9500>9700 softmodded card has finally failed!

[Spacepiston]

Well after over a year of perfectly flawless performance, my Sapphire 9500 has begun to fail! At first it started as a driver glitch with screen corruption followed by a system crash. I thought it was a bad driver or SP2 causing trouble, but it turns out the card itself is apparently toast.

I tested all sorts of drivers and different configurations but the artifacting, and crashing is just getting worse and worse! So I decided to finally pry off the gpu shim, and hardmod the extra piplines since it seemed I had nothing to lose.

Well, the card successfully hard modded and I thought maybe I had gained a second wind, but instead I found the card still crapped but, but without causing windows to lock up like it did with the softmod driver.

I assumed perhaps the 4 extra pipelines (orginally assumed defective) might have finally deteriorated beyond a usable level. Unfortuantely when I flashed the card back to a 9500 np it still crashed! AAAAACK! Apparently its worthless now!

It did give over a year of faithful service with a heavy overclock; 390 on the GPU and 300 on the memory (watercooled).

I just thought I would pass on the grim news that such a great card failed prematurely....I sure did like almost 20k in 3dmark2001se and 6k in 03! My MSI 9800 Pro arrives tomorrow...

[Overclocker550]

my consolences and just goes to show that softmodding may kill your card prematurely. I am aware my softmodded 9500np may die in like a year but it cost me $80 now and a year later its gonna be close to worthless anyway. I would never softmod any card costing over $100 cause say an x800pro to xt mod dies, you lose $300 of resell value a year later. If my 9500 dies too early, ill just go back to my ti4200, its almost as good anyway and ill wait till I get a winchester before taking a nice 9800pro(must do around 500/400 clocks) if not maybe an x800se or x800pro or even a real 9700pro

[Kenshiro]

That sucks...... My amd is going down too..... not sure if it is the CPU or the mobo.... it just keep freezing up during gaming, and I am only playing WC3.

[Slimmy]

Wow 390 on the gpu! I can only get 375 out of my 9700pro w/ a vga silencer on it.

I'm assuming you tried your card back to stock speed.

Well I hope you find a nice new replacement. Look used I picked up a 9700pro for 91 skins used.

Oh ya moment of silence for the deceased hardware.... :(

[Albuquerque]

*cries*

*pours out a forty for the fallen homey*

Sorry to see it go man, I know it really saddened me when my first one died -- 415 on the core and 337 on the ram, voltmodded, BGA sinks and a huge socket 7 sink on top.

I'm not very convinced that your softmod or even hardmod did it, it sounds more like just the whole thing choked and died. I've got another 9500np softmod that's been working for two and a half years at stock 9700pro speeds without any issues.

[obsolete]

my consolences and just goes to show that softmodding may kill your card prematurely.

And buying a bran new card & doing nothing to it may die prematurely.

[realtadiquantu]

I have an ati built 9500 pro softed to 9700 pro
did that activate the extra pipelines for me?
:cry:
dont die on me plz :rolleyes:

[Albuquerque]

I have an ati built 9500 pro softed to 9700 pro
did that activate the extra pipelines for me?
:cry:
dont die on me plz :rolleyes:
Your original card is an ATI built 9500 pro? Or a 9500 non-pro?

[Z YA LTR]

Sorry to hear that.

Yea I love my 9500np too. I had it up to 411 on the core with no voltmods. Just a huge heatsink on it.

--Josh

[Overclocker550]

mine will do 400+ core as a 9500np but I dont know what gives when I can only do 350MHz, any more and it begins to stutter and the fps just die. arent you supposed to get white dots

[SlyJavi.]

Bummer dude, it sucks that a 9500NP has crapped out. :(

But, you got plenty of performance for the price while it lasted. Since it was watercooled, is there a possibility condensation killed the card over time? Just a thought.

My Sapphire 9500NP ==> 9700 is still running fine after 2 years with a constant OC of 385x309. I'm using a socket 370 heatsink modded with an 80mm fan for cooling.

I now put the softmodded 9500NP in my Server rig running @ 275x275, since I recently upgraded to a Sapphire X800 Pro Vivo Flashed==> XTPE for my Gaming rig. :clap:

[Spacepiston]

I did get water on my card a while back but that was being stupid:) It wasnt on at the time and I cleaned it up pretty good. I would say it went another 4 months after that incident.

I got my MSI ATI 9800 Pro today, has the samsung memory and the r360 core..XT HERE WE COME:)

[Overclocker550]

how does it overclock? can it do xt clocks? I hope alot higher than that, I had a 9800 pro that wouldnt even do xt clocks, sold it and got a softmodded 9500np instead and its 90% the performance of a 9800pro anyway

[Stoanhart]

So now that you got your new card, the problem went away right? I had the same problem with my 9500 Pro (ATI built), too, it it was only moderately overclocked, and only when playing games. I though it had died, so I borrowd some POS GFMX440 until I could get a new one. So I was play KOTOR on the 440 and the same crash happened. I was like WTF. Glad I didn't win that eBay auction, because I guess it's not the video card. Turns out the noname 300W PSU that came with my case finally had enought. I checked my voltages, and my 5V was around 3v and my 3.3 was about 2.1v. With the low voltage, the PSU had to dump more and more current into the wires to keep up with the power demand. The end result was a burnt ATX connector! New PSU, and my 9500 pro is still going.

[realtadiquantu]

Your original card is an ATI built 9500 pro? Or a 9500 non-pro?
Its a 9500 PRO flashed so it reads 9700 PRO, makes me feel so much better :santa: . oh wait they are both obsolete

[Albuquerque]

Well, not to make you feel much worse, but a 9500 Pro still only has a 128bit memory bus, unlike the real 9700's and the 9500np (with the L-shaped ram of course).

But that's nitpicking, so I should stuff it ;)

[Spacepiston]

Yea my 9500np>9700np was pretty good. This 9800pro flashed to an XT is only 1000 points higher in 3dmark2001se, so yea I give the Sapphire 9500np props for being top notch.

My 9800(XT) has successfully clocked 450/370 with a 3dmark2001se score of 21180. Not bad:)

[realtadiquantu]

but does flashing a 9500 PRO to 9700 pro activate the extra pipelines? because i didnt notice any difference after it was flashed.
(2.4ghz 2500+, 1gbcorsair pc3200, SATA hds)

[Spacepiston]

no,it has to be a non-pro.