the BEST card for overclocking!

Ive spent all day today looking around at cards and how well they overclock and have come to a conclusion about the BEST card for overclocking....


Correct me if i am wrong people, if you know a better card then spak up!

The card is the ATI 9500 non-pro, apparently there are both hardware and software hacks to make it run as fast as an ATI 9700 pro!!!!!



DONT GET ME WRONG, i absolutely HATE ATI and never bought an ATI card before in my life, but this seems like the best card for overclocking, and if it is then i am just gona have to get it =/


Again, correct me if i am wrong!


edit: Please dont ask why i hate ATI as there are many different reasons and details i dont wanat to get into, as an ATI vs GEFORCE discussion is almost always endless....

I will tell you that my hatred for ATI began back when ATI made those drivers that allowed you to play games in meshmode and people used them to wallhack in counterstrike.....

Why the hell would you say you absolutely hate ATI?
Maybe you should get a FX5200 then.

old news eheheh


but if your getting a 9500 and soft/hard mod it sometimes it doesnt work, and if it does yoru just changing the 128 memory
pipeline to 256 thats not technically overclocking, although i see your point and agree with you


if yoru just overclocking, lots of times it depends on the manufacturer of the card, the heatsink, and a bunch of other stuff


but i generally agree with you that if you want to


"hot-rod" a card the 9500 non=pro with the L shaped memory is the way to go

technically you can't make a 9500 to a 9700 cause there's no R300 to R350 mod. since you'd have to hard mod the card you really can't do it. you can get the clock as high as a 9700 pro but the card is still neutered compared to a 9700.

blackjackel said:

Ive spent all day today looking around at cards and how well they overclock and have come to a conclusion about the BEST card for overclocking....


Correct me if i am wrong people, if you know a better card then spak up!

The card is the ATI 9500 non-pro, apparently there are both hardware and software hacks to make it run as fast as an ATI 9700 pro!!!!!



DONT GET ME WRONG, i absolutely HATE ATI and never bought an ATI card before in my life, but this seems like the best card for overclocking, and if it is then i am just gona have to get it =/


Again, correct me if i am wrong!


edit: Please dont ask why i hate ATI as there are many different reasons and details i dont wanat to get into, as an ATI vs GEFORCE discussion is almost always endless....

I will tell you that my hatred for ATI began back when ATI made those drivers that allowed you to play games in meshmode and people used them to wallhack in counterstrike.....

Click to expand...

would you like some chips ahoy for that???

emericanchaos said:

technically you can't make a 9500 to a 9700 cause there's no R300 to R350 mod. since you'd have to hard mod the card you really can't do it. you can get the clock as high as a 9700 pro but the card is still neutered compared to a 9700.

Click to expand...

Actually you can. Not only do they both use the R300 core but everything about them is exactly the same except the bios and one tiny soldering job on the pcb of the chip. The 9600 uses the R350 core. When you do the 9500np > 9700 mod soft or hard mod it becomes a true 9700 with all the same features.

Yeah.. just with a little bit slower memory..(sometimes)

Also emericanchaos... ive read a few of your posts around today.. and many are filled with misinformation that is just plain wrong.
I dont want to flame you... I just want you to make sure you got the right information.. and know what your talking about before you post.

I will tell you that my hatred for ATI began back when ATI made those drivers that allowed you to play games in meshmode and people used them to wallhack in counterstrike.....

Click to expand...

Yes and im sure that was ATI's intention. Thats like saying gun manufacturers are responsible for people being shot.

When did we stop blaming those who do the crime... you should Blame/Hate the cheaters.. not ATI.

emericanchaos said:

technically you can't make a 9500 to a 9700 cause there's no R300 to R350 mod. since you'd have to hard mod the card you really can't do it. you can get the clock as high as a 9700 pro but the card is still neutered compared to a 9700.

Click to expand...

You're confusing the 9700 and the 9800.... The former is an R300 chip, the latter is the R350.

Also, the poster above you is confused too... You cannot "turn on" the 256-bit memory pipeline; it's either there or it's not. Here is EXACTLY how this mod works (and this has been posted SO MANY TIMES, I'm still not sure how people get it confused):

The 9500 non-pro is the same R300 core as the 9500 Pro, 9700 non-pro and 9700 Pro. They are ALL built on the same core. The R300 core features a 256 bit memory bus, eight pixel pipelines, VS and PS 2.0 features, and a 24-bit floating point pixel processor. EVERY SINGLE R300 CORE HAS THESE FEATURES.

What makes one of these R300 cores into the different "platforms" (ie the 9500np, the 9500p, the 9700np and the 9700p) is a combination of clock speed, memory configuration on the actual board, and a small software flag to disable half of the pixel pipelines. You can change that software flag by either resoldering a resistor and then flashing in a new bios, or just by using a hacked driver.

The 9500 non-pro cards were supposed to be a 128-bit memory bus PCB with the resistor jumper set to disable four pixel pipelines running at the slower 270 mem/275 core speeds. TO make things VERY CLEAR, the core itself is still the same R300 core from all the other 9500/9700 cards. Thus, using the software hack, you can enable all eight pipelines again (hoping that you got a good R300 core). Any 9500 non-pro card with this mod working turns into (at least) a 9500 PRO card. Meaning, it has 8 pixel pipelines working but still a 128-bit bus.

The 256 bit bus DOES NOT come from any sort of modification, it instead comes from the actual design of the PCB (the card itself and how the memory is arranged). The PCB's with the memory chips in a single line OR with only 64mb of video memory ALL have a 128 bit memory bus - NO EXCEPTIONS. However, the PCB's with the memory chips in an L-shape AND are equipped with the full 128mb of ram have the 256 bit memory bus.

Again, the memory bus is irrelevant to any mod you may have done. Thus, it's entirely possible to have a 9500 non-pro that doesn't take the pipeline mod, but STILL HAS the full 256 bit memory bus. This can be (and has been) easily ascertained by simply benchmarking two 9500 non-pro cards on the exact same computer with the exact same graphics settings -- but one card using the L-shaped memory layout and the other using the I-shaped one. The L-shaped always wins, ESPECIALLY in higher resolutions, because of the higher memory bandwidth.

The 9500 PRO cards can NOT be "modded" in any way, because they already have all eight pipelines running AND they are ALL built on 128 bit memory bus PCB's. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Thus, if you are one of the lucky few with a 9500 non-pro that successfully pipeline modded, AND have the L-shaped memory PCB layout, then you have (at the very least) a true 9700 non-pro on your hands. All eight pipelines. All 256 bits of memory bandwidth. Now just a small overclock and you're at 9700 Pro speeds, or even above...

As many times as this has been posted, people STILL somehow get confused. The memory bus has nothing to do with mods, the mod ONLY affects the total number of pipelines. And ALL the 9500 and 9700 cards ARE BUILT on the SAME R300 core.

Amen...

Does anyone know about "Powered by ATI" 9800 256MB VRAM being rated at 450MHz? Obviously if these cards did have the fast Samsung modules, like the "Built by ATI" cards, they'd be the best for overclocking so long as you had a way to cool the RAM properly.

Its DDR2 on that card. And they come with Heatsinks already on them. Since DDR2 runs pretty hot, there may not be much room. Not to many people have worked with DDR2.

Plus that card costs 499 am I right?

The 9500 to 9700 mod... if it works.. is the best bang for the buck also overclocking wise its good.

Really the only thing that usually holds those 9500 -> 9700 modded cards back in overclocking is the ram speed... Take mine for example: perfectly stable at even 405mhz core clock in the way older games like NFS3 and whatnot, but sometimes shows sparkles in like UT2K3 or something, so I have it backed off to 378 core. That speeds works in everything and shows ZERO anomalies in anything I play...

But my damned memory peters out at 297. Even one more notch higher to the 303 level and it goes straight to hell after like two minutes. It's not heat-related either, because the little BGA memory modules are just luke warm to the touch. I think people have had success Vmodding the ram on these puppies to make them behave better, but honestly I don't care THAT much.

Otherwise, these things overclock awesome. I've only seen a very few users report that their modded 9500 won't do at least 350 core. We really will never know the reason for those, but it seems almost everyone is able to pump at least 350 core and 290 memory (580 DDR) out of these suckers pretty reliably.

My 3DMark03 score with the rig shown below is 5359 -- can't beat that for $150!

Albuquerque, so what is stopping some of these cards from a successful mod (without artifacts), people get checkerboarding and such by enabling the additional pipelines with the hacked drivers? Also, i thought the 9500np was supposed to be have 128bit memory by default, why have they built the pcbs allowing 256bit in some 9500np but always 128bit even in the L shaped 9500pro?

What is stopping them is defective pipelines. The ones with memory in straifht line always have 128 bit bus, the ones with L-shape always have 256 bit.

L-shape 9500np Is a 9700np with a different bios and small soldering job on the pcb of the chip.

q149 said:

The 9600 uses the R350 core.

Click to expand...

the 9600 is rV350 not r350 they are 2 different architectures

R4z0r4mu5 Pr|m3 said:

Albuquerque, so what is stopping some of these cards from a successful mod (without artifacts), people get checkerboarding and such by enabling the additional pipelines with the hacked drivers? Also, i thought the 9500np was supposed to be have 128bit memory by default, why have they built the pcbs allowing 256bit in some 9500np but always 128bit even in the L shaped 9500pro?

Click to expand...

simple answer is that those chips have some bad pipelines and are binned as 9500nps instead of 9700/pros though some of those cores are binned like that anyway

Albuquerque, so what is stopping some of these cards from a successful mod (without artifacts), people get checkerboarding and such by enabling the additional pipelines with the hacked drivers? Also, i thought the 9500np was supposed to be have 128bit memory by default, why have they built the pcbs allowing 256bit in some 9500np but always 128bit even in the L shaped 9500pro?

Click to expand...

It was cheaper for them to just take 9700np... solder a different resistor that shut off 4 of the pipes and then sell it in a different market, they couldnt or didnt.. shutoff the extra 128 bit, they left it there, because the 4 less pipes was enough to cripple the card.

when they realized people figured out the mod, they eventually started making PCB's specifically for the 9500.

I believe that was in the plans from the start to make a new PCB. But they were in a hurry to fill the mid range market segment and they started by making the 9500's using r300 cores that either had a couple broken pipes..(why the checkboard happens) or ones that worked fine, but were on the outside of the waffer and were not guaranteed to do well at the higher clockspeeds.

the 9500 pros were on a different PCB from the beggining. So there was never a 256bit bus on those.

do most mods get checkerboarding or artifacting of some kind? how often do people get a modded card that works perfectly? i don't mind the core/mem speed like if it's outside the waffer since it's already the same as a 9700np, but artifacts affect gaming experiences

I think it was on this site that a really good Poll was posted that about 300 people replied to. Something like 60% of the respondants said they had a 9500 non-pro that was modded perfectly as in absolutely zero artifacts in any game or app. Another 10-15% had "acceptable" artifacts, such as small sparkles or other small insiginificant things that they could live with. The rest had bummed cards that would just go straight to hell with the mod enabled.

That is, if my memory serves correctly, but I'm pretty sure those numbers were accurate. It WAS better than a 50% chance of getting a good moddable card with zero artifacts. I think the newer ones are actually modding better than the older ones for some reason; likely because the total positive yield on those wafers is getting better and better as time progresses.

Memory on these cards seems to be the biggest bottleneck, not necessarily the GPU. I've been reading some more over the last two hours, and have found that VDD/VREF/VDDQ voltmods on the 3.3ns Infineon-equipped cards seems to help a LOT. Stupid little chips usually quit at 290-297mhz on most people, but when modded, seem to go as far as even 340+mhz. That's MUCH better

So the general concensus seems to be agreement, thats good. So if anyone out there has a 9500np and it overclocked perfectly let me know, because that is definately the card i am going to get!

I have also posted around on other forums this exact topic, the 9500np and the 9600 pro ultra are the exact same price on pricewatch.com

should i go with a 9500 or a 9600 pro ultra????

heres the link to the other forum:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=633425