9500 Saphire OC

Well, the thinking goes something like this.....alot of people are buying the Saphire 9500 right now so Saphire is likely to have more good (read modifiable) cards out now in order to fill the gap in orders. Or at least this made sense to me. Got all of the parts in for the new system but was really curious about the vid card so ran some tests at 2.2Ghz on 3dmark.

Results:

11,057 Stock
11,167 Stock with mobo bios mods
12,235 @ 317/604
12,255 @ 317/621
12,396 @ 324/621

Not real impressive however did not lean on the card/system hard. Maybe 14G wound out.

Tried software mod for 98se with no success. No Joy for those of you so inclined. Took heat sink off card to do hard mod and found the resistor too small for me at this time (toothpick head was larger than the resistor area. Took defogger paint and ran it across the resistor to the second connection point (new location). Flashed bios with warps and with stock drivers and stock 9500 settings am now getting 13,800. No other mods or system settings to enhance the score. No checkerboarding or other artifacts. (kind of nice seeing 140s in nature). This was run at 270/540. Am a little leary to push the card too hard at this time due to reusing the same thermal compound and stock heatsink. Am looking into vmods for the card now. Seems 13800 stock scores should easily put 19g scores within reach. Too bad I'm on the road these days as this card along with the xp2700 on the dual tecs along with the epox nf2 and the corsair 3500 xms, through in a vdd mod and 20g could be attainable. We shall see what it can do on air though and possibly play around with the tecs a little later. Take Care All.

mods

Awesome, silver!

Makes me feel unworthy having picked up a Sapphire 9700 pro for my experiments, when I could have taken the route of modding the cheaper 9500.

2400+ @ 2250 but FSB limited to 180
9700 pro mods:
AMD retail HSF on GPU
copper ramsinks
no chance to overclock the card or run 3dmark just yet.... I wish I could just go home at least every couple of days, but I'm too busy.

Wow, so you don't even need to move the resistor, just paint a trace from the resistor to the spot it is moved to when modded?

That would be easy enough for even me to do

OC Noob said:

Wow, so you don't even need to move the resistor, just paint a trace from the resistor to the spot it is moved to when modded?

That would be easy enough for even me to do

Click to expand...

Can't say whether or not it will work for all but seems to have for me. Fill rate is a touch over 1700. Played around a little and have gotten it up to 15,500 in 3d. Great to see things like the dragon starting to climb the wall at 325fps or peaking in nature at 175fps. Seeing Drag high detail peaking at over 200fps. Cool stuff. Need to do a cooling mod, add some ram sinks and a vmod to see if we can't push this thing up. This unfortunately will not occur until some time next week as am off to Alabam first thing in the AM.

Nice results, I just got my card today from bananaPC. At default it scored 10,951 3dmark I ran wizzard's drivers and score went to 13,188! That's with no other changes made. Gonna install floppy later and flash the bios so I can do a bit of overclocking. I'm really glad I got one without artifacts. I'm glad to know the defogger does the trick without artifacts (if ya got a good card). I think I'll leave it as is for now, but will do the defogger later so hacked drivers wont be needed anymore.

peace.
unloaded

Arkaine, I assure you that had I had the money twould be a 9700 but alas it was not so. It means while competing, I shall have to find a way around slower ram.

9700

It was $250



At least your system ram is faster than mine.... ever since I got this tbred, my FSB has suffered.
But hard to complain when the 2400+ was free.

Forgot the link, sorry.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5646986

I need some fill rates like that silver, my 9500 is about half of yours. I like how Futuremark thinks your processor is a 2.2 GHz Duron

Nice, these cards just keep getting easier to hack/mod

Need to do some work on the vid in the next two days and get the air cooled xp2700, etc up and running. Will make some preliminary runs on that setup and post as long as there is some time to do so.

OC

16k

375/360 and the core will keep going I think...

Too bad this original revision kx7 doesn't like tbreds... no more 200 FSB for me. And I want a new board, but I have this big raid array full of stuff that'd be hard/expensive to back-up. I could get a new board if it had a HPT 372 controller on it, otr if I buy a pci raid card that does.... I guess. <sniff> not really worth it.

Just doing a little playing. 9500 is still unmodded as far as cooling, ramsinks and v mods are concerned. 16,200 on the Epox 8k3a and xp2200. Need to break 17g unmodded to have a shot at .....whatever. Take Care All.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5709737

Once I'm CERTAIN the hack works on my card (if it does) without artifacts and such. I'm gonna lap the gpu, heatsink, AS3 it, mod the card to the Hilt and see what I can get out of it. (No volt mods though, unless I get bored). This card will be my *****.

I am going to make sure my mod works...then I am going to AS3, install new GPU kewler...copper ram sinks (if I can find some)...and then have 2 of my 80mm fans blow right across it

This card will be sweet...

I am also thinking of modding it into a Fire GL card...I must wait to see if my card is REALLY stable b4 I do this though...

Also depends on the hit it takes in FPS...