Just got my connect3d radeon 9500 np recently, took a week for shipping
packing seemed ample, and the card was sealed properly
I was a bit worried because the box on the back said the card was powered by 64mb of DDR memory (no 128?!)
but it was alright when everything was said and done and I plugged the card in
had no problems whatsoever with the card, everything booted wonderful
flipped a penny to decide whether to use the omega or wizard drivers
the mighty penny decided on omega
and the card softmodded just fine with it
I ran 3dmark2k3 before the softmod and went from 925 (geforce3ti200) to 2600 (non hacked 9500)
then hacked the drivers with omega and went to a score of 4000
my card has the 3.3 ns infineon chips, don't know about the rest of you (heard some of you had 3.6)
My system is: *a piece of crap *
AMD Athlon 1600+ @ 1400mhz
Asrock kv7t2 motherboard (this thing sux0rs but is cheap)
512mb of pc133 SDram (yeah, SD...told you it was a POS)
60 GB IBM Deskstar @ 7200rpm
Connect3d Radeon 9500 128mb non pro (haxified!)
Now note...my asrock motherboard only supports AGP 4x
the reason I got this radeon was because it was the first item in a list of upgrades I am planning on getting
and since this thing was limited, it was the first to be bought
And I must say...this card is astounding
I expected a significant increase over my geforce3
but I was just totally blown away
this card is a little beast when softmodded
3dmark2k3 ran all tests perfectly fine
BUT when i ran 3dmark2001SE, I encountered artifacting in the form of checkerboarding when it showed the water in the nature test and the water in the test that showed the ocean rippling
I was a bit worried, so I went and tested all my games
games tested were Counter-Strike 1.5, and 1.6
also tested on civ3 (haha), homeworld 2, and dungeon siege
everything worked beautifully, not a hitch
however, I did note that when in CS I decided to try out direct3d mode just for the hell of it
I saw random artifacting in the form of checkerboards in minute, random parts of maps
thankfully, I hate direct3d, and openGL owns in framerates for me anyway
I did further testing and came to this conclusion:
My card checkerboards in some instances when running in direct3d under directx8.1 applications
it runs direct3d just fine in directx9.0 applications
and it runs opengl just fine in everything
so I don't care that I saw checkerboarding in a stupid benchmark tests
my games run flawless
and as far that goes, so does my card
which was an amazing value for $150
now I haven't gotten my new rig yet, and I'm tempted to overclock this card now
with it's stock HSF cooling, can I overclock this thing safely to near or exactly 9700 pro speeds, without frying the card?
I'm afraid to try on this halfass system...wondering if my 350w codegen could handle it, or the card for that matter
I'm done babblin now
this card r0x0rs my b0x0rs!