it wouldn't be stable. I'm just guessing that high-pitched squeal is an overworked voltage regulator somewhere.

jaybee
 
i have been up since 8:30 waiting for the UPS guy to knock on my door with my new 9500 🙁 my first radeon card and here's hoping it's a great step up from my gf2 mx 400!
 
*sigh* just got my card today and did the software mod. i'm getting 3d artifacts in some games, but not all. getting artifacts in 3dmark as well. 3dmark won't complete. always crashes.

*edit* is there ANYTHING at all i can do about this? is the card ruined?
 
Originally posted by: hdeck
*sigh* just got my card today and did the software mod. i'm getting 3d artifacts in some games, but not all. getting artifacts in 3dmark as well. 3dmark won't complete. always crashes.

*edit* is there ANYTHING at all i can do about this? is the card ruined?
Click to expand...

you could keep it as just a 9500. no, the card isn't ruined. 🙂
 
I got a Sapphire 9500 NP 128 MB with red PCB, correct memory layout, and 3.3 ns Infineon ram.

No go 🙁.

Heavy 2d and 3d artifacts. The 2d artifacts looked like little scrambles whenever a menu popped up, the 3d artifacts were checkerboarding, and some major scrambling when I tried to play DAOC. Darn, I'm not gonna give up just yet though

Ollie
 
Originally posted by: blcjr
I got mine from mwave.com. It is part no. A19810 here. With Soft9700 my 3dMark2001 score increased from 8900 to 11600. So I'd count that as a successful mod! -Baz
Click to expand...

I just ordered from there yesterday thanks to your post (and the Anandtech GeForce FX review!). I hope I have the same success as you.
 
It's definitely a crapshoot. My 9500 is plugging away with just 4 pipelines -- one or more of the others are bad. I bought in early when it looked like it was a sure thing; now I'm stuck with far less of a card than I expected.

jaybee
 
I believe some people that had checkboards with the Soft9700 mod also tried the volt mod and it cleared it up in at least some cases.
 
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