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Radeon 9500 questions... HELP!

A

alembic5

Golden Member
I have what I think is a Radeon 9500 non-pro. The reason I say this is because the maunfacturer's label says Radeon 9500, but the label put on the card by the reseller says 9500 pro. So, on with the questions!

1. Is there a definitive way to tell which card this is? It shows up under winXP as a 9500.

2. How does this card perform as compared to a GeForce 4 Ti4200? I have a 128 MB Gainward Golden Sample card with 3.3 ns ram. Are they on the same playing field? The card will be in an Asus A7V8X deluxe mobo.

Any insight or help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: The core clock is at 276.75 MHz, therefore showing it is a non-pro. Any way to mod this thing into something higher? 🙂
 
Excellent... thank you for that link. Checking it now...

It appears to be a non-pro. So in this light, which card is better? Also, I've seen that you can mod these to a 9700. Anyone have links to this mod? Anyone had success doing this? Thanks!
 
Actually checking the clock speeds won't tell you for sure, both the 9500np and pro are clocked at 275/270 (though if the manufacturer label and Windows says its 9500 it probably is non-pro).

I think there are a few other ways, but the one i remember is using Rivatuner (available at Guru3d), it should say in the program somewhere about how many pipelines the card has. If it has 4, then it's non-pro, if it has 8, then it's a pro.

Rivatuner also has the softmod for the 9500np, but I'd rather use wizzard's patch available here.

Edit: If in fact you have a 9500, I would return the card to the reseller UNLESS you can successfully softmod to the 9700non-pro. Read the FAQ at the softmod page for more info.
 
AFAIK, both the 9500pro and the 9500 regular have 275/270 clockspeeds, the only difference is that the non-pro has 4 pipelines vs 8 for the pro. You'll need to run 3dmark2001se and check the fill rate to see which card you have.
 
Originally posted by: sellmen
AFAIK, both the 9500pro and the 9500 regular have 275/270 clockspeeds, the only difference is that the non-pro has 4 pipelines vs 8 for the pro. You'll need to run 3dmark2001se and check the fill rate to see which card you have.
Click to expand...

This is correct. Sound like it's a np, but checking your fill rate should show you. A pro has double the fillrate, 2200 Mt/s vs 1100 Mt/s for the np.
 
Ok, here is what I got from RivaTuner...

$0900000000 Graphics core : R300 (4x1)
$0900000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0900000001 Memory type : DDR SGRAM / SDRAM
$0900000003 Memory amount : 128MB
$0900000004 Core clock : 276.750MHz
$0900000005 Memory clock : 270.000MHz (540.000MHz effective)
$0900000006 Reference clock : 27.000MHz


Does the 4x1 depict 4 rendering pipeline open?
 
Not yet. What is the best way to do this? Thanks again, guys for all the help! Just more proof why Anandtech people are the best! 🙂
 
Ok, I installed RivaTuner and attempted to run the softmod. How do I get past the windows protection on this? It says I need to patch the file before installation. How do I accomplish this? Thanks! 🙂
 
Originally posted by: alembic5
Sweet! I'll give it a try now...
Click to expand...

alembic, there are many ways to softmod, I used the Omega drivers located at http://www.omegacorner.com/index_ati.html . They are as simple to install as the ATI drivers, and ATI claimed them to be the best 3rd party drivers/modifications out there. Just thought I'd through throw that in. No way of softmodding is better than the other, as long as it works. Omega's are constantly kept up to date with ATI's driver version. I'm not sure about others. Another one is also located at http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod . Pardon me for being too lazy to link.

Omega's mod is as simple as running a setup. (a rather long setup that you have to click next for ALOT, if i remember correctly)
 
Thanks for those links! That sounds much easier than messing with the windows file protection issue. I have seen the omega name in many posts, so I think those are the ones I will go for. I'll try them out tonight and let you know how it goes. Thanks again!
 
good luck on your L shaped 9500 NP

I hope you are as lucky as I am and get a soft moddable card.

Chances are if he sold it to you that it failed the softmod (artifacts) good luck.


I use rage3dtweak to overclock my card further
 
I know for a fact that he never did any overclocking or tweaking of any kind... he is a good friend of mine, and has no knowledge of how to do these things. He's a basic user that wants a machine that he can just turn on and go... 🙂 I actually built his machine for him, so I know about his setup. He bought the card after I built the system for him, and he was unhappy with the performance. I think he was unhappy because he had some bad drivers, and the card was not performing at all for him. I ended up reinstalling XP for him on a new hard drive, but he didn't want to try installing the card again. I took it home, plugged it in and ran call of duty at 1280x1024 with all the eye candy maxed and it ran beautifully! Here's hoping I can squeeze a little more out of it... 🙂

By the way, what are you guys getting for an overclock on your cards with stock cooling?
 
sapphire 9500np

core clock 340mhz

memory 295mhz

stock cooling.

side question I have never used the omega drivers but want to try it to but have some questions

1. so will it soft mod automatically or is there a tweak tab involved?
2. does it have a overclocking utility? omega does not recommend external tweakers like rage3dtweak so what do you use to overclock?

 
Well, I tried the Omega drivers, and when I fire up 3dMark2001SE, I see many little blue dots. I would assume that these are the artifacts that occur when one of the pixel pipelines is faulty? Oh well, it was worth a shot. I've uninstalled the omega drivers and gone back to the catalyst drivers. What would you all recommend now to get the most performance from this card? I'm more interested in stability, so I'm thinking a light overclock will do it. Are there any advantages to installing the omega drivers without the softmod portion? Do they offer better performance than the catalyst drivers? Thanks again guys for all your help! I think I'll be trying the rage3d tweaker first.
 
just insatlled the omega drivers.

if you failed the mod you can still insatll the regular driver.

The omega drivers has a built in overclocking feature so you dont need a seperate tweaker (rage3dtweak)
also the installation was easier since the control panel was already incorpoarted into the driver installation.
If you are not a tweaker the drivers are already tweaked for stabilty and quality (so they say).

will be trying out hte omegas next couple of weeks

good luck

check out the omega site they have some suggestions to fix some problems (artifact) with the 9500 to 9700 softmod
example disable fastwrites. Might be to soon to give up on the mod.
good luck
 
Good information... I had forgotten to check that setting. I will go in tonight and mess with the settings again! Thanks for the reminder.
 
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