- Joined
- Jan 12, 2002
- Location
- Goldens Bridge
The rules of the game have definitely changed... for the worse.
You guys had a thread here 2 weeks ago about "hobbling" of the 9500NP, but the single criterion cited was the "L-shaped RAM" as indicating that this is a 9700 PCB. I believe that's all over now.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/editpost.php?s=&action=editpost&postid=1331958914
above thread got lots of hits, but no comments and no credibility- AFAIK- but I'm not looking for applause: this news sucks. I'll leave it here like a dead fish at your doorstep and then I'll let it drop.
The post I wrote went like this:
It used to be that you just needed to get a 9500NP with the 9700 PCB -meaning that the ram chips had to be in an L shape, not straight. That was enough to indicate you'd have a fair shot at opening up the 4 pipes just waiting , and the 256 bit width of ram too.
Well, I had a sapphire 9500NP with "the 9700 PCB" (& I still have it- it's a great paperweight). It came a month ago. It had L-shaped ram (Infineon 3.3 ns) and it took the soft mod with ease: fillrates were superb and it OC'd so well that I decided to watercool the core and sink the ram chips. I wanted to convert it to a hardmod prior to permanent attachment of a waterblock. I believe that was when I ruined it: the soldering job required more delicacy than I could provide. Nothing I tried to save the card worked- & I tried everything to save that beauty, but even the POST ascii looked like Braille cyrillic.
So- still not content with my failure and the lessons it offered- I decided to try again. I got another 9500NP. It arrived 2 weeks ago with Hy 3.6 ns ram- again in L-shape.
But... that wasn't all that had changed: now there are different IC's on the flip side of the card!
Opposite the auxilliary power jack, there'd been 2 identical 14-pin ICs: ISL6522CB/P301ACQ but the newer 9500NP had one 14-pin (ISL-same/P240BEH) *and* an 8-pin: 3037A/CS233 and there were 2 new components opposite (and flanking) the GPU site:
old had 106C/P425S, new had 10/16V.
The old card had stencilled on to it V2A, and P/N ended with 073520 and the new had V39, P/N suffix 067378.
The new one took the softmod and opened its pipes- but it also had artifacts of a peculiar type: 2 vertical pairs of parallel dashes, one on each side of the monitor just like these, but vertical:
============================
They looked stuck-on to me: a deliberate spoiler that just served to blemish an otherwise beautiful rendering job.
I believe the changes in the PCB layout have been exclusively for the purpose of deliberately spoiling the mod.
So now the suitability of
a 9500NP to take the mod is no longer just a crapshoot of getting a board that was binned yet still works the full pipes: the pipes work just fine, but the "artifact" -which disappears when the mod is reversed BTW- is a protection ATI has developed.
You guys had a thread here 2 weeks ago about "hobbling" of the 9500NP, but the single criterion cited was the "L-shaped RAM" as indicating that this is a 9700 PCB. I believe that's all over now.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/editpost.php?s=&action=editpost&postid=1331958914
above thread got lots of hits, but no comments and no credibility- AFAIK- but I'm not looking for applause: this news sucks. I'll leave it here like a dead fish at your doorstep and then I'll let it drop.
The post I wrote went like this:
It used to be that you just needed to get a 9500NP with the 9700 PCB -meaning that the ram chips had to be in an L shape, not straight. That was enough to indicate you'd have a fair shot at opening up the 4 pipes just waiting , and the 256 bit width of ram too.
Well, I had a sapphire 9500NP with "the 9700 PCB" (& I still have it- it's a great paperweight). It came a month ago. It had L-shaped ram (Infineon 3.3 ns) and it took the soft mod with ease: fillrates were superb and it OC'd so well that I decided to watercool the core and sink the ram chips. I wanted to convert it to a hardmod prior to permanent attachment of a waterblock. I believe that was when I ruined it: the soldering job required more delicacy than I could provide. Nothing I tried to save the card worked- & I tried everything to save that beauty, but even the POST ascii looked like Braille cyrillic.
So- still not content with my failure and the lessons it offered- I decided to try again. I got another 9500NP. It arrived 2 weeks ago with Hy 3.6 ns ram- again in L-shape.
But... that wasn't all that had changed: now there are different IC's on the flip side of the card!
Opposite the auxilliary power jack, there'd been 2 identical 14-pin ICs: ISL6522CB/P301ACQ but the newer 9500NP had one 14-pin (ISL-same/P240BEH) *and* an 8-pin: 3037A/CS233 and there were 2 new components opposite (and flanking) the GPU site:
old had 106C/P425S, new had 10/16V.
The old card had stencilled on to it V2A, and P/N ended with 073520 and the new had V39, P/N suffix 067378.
The new one took the softmod and opened its pipes- but it also had artifacts of a peculiar type: 2 vertical pairs of parallel dashes, one on each side of the monitor just like these, but vertical:
============================
They looked stuck-on to me: a deliberate spoiler that just served to blemish an otherwise beautiful rendering job.
I believe the changes in the PCB layout have been exclusively for the purpose of deliberately spoiling the mod.
So now the suitability of
a 9500NP to take the mod is no longer just a crapshoot of getting a board that was binned yet still works the full pipes: the pipes work just fine, but the "artifact" -which disappears when the mod is reversed BTW- is a protection ATI has developed.