1. Radeon 9700 128m
2. Ati Radeon 9500

I have not understood why I have not been able to OC my Powercolor ATI 9700 (not Pro) hardly at all. No matter whether I used Rage3d Tweaker, or PowerStrip, when I OC'd I'd get artifacts or those 'tire tracks' all up and down the screen.

Then I found a post saying that the 9500 Pro and 9700 are DELIBERATELY LOCKED by the manufacturer (all of them) in the video card BIOS. So, I went to this site: and read this paragraph with great interest, 'Warp11 compared the ATi Radeon 9700 Pro BIOS, the 9700 non-Pro BIOS, and the 9500 Pro BIOS and was able to find the one hexidecimal value that is keeping the ATi Radeon 9500 Pro and ATi Radeon 9700 non-Pro from overclocking. ATi is setting the same hex value on the 9500 Pro and 9700 non-Pro cards to keep them from overclocking. I tested this theory on both a 9700 non-Pro and 9500 Pro and it works. All of the overclocking utilities functioned correctly with these BIOS's Neither 3DChipset nor Warp11 is responsbile for what happends when using these files.

Radeon 9700 128m

You have been warned!!' Then, at your own risk, you are shown links to very short files you can download to unlock and reflash the video card BIOS. It is quite a detailed job - you have to run this Radeon Bios Editor in DOS mode (a different download) before you can even do the flash, etc. Does anyone have any experience with doing this? It looks like a lot of hassle, frankly, but according to the post the results were dramatic.

Does anyone know an easier way to unlock and reflash the video card BIOS? Lastly, can anyone understand why a company like ATI would even do such a thing, if they really did this? IF true, it's stuff like this that made a lot of people distrustful of ATI several years ago and I must say that I never knew of nVidia to LOCK their cards so that a person could not clock them to suit themselves. Please, heavy-duty Gurus - step up to this issue.

Those explain everything I know about this so far. You need to find out what memory you have and go from there for best results. For example, I have a 9500 Pro with the Infinion 3.0ns memory.

I flashed my card with the basic Warp11 and got good results but after flashing with the Infinion version of the Warp11 I gained quite a bit more accross the board. The flash proceedure I followed was super simnple and took all of 2 minutes.

After flashing my BIOS my card also registers as a 9700 Pro. I have OC'd it to 370/340 and it ran clean in 3D03. Looks like sheeeit in 3D2K1 tho!3D2K1 I can clock it to 360/335 clean. Thank you, TrebLiq Thank you, TrebLiq, Although dozens of people viewed this thread, you were the only one who made a useful contribution. I have some kind of South Korean RAM on the Powercolor ATI 9700, not Pro, called 'Hynix'. I know nothing about them, but I think it's 3.3 ns RAM. I didn't expect top line RAM in the 'not Pro' model - no complaints there.

But I damn sure did not expect that ATI would LOCK the card so that it can't overclock without performing BIOS surgery on it, either. The longer I think about this the more it irritates me. I'll probably gut up and try doing the flash. If I f.k it up then I can rant and rave and buy a nVidia FX 5800. Fan noise doesn't bother me, but companies that sell locked video cards do. They should let us do whatever we want with the cards we buy.

Hell, they ought to be encouraging overclocking because then we'd buy even more videocards. Sure go out and buy a FX 5800 You just go right ahead and get yourself an 5800, tell me this a card with settings of 500/1000 can only marginally beat the 9700pro then you might start to think there is something wrong here, not to mention hmmm screensaver bug. Rumors from nVidia are that they are scrapping the origianl FX NV30 series cards release to date and working more on the NV 35 chip planned for a much later release date. Think before you buy, the name says nothing about the true value and performance of a product, nVidia is scrambling right now to get back the throne that once they stood proud on and.ing up along the way, ATI has taken time and now we are seeing the true essence of what time has done for them. Just my 2 cents Eagle Eye. Ahhh don't get butt hurt about any of it. Them locking the cards isn't a bad thing.

It could be something as simple as the reason AMD started locking their CPU's. Some one could OC a 9500 and sell it to you as a 9700 for the extra 200 bucks!

Wouldn't that suck! For the Hynix I would use the plain Warp11 BIOS from the second link I posted it will atleast unlock the card until we find ut if they have a Hynix BIOS tweaked for you. The instructions on that guys page are very simple. It will freak you out but it is super simple. If you have XP just pop in a floppy and format it as a Boot Disk and then d/l the one file link he has on that page, It has the ATIFlash Utility and the Bin. File you need. Just follow his instructions except that creating the Boot disk you can do in XP.

Once you reboot the System with that floppy in it will take you to the A: and you just type in exactly what you see on that page. There are spaces. If you decide to do it make sure you back up your original BIOS when it asks and that link explains that also. I had problems overclocking my ati radeon 9500 pro at first. I was setting the clock rate through power strip, also tried rad clocker. It would 'set', but then it kept reverting back to the stock rate when the screen changed display mode to run 3dmark or a game or something.

After I installed omega's catalyst drivers, I have had no problem OC'ing this card. I typically run 340/310, haven't actually tried to go higher on the core yet but the memory will only go up to about 320 before artifacts show up.

Russian graphics geeks at are claiming that the radeon 9500 64 mb cards from ati can be with just software tweaking. The 9500 non-pro has only four rendering pipelines, but it is insinuated that there are really 8 on the chip, and that they have merely been hidden by ati to dumb-down the card and sell it more cheaply.

The makers of rivatuner software at nvworld are reportedly saying that the next version of rivatuner will allow users of radeon 9500 non-pro cards to tweak them into radeon 9500 pro mode. As well, apparently you can take a radeon 9500 128 mb card and make “ a complete radeon 9700” out of it. There's more on the and the at vr-zone and at. Just fyi, doing a quick check, the low prices listed at for each card are: radeon 9500 64 mb – us$89 radeon 9500 128 mb – $156 radeon 9500 pro 128 mb – $170 radeon 9700 128 mb – $230 radeon 9700 pro 128 mb – $275. But (3:34pm est thu jan 09 2003) will it improve my c&c and age of empires.that is all that maters. – by bring back pong good work. (4:26pm est thu jan 09 2003) i remember the days when non-oem patches would come out to improve performance.

Hey, if ati wants to do the same as intel, then i see no foul, just competition. – by tech $89 dollar card on pricewatch isn't at 9500 (4:54pm est thu jan 09 2003) the 89 dollar card is actually a 9100 card. The cheapest price for a 9500 64mb is 140.99. The 9100 is an older directx 8.1 card. – by liquideric dude, how many times do we have to go through this?!

(5:21pm est thu jan 09 2003) you dont need a 3d card for god damned c&c and aoe!!! The shared memory on your computer will be more than sufficient, if you can only play those games, then your computer probably cant handle having a gf4 or radeon 9500.

– by superklye fool (5:51pm est thu jan 09 2003) i think the original guy was trying to be sarcastic, by saying 'will it improve c&c and aoe? Thats all that matters.' As in it wont so who cares, not he wants one coz its gonna improve it. – by jaffa superkyle (5:53pm est thu jan 09 2003) that would be pong's point.

Slow down and think about it maybe loosen your hat:) if you need it spelt out for you, the video market has reached a point where many of us have reached our personal maximum requirements, anything else is overkill. – by london boy liquideric (7:08pm est thu jan 09 2003) the 9500 is $89 on pricewatch.com. Btw softquadro works fine. Quadro is same geforce chip, only gf4-based quardo has some differences, making it faster then gf4 sofquadro in some cases (lines aa being one) if you avid gamer you do need a fast card for the latest games (like ut2k3, that uses many features of modern gpus) but gf4200 is enough for anything really – by dale please use your brains (10:02pm est wed jan 15 2003) ok, if you look at your card and you have only 32 mb card this card with the software drives patch, if it works great if not great you simply cannot go wrong with a card that will last you all the way in to the dx9+ games of the future. And at this point thow away your nvidia's cause for right know they will not carry you to dx9 i smile:) because for right know it is the truth. – by daveo hot bathtub blalala (11:51am est thu jan 16 2003) oh well, what a world.live and let die!

Who ever wants to trow his last buck away to get a even faster gpu he never needs for anything ele but benchmarkslet him go. And let´s lean back and laugh about these dummies while we´re the smart ones who tweak our plain old ati mach 8 into a 9900 ultra! Conclusion: what are you talking about – you can never change the dummies – and what´s bad on a nice, cheap and tweakable gpu??? – by seven of nine stfu (6:22pm est fri jan 17 2003) if you think its too much and don't have the bucks for it then don't buy it and stfu. Not every1 is the same as you, so don't act like u so righteous just because u don't need it and can't think of a reason y others would buy it. Don't be criticizing people for buying something u can't. Sounds like some ppl are a little jealous.

Go get a second job. – by sdfsafda it's all about the goodies! (2:13pm est sun jan 19 2003) i'd have to agree with “dsfsafda”. I already own a 9700 pro and have for quite a while now.

I actually can't wait for the newer cards to come out as the frame rate isn't as good as i prefer (yes i can tell the difference) when running games like ut2003 at 1600×1200 on my 21″ trinitron with 8x aniso and 4x aa. I really hate having to run games without aniso and aa now that i've gotten used to it. Those jaggies just are very becoming to gaming pleasure. So you tell me, what do you think i should sacrifice? Screw it, i can tell when i bump any of these down and i like them smooth and perty. I'm just “settling” with 1600×1200 at 2xaa and 4xaniso at “ok” frame rates for now.

And don't go telling me to lower the detail levels in ut2003 to compensate. Go walk over some skulls in inferno with highest detail settings and you'll never go back!

Ati Radeon 9500

C'mon people, back me up here! I remember when nvidia first downplayed the 9700pro with “nothing faster than a 4600 is ever needed” and that “you can't tell the difference in a few fps”!!!

Sounds like billy g., “no one will ever need more than 640kb of ram!!!” – by davethomson r9700pro (2:55pm est tue jan 28 2003) the graphics card market has gone mad and the games are lacking behind. Games dont require these cards at the moment.

But running a game in maximum settings makes everybody drool. I got one of the first r9700pro in australia. I love this card.

Graphics cards are getting cheaper. This card cost about 400us$. Thats not to bad for the investment.

Gforce 3 where almost twice that price when introduced. I thought it was a good investment because of the dx9.0 compatibility. This is a card that will last a while. One more thing. The r9700 gpu has 110 million transistors. The newest p4 cpu from intel has much less.

Why are they then so expensive. Its only a cpu. R9700 pro costs half that of the latest p4 and have a wiring board. More competition is needed in the cpu arena. The competition is hard in the graphics card market. Lower prices are the result.

Good for the people. I recomend to buy a better gpu rather then the latest cpu. A new computer with the latest cpu and a slow gpu sucks. Cheers, andy – by andy savings (3:58am est wed jan 29 2003) now the prices quotes are from the american stand-point. If i were any of you i would just buy the best card around. However i'm not, and for each card i have to pay 4x the price in usd.

So if i do get to mod it to a pro or a higher-end mode. I'd be doing it. – by will mod r9500 (10:02am est tue feb 04 2003) i just ordered a 9500, i was going to go for a 9700 but sapphire are stuggling with demand and everywhere in the uk is out of stock. So for the first time i will be modding some hardware. I hear that the connect3d cards have a good success rate for the softmod, so i'm getting that one for 115 pounds, which i think is a good deal, especially if the mod works, the sapphire 9700 was listed at 199 pounds. So here's hoping i'm only getting the thing to play ut2003 anyway. – by ex voodoo5 guy.

Radeon 9100?? (3:12pm est thu feb 06 2003) where are you guys seeing this card?

The company i work for makes radeon 9000s, 9500s, and 9700s based cards, but even ati's site does not list the 9100. Is this some new bullshit, crippled ati card that has just been announced? – by herctechieguy radeon 9100 (7:48pm est mon feb 10 2003) i just saw a 9100 at fry's today.

Weird, it was 99 u.s.d but an 8500 was 149 u.s.d. But the box that said radeon 9100 didn't seem to be an ati box. Donno lol – by df 9100 is 8500 (1:28am est tue mar 25 2003) radeon 9100 is the exact same as the 8500, i think the only difference being a new video codec in the driver, they just changed the name of the 8500 because theres still lots of demand, but its confusing because its better than the 9000 but has a lower number anyone here test doom3 on a 9500 64mb?

– by. 9500 to 9700 softmod works n' rocks (6:34pm est fri may 23 2003) i just softmoded my saphire 9500 128mb non-pro to 9700 (8 pipelines) and the results where great at 3dmark 2003 v 1.0 from 2829 to 4029!!!!!

– by ant0n1z i dont know. (8:37pm est mon jun 30 2003) all i know is that i can only pull 30 fps in raven shield and it blows ( i have a radeon 9500 pro ) – by mike ps2 (5:45pm est mon aug 18 2003) hw can i fix my ps2.

Or wats rong wid it coz i droped it once amd it only plays 1 game and the rest dnt work + the dvd doesnt work. Plez try and help me wats rong wid it? Thanks 4 ur help!!!!!!!! Information systems provider releases bibliographic software for mac.

– by ajay dhokia 9500 64mb to 9700 softmod works (9:02pm est wed oct 29 2003) on 3dmarks 2003 i had a score of 2479 and when i softmod it. It went to 3217 and may core is 270 and memory is 270. Core can't go pass 275. Its made by saphire and when i bought it the core was set to 240. – by jesse 9500 128mb (128bits?)?- 9700 (256bit) (5:20pm est sat nov 29 2003) managed to get hold of a 9500 card, thought they be all sold by now. It is a 9500 radeon from connect3d, according to specification it has 128 mb but only 128bit-ddr memory interface, and 4 pipelines.

Can i still upgrade to a 9700?? As i understand the saphire 9500 has 4-pipelines but 256bit-ddr memory interface. Else the chipset r300, 215r8abga13f seems to be right.

– by valar perfect 9500 pro 64 (12:45pm est fri oct 01 2004) i've modded my gygabyte radeon 9500 64 non pro that now is a 9500 pro 64.to complete the works i've overclocked up to this freuquncy: 404mhz for the core and 330 for the memory. Radeon r300 forever!!! – by franz@root what can i do with/to my saphire 9500 pro card? (10:58am est thu jun 23 2005) is it only the non pro card that can be upgraded?? And does the 9500 pro has as many pipelines as the 9700?? – by renegadedk.