ATI Radeon Modification Poll

[Black_Paladin]

Ryan, did reinstalling Windows take care of the crash in 3dmark's Nature test? I'm assuming that it did because I believe the boat demo comes after the Nature test so if you got to that test, you must have passed the Nature test OK.

Sorry that you saw slight artifacting in the boat demo but hopefully you won't see artifacts in games. Usually, people will get artifacts in 3dmark tests but they won't see anything unusual in games. Thank you for testing your card and voting appropiately though.

For overclocking, I would say use Powerstrip. I think it's the best overclocking program by far and it works perfectly. You know, certain ATI cards have a lock for overclocking (I know the 9500 pro has that lock but I can't remember if the 9500 non-pro has it as well) but Powerstrip just seems to ignore that.

Also, overclocking your CPU to 2.5Ghz should give you a TREMENDOUS boost in performance! Way to go! Let us know the results when you run some tests with your CPU overclocked.

 

[Ryan T]

The boat demo was in 3Dmark2001 SE. The nature test that crashed my card was in 3Dmark2003. After I reinstalled windows I can run the whole 3Dmark2003 wittout any artifacts or crashing. I can't find any artifacts in any games yet so I think it's just that dumb boat. The artifact shows up in the shadows under the boat on 3Dmark2001 SE after the fish swim by.

About powerstrip, did you buy the full version or can I overclock with just the demo? Also how much of a boost will I get by overclocking my card to 9700 Pro levels? I've heard around a 10% increase but I'm not sure.



Thanks
Ryan

 

[Black_Paladin]

Ryan, it's cool that you don't see any artifacts in games. Considering that you are seeing artifacts in the shadows under the boat, this is something probably related to bump mapping. My bet is that if you don't play a game that makes heavy use of bump mapping, you will probably not see any artifacts.

For Powerstrip, no you don't need the full version. I had overclocked my 9500 with the version I had downloaded and it works fine.

For how much of a boost you can get, I'm sure you can get much more than 10%. I was able to overclock my 9500 to 380/300 with no problems and you might be able to even go higher. Going to 380/300 basically gave me something like 2500+ 3dmarks extra so there is a lot to be gained by overclocking and this also totally depends on your CPU speed. If your CPU is bottlenecking you, you won't be able to see such an increase but with your 1.8A running at 2.4, you will probably see at the very least 1000+ points I'm sure.

Let us know how it goes.

 

[james.miller]

Am i the only one who finds these results hard to believe? everywhere else seem to think the success rate is around 30%. But we have 55%. something doesnt seem right....

 

[Ryan T]

Ok, I overclocked my CPU by bumping the external frequency from 100 to 140 to get my cpu to 2.53 Ghz. My CPU runs at 38c idle and around 50c during 3Dmark2001 SE. Do you think these temps are ok?

Onto the 3Dmark score. With the cpu overclocked my score jumped fro 9600 to 11500. It's not quite as big of a jump as I had hoped for. I kinda wanted to at least break 12000. I still have not overclocked the card but i'm going to try 3Drage tweak because I already have it downloaded. If that doesn't work i'll try the demo of powerstrip.



Ryan

 

[Ryan T]

Well I narrowed the artifact down to the adv pixel shader test. I looked really closely and saw that there are artifacts in most the shadow areas. So something is wrong with my pixel shaders I guess. I still can't find any atrifacts in games so i'm not worried about it.

I still can't break 12000 . I overclocked my cpu to 2.7 Ghz and I got 11947. 3Dmark 2001 did shut down during the vertex shader test at 2.7 Ghz so I had to rerun the test without the vertex shader. I OC the card using pwerstrip to 325 core and 300 memory but i only got a 500 point increase. Any suggestions on how to increase my score?



Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Michfan]

So i take it that once you softmod the card theres no way to revert back???

 

[james.miller]

yeah there is. a softmod mod is just that - soft. its easily reversed by instaling the official drivers.

 

[Spacepiston]

Even if you do the hardware mod its not permanent! Yes the physical mod is there forever, but if you reflash to the old bios it goes back to the card it was. My card is hardware modded and is currently back to normal.

 

[Michfan]

Yeah i figured you could easily revert back.

 

[AlexG]

Am i the only one who finds these results hard to believe? everywhere else seem to think the success rate is around 30%. But we have 55%. something doesnt seem right....

I saw a poll at Rage3d.com where the results were about the same as ours, roughly 60% success, as I recall. I've lost the link though. Maybe I can dig it up. It was a big poll with a lot of respondants.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

I've got a question. Can someone name me 3 game demos that run on opengl so that I can test that part of it.

 

[Dragonprince]

I've got a question. Can someone name me 3 game demos that run on opengl so that I can test that part of it.

I dont think any games made today are using OpenGL by default, but alot of rendering engines can be forced into OpenGL mode. I seem to remember that Quake3, UT and maybe even UT2003 can all be run under OpenGL by either picking that option in the setup or by editing the .ini files...

 

[Dragonprince]

I have no artifacting and my 3DMarks score jumped a lot after using the softmod. I havent done any OC'n at all with this card at this point. My 3dMarks2001 score was 14700, up from about 11500.

 

[Wolfeinstein]

i have the 9700 pro

 

[GravY]

I have seen no artifacting.. current hi-overclock 370/310
3dmark2k1se 17220
3dmark03 5630

 

[AMD900]

can some one tell me how to or where i can info oo how to do the rivatuner mod?

 

[ripper]

I recieved my Sapphire 9500np from Newegg on Monday.

I installed it, the drivers and control panel and ran 3dmark01.

The unmodded and non-overclocked card scored over 11000 pts.

I softmodded the card using Wizard's instructions and patch.....and was greeted by a blank screen in every test that required 3d acceleration in 3dmark01.

Oddly enough the fillrate tests in 3dMark2001 ran perfectly. The 4 extra pipes were shown to be enabled, Single pass scored over 1500 and double pass scored over 2200. CRAP!!!

No luck in either Direct3D or OpenGL games.....instant locked computer.

On the bright side I managed to get a card with infineon 3.0ns DDR SGRAM so I may be able to get the RAM up to a respectable clock speed.

A post over at Rage3D indicates that I'm not alone with this problem; no solutions so far. It's probably some kind of power issue either with the 9500 or my power supply (400W Sparkle).

Epox 8rda+
2x256 Kingston HyperX PC2700
AthlonXP 2100+@2600+(Speeze Aircooled)
Sapphire Radeon9500NP (Red PCB)

 

[JigPu]

Just recieved my card today from Newegg, and tested Wizzard's soft mod with the following results. (GOOD = no artifacts)

3DMark 2001SE (DirectX) - GOOD
GL Excess (OpenGL) - GOOD
Descent 3 Demo 1 (DirectX) - GOOD
Descent 3 Demo 1 (OpenGL) - GOOD (though the screen is still at 'the wrong spot')
RTCW (whatever it is) - GOOD... I think... (my monitor's gamma SUCKS!)
Robot Arena (Can't remember) - GOOD
Half Life (whatever it is) - GOOD
Dance With Intensity (2D DirectX game) - GOOD (..so good in fact, that I finally beat 'Invader Zim' for the second time )
StepMania (2D DirectX game) - GOOD
Unreal Tournement 2001 Demo (DirectX if I remember) - GOOD
Unreal Tournement Demo (DirectX) - GOOD
Unreal Tournement Demo (OpenGL) - GOOD (though hard to see since for some reason I can't adjust brightness)
Deus Ex (DirectX) - GOOD
Deus Ex (OpenGL) - GOOD
Flight Gear (OpenGL) - GOOD (though the textures seem to be a bit low-res)

3.3ns Infinion RAM
Gold 'Orb' type heatsink (...and I'm guessing it sucks )

I'm gonna try OCing this thing tommorow. I feel a bit weird today, so I'm not going to trust myself to proper testing procedure and end up with a dead card or something

JigPu

 

[AlexG]

bump

this topic is still alive! theories abound as to the sucess rate, here are the facts

PLEASE sticky this poll!

ThaNKs