9700pro just 300 mhz?

[floppy]

Hey ya!

At first: AtiTool is just great! Works fine!
I've patched my 9500 non-pro to a 9700 pro (just activated those 4 pipelines with RivaTuner) and was trying to get even more power out of this old card with overclocking it.
The default clock values are 277/270. I've tried long to find out the max clock without getting artifacts and finally became these values -> 303/301

Well, I can't complain to get my 9500 non-pro to such a good performance, but I read ->this post<- and "threedd97" gets about 340/330 :\
I use the ->ArcticCooling VGA Silencer 3<-

Is there a chance for me to get higher clock values without getting artifacts?

Thx

[wazzledoozle]

Probably volt mods, go google for 9500 to 9700 pro volt mods

[floppy]

hmm I think that'd be too dangerous for me ... what about setting the AGP volt higher in the bios? Currently it's @ 1.5 V
how far can I set it without damaging my card?

thx

[wazzledoozle]

Eh i wouldnt adjust the AGP voltage. VOlt mods usually just pump more energy into the cores.

[TheJuice]

Volt mods will give you the gains you want. I have 9500 non pro at 9700 that can do 450/360. deffinatley not on stock cooling though. Tweakmonster BGA ramsink and a Vantec Iceberg 4. Don't up the voltage to the AGP. That can dammage the card. However, its been said that a .1 volt increase can improve stability.

[floppy]

I have news: I don't know why, but now my card makes 370/300. But if I see 450/360 ... woooh quite nice, makes me jealous

@ TheJuice:
Do you think the Vantec Iceberg 4 is better than the ArcticCooling VGA Silencer 3? Well, I searched but Vantec isn't sold in any German computershops :\
CAN such a volt mod DAMAGE the card? Or just in case of me making mistakes?

@wazzledoozle: Ok, if there's the risk of damaging my card I won't change the AGP voltage


-----------
Edit: Looked for a volt mod manual again and saw: This is definitely to tricky for me!
But thanks for your answers

[TheJuice]

I don't know if the Silencer is better than the Iceberg it could be but, its NOT copper, the Iceberg4 is ALL copper and its quite heavy for its size. Also, when I bought the Iceberg4 the silencer3 wasn't available yet. So the Iceberg4 was the best available aftermarket heatsink besides modding a CPU heatsink. Also don't expect to get any higher clocks with a the ram on a 9500 its generally slower than the ram on a 9700 mine had 3.0ns infineon and would artifact and crash over 300 without the voltmods.(300 is basically the limit for most 9500s) The 9700 pro has 2.8ns ram. There are rare cases of 9500s with 2.8ns ram though. I have seen much crappier ram on them too, a friend of mine has one with 3.3ns infineon. At stock speed its pretty much maxed.

Volt Modding is always risky, there are many things that can go wrong. You can accidentally overvolt, thats kinda hard to do if your smart about it. But what can really go wrong is if the solder gets out of hand, a tiny blob of solder can land somewhere on the board and you might not even notice it and a short circiut could fry the whole thing. A yank on a wire connected to one of the legs of a chip could rip the leg right off the board and thats pretty impossible to fix. I've even seen a guy tear a trace off the board. You could accidentally cross some connections and have a VERY hard time uncrossing them. Bottom line is you really need to know what your doing. If you don't know what a Multimeter is then I suggest you do not even think of voltmodding.

I had 2 9500s modded to 9700 with both Vmoded. I took one to a friends house to show him what it could do one day. So I get to his house and plug my card into his system (he had a modded 9500 as well but had the crappy 3.3ns ram so I would not need to install the drivers again and everything should have been smooth). Well it was installed and I powered the box up. The machine turned on and there was no video, I knew imediatley something was wrong, I dove for the power plug and yanked it out of the back of the machine. I slid the side panel off and popped out the card. The Heatsink was HOT VERY VERY HOT! I examined the solderspots and found something terrible. On the way to my friends place I must have hit the wrong bump in the road because the wire connected to the VGPU voltage regulator leg had somehow gotten pulled off the board. The leg was still connected to the chip and the wire so all it needed was to be soldered down. I went back home to attempt surgery on my board. I heated up the iron and prepared for the worst. I gently pushed the pin back down into place (we are talking like 2 millimeters) and SNAP! the leg came off the chip. I have since tried repeatdly to solder the leg back on but had no luck. The card has now become a spare parts card. It has since been used to save a 9800, which is a whole other story. If anyone cares to hear that story I will gladly tell it. Its a pretty good one too.

[ARTOSOFT]

Juice,

Can we know the result of 3dmark03 and 3dmark05 on your setup?

Mine is PowerColor 9500pro convert to 9700pro. Have inferior 3.3ns. I am happily run it at 351.0/300.0 on my shoe box computer (I make a hole on the side, so the GPU always get fresh air from outside the box).

CPU intel 2.4GHz, FSB 533MHz. Memory 1GB. No overclocking on the board, since I tried several times and becomes unstable. Only Video Card overclocking.

3dmark03: 4281.
3dmark05: 1838.

Best regards,
Arto

[floppy]

As far as I know are 9500pro cards NOT able to be patched to 9700pro?

[ARTOSOFT]

Floppy,

9500pro and 9700pro (and 9500) use the same GPU. But only 9700pro allowed to have overclocking feature. The rest by default is lock for overclocking.

Well, the bios of 9500pro cards can be patched to 9700pro, so it will unlock the overclocking feature on 9500pro. It will works and report as 9700pro afterthat.
The disadvantage is the memory bandwidth is only half of the 9700pro (64bits instead of 128bits).

Some 9500 (depending on board) can be patched to (true) 9700pro by unlocking sleeping pipelines on the GPU. But, the sleeping pipelines on 9500 is not because no reason. So if you are lucky, you can patch 9500 to 9700pro without any (artifact) problem.

Small changes on the 3dmark03 and 3dmark05 result after I run clean windows:
3dmark03: 4346
3dmark05: 1838.

Best regards,
Arto

[TheJuice]

ARTOSOFT,

Thats not true. My 9500 NON Pros all came unlocked for overclocking. That is entirely dependant on what 3rd party company built the card. Sapphires were all unlocked. This 9500pro > 9700Pro "mod" just unlocks overclocking. Since it is only 64-bit I wouldn't say its a 9700 Pro conversion just because the bios reporst it as one, but an unlocked 9500Pro. Also many 9500Pros are already unlocked as well making this bios flash uneeded, but in your case you needed it.

I do not currently use the 9500@9700s anymore I moved them into other machines and got myself an x800Pro@XT. I did bench the 9500s a while back though long before 3DMark05 was released. My scores were around 5500 in 03 and 17-18K in 01.

[ARTOSOFT]

Juice,

Thanks for the explanation. That's clear and correct.
I forgot some of the card manufacturer already unlock 9500 and 9500pro.

Now I am curious, is there much difference between 64 bits and 128 bits memory?

Best regards,
Arto.

[TheJuice]

The 64 and 128 bits are the bus width, so theoretically the card with a 128 bit bus can push thru twice as much data than a 64 bit version of the same card. A 9500 Pro is identical to a 9700 pro except for bus width and clock speeds. They both have 8 pipelines even but the 9500 pro is choked by the bus.

ARTOSOFT, I assume the bios flash set your default clock speeds to that of a 9700 Pro? (325/310) It should have. Are you dropping the ram down to 300 due to instability at 310? Most ram on the 9500 varietys won't go over 300 without vmods.

[ARTOSOFT]

Juice,
I drop memory to max 300MHz, since over 300MHz the artifact come out. I think it is because the memory on my 9500pro is 3.3ns (==>max 303MHz).
Is vmods can fix this problem? Is this vmods will decrease the board life? Could you (or someone) point me to the website about vmods?
Thanks!

Best regards,
Arto

[ctrl_alt_del]

so there is no way to increase the bus on the 9500Pros right? I am getting about 355/305 stable on mine - can push it more but I wanna keep it conservative...

able to run 3D2001 at 410/357 ok but get artifacts in games...

[Nobru_rv]

Juice and ARTOSOFT

There are no 9500 card with 64 bit memory bus. What u mean is 128bit vs 256 bit.