ATI Radeon Modification Poll

shouldn't we have a list of games or demos to try that we KNOW causes artifacts in defective cards? i for one am having trouble finding 3 openGL games lol.
it would be much easier if we all tried the same apps

edit:btw so far, this card has taken everything ive chucked at it.

Well, I'd heard about artifacts showing up in B1942 so I got the demo and no problems there either

shouldn't we have a list of games or demos to try that we KNOW causes artifacts in defective cards?

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Well, the only problem with that is everybody seems to be having problems in different games. I can say that the OpenGL version of Unreal Tournament 2003 is probably one game where several people at least on this forum reported problems with. We could say try UT2003 then. Not everybody have the same games however, so that is another problem. Some people might have a whole bunch of first person shooters but not UT2003 and might not want to buy UT2003 just for artifact testing. In my case, I had problems with Soldier of Fortune 2 and Urban Operations but no problems with any other game including UT2003. Nobody else reported problems with the games I had problems with though. You see, since we have most of the problems with the HyperZ units on these cards as opposed to the 4 extra pipelines, depending on which part of the HyperZ unit is defective, people will not be getting artifacts in the same games in the same fashion. HyperZ unit is something pretty complicated and it is very unlikely that everybody would have the same kind of defect in the unit.

As a result, some people report problems even on the desktop whereas other people report problems with only some specific games. The list of these specific games change from person to person. In the end, just try whatever. Run 3dmark2001 or 2003 for directx app1 (since it's free everyone can just download it and run it), UT2003, Unreal 2, Warcraft 3, FIFA200x, Neverwinter nights, Command & Conquer generals, Max Payne or whatever for Directx apps 2 and 3. Most games on the market are DirectX games so if you just have 2 DirectX games that are not very old, you completed the DirectX list.

For me, thinking of OpenGL games is much easier. This is because there are tons of games out there that use the Quake 3 engine and run in OpenGL. Examples are Quake 3 itself and then: Return to castle Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, Urban Operations, Jedi Knight 2, Soldier of Fortune 2, Battlefield 1942, etc... If you have UT2003, again you can run it in OpenGL mode as well as DirectX mode having shot 2 birds with 1 stone. Actually, I think with so many games running with the Quake 3 engine on the market, you are likely to have a couple first person shooters that run with OpenGL. And if you need a Radeon 9500/9700 card, chances are that you are into first person shooters as they demand the most from graphics cards (as games, not talking about professional 3d applications).

Having said this, I don't think it is very diffucult to find 3 OpenGL applications and DirectX applications for testing. 3dmark takes your requirement down to 2 and then UT2003, if you have it, counts both as a OpenGL app and DirectX app and there might be other games out there that also support both DirectX and OpenGL.

hmmm. lets see then. this list will be updated untill i have run enough tests to pass (or just to see if any games i play give me artifacts)

direct x:
3dmark2001se
3dmark2003
max payne
MotoRacer3
NFS:hot persuit 2

all 100%, no artifacts

openGL:
jDoom
quake3
serious sam

i guess thats a pass then

I think the DSX9 demos from ATI were where a lot of people were having problems. Even with cards that ran fine in everything else.

OC Noob said:

I think the DSX9 demos from ATI were where a lot of people were having problems. Even with cards that ran fine in everything else.

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I also heard this from a lot of modders - that everything looked good BUT the Dx 9 demos DL from ATI.

i guess thats a pass then

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Yup, I would say that you seem to have 100% defect-free card if you can run all these games with no artifacts. Very nice!
Did you vote for the poll then?

I also heard this from a lot of modders - that everything looked good BUT the Dx 9 demos DL from ATI.

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Heh, yeah, that could be. I don't the think the problem is related to DirectX 9 though. I think it is just coincedence that some people ran into problems with the DirectX 9 demos. I am willing to bet that people having problems with the DirectX demos would find the same problems with other demos/games too. This is because most people run the demos first and then games. The reason I'm saying this is that, so far, we know that there are only 2 things that change with the 9500 cards when you mod them into 9700 cards.

1- 4 extra pipelines get enabled.
2- Hierarchical Z unit gets enabled.

None of these 2 things are directly related to DirectX versions though. If the pipelines are defective, you can end up seeing artifacts even on the desktop and if the Hierarchical Z unit is defective, then you have the chance to see artifacts in practically any 3d game as Hierarchical Z unit is related to depth calculations in 3d applications in general. As it is, newer games might use more advanced types of depth calculations, exposing the faults with the HierZ unit while older games might not. However, I don't think this has got anything to do with DirectX 8 or 9 or whatever in any way.

EDIT: The results are looking quite good btw. Much better than I expected them to be honest but that is not a bad thing. In terms of artifacts, there seems to be twice as many people running artifact free cards compared to the people having cards with artifacts. In addition, Unwinder's HierZ disable script should even increase the amount of artifact-free cards for the poll. There are 4 unfortunate souls that couldn't get the mod to work at all though. Probably the reason behind this is that either these people ended up with cards that have severely defective pipelines or the problem is *maybe* between the chair and the keyboard.

In either case, the results are somewhat along the lines of 58% totally successful to 42% unsuccessful with the artifacting cards and the un-modable cards combined. This disproves the 70% success to 30% failure ratio altough the numbers are still in favor of successful mods.

This poll is nice but seems kinda late. The moddable cards are getting really scarce. Most sites have them on the 9500pro pcb now. I've got another one coming from bananapc.com and got my fingers crossed, hoping its on the 9700 pcb(as shown in pic). It's sposed to arrive on 26th so I'll let you guys know. Maybe a second poll of recently purchased card and the pcb would be good?

peace.
unloaded

This poll is nice but seems kinda late.

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Why do you say that? The people that have already bought their cards and modded them can still vote here. Actually, I think if we made a poll earlier, our results might have ended up less accurate because people voting might not have had enough time with their cards to test them for artifacts.

In terms of future mods, you are right in that the red PCB's with 256 bit memory bus are getting scarce.

UnLoadeD said:

This poll is nice but seems kinda late. The moddable cards are getting really scarce. Most sites have them on the 9500pro pcb now. I've got another one coming from bananapc.com and got my fingers crossed, hoping its on the 9700 pcb(as shown in pic). It's sposed to arrive on 26th so I'll let you guys know. Maybe a second poll of recently purchased card and the pcb would be good?

peace.
unloaded

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Thanks for the input unloaded and good luck with your card. This poll is as much for historical purposes as it is for the practical purpose of determining one's chance of a successful mod - although it should serve that purpose as well, if the supply holds up. But now that the supply is possibly near the end we wanted to settle the question as to what % were TOTALLY successful.

But now that the supply is possibly near the end we wanted to settle the question as to what % were TOTALLY successful.

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This is exactly what I wanted to say.

*BUMP*.

This post is not stickied so it keeps going down.

sorry, stray click . . .

Black_Paladin said:

Yup, I would say that you seem to have 100% defect-free card if you can run all these games with no artifacts. Very nice!
Did you vote for the poll then?

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certainly did btw its still blazin' through all my games

Add 2 more counts to vote number 2 (works with artifacts) I got the same results on 3 cards.

Thanks for keeping this alive guys. There must still be some people out there that did the mod a while ago and haven't posted here. Right now, we have 34 votes total which isn't really all that much considering the fact that we have more than 10000 people on this forum alone and that Alex linked to this thread on other forums. I would think that out of that many users, more than 34 people have done this mod.

I think more people have voted here if this thread was stickied as it keeps disappearing to the 2nd page so you have to hunt for it (some people might simply not be voting because they don't even know that this thread exists perhaps) but the mods didn't deem it important enough for a sticky I guess. I can't really say I blame the mods for this but it would have really helped if this was stickied.

Anyway, 34 people is better than nothing so I shouldn't be complaining.

Well, after further testing I have voted for choice #1.

I have tested the following extensively

DirectX:
3DMark01se
3DMark03
UT2003
Dungeon Siege

OpenGL:
MOHAA
SOF2
RTCW
Serious Sam
__________________

I have tried all the ATI DirectX9 Demo's and Screensavers including the newest ones for the 9800 and everything runs
perfectly with no artifacts.

I have also tried:
Battlefield 1942
Age of Empires 2
The Sims
SimCity 3000

I love my 9700!

Cheers

terminalmind, wow, this is what I call serious testing! Thanks for taking the time to do this. Your post and vote are much appreciated. Thanks a bunch.

Also, congratulations on getting an artifact free card. Looks like you scored. Grrr, I am now jealous.

Don't know if you guys knew about this but check this thread out.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33667164

Basically you flesh your card with Radeon 9700 Pro BIOS and paff you are:
1. running 325/620
2. able to o/c it even higher

I had mine ( flashed with Warp11 PAL BIOS ) o/c 351/606 highest... Now my friends i have it 351/650

did you flash the 9700Pro bios on a softmodded 9500 non-pro ? or was it the hardware mod?