Connect3d Radeon 9500 L RAM red pcb

[Deafcon22]

fyi my card was not wrapped in plastic either, and it softmodded just fine.

 

[Pothead]

all of their cards have no plastic wrap, but i was specifically referring to the yellow sticker seal on the anti static bag.

 

[Skibbi]

Hi,

i tried reverting back to just 4 pipes, no problems, but the performance just isn't the same, do they have a trade-in program, or a 30 day guarentee or anything? I'm wanting to dump it and get a (better, or working 8pipe one, better preferably)

any ideas?

 

[PeterPan76]

LOL.

My NVIDIA Gforce MX2 score 198 on the 3DMark2003 benchmarks.

 

[narita]

Got the card in today from Connect3d. Didn't softmod (checkboard). Tried to underclock the memory and gpu just for kicks and my suspicions were right that this did not have any effect on the success of that.

Overclocked it to 351mhz gpu and 303mhz memory and it's running rock solid [3464 in 3dmark03]. I may try to go higher later, but this is sufficient for the time being. I can't say that I'm not disappointed with this though, but the risk was inherent in the purchase anyway.

Also, the packaging was fine. It was wrapped in an antistatic bag which was properly sealed.

 

[Avalon]

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!

 

[Scrounger]

Sounds like a monitor driver problem to me. Does the system think you are on default monitor? When I stuck one of these cards in my wife's computer she couldn't use her Viewsonic PF790 in anything besides 60 Hz vertical refresh rate. There is no .inf file for PF790/Win XP available and when I tried to force the issue other refresh rates became available but the actual rate never changed from 60 Hz. It also defaulted to low settings first boot after driver install. Cat 3.7 or Omega it was all the same. When the system had a GF2 in it it still called it default monitor but at least I could change refresh rates.

Maybe it's a little hardware bug to go with the persistent ATI driver problems? Fast as hell but I still find games with annoying little glitches that don't occur with nVidia products.

Originally posted by: Mecheater
Got my Connect3D card last night. Seems to work using regular softmod since it is being recognized as a 9700. Can somebody help me with a problem I'm having with Omega drivers. I can get everything to work the 1st reboot after installing omega drivers, but after that it screws with my display settings. Drivers are recognized as a 9700, but it limits me to 800x600 and 4 bit color. Did I install it wrong?

Thanks in advance for any help and sorry for the techsupport request in this thread.

**EDIT** Mine checkerboards apparently

 

[Scrounger]

Having seen both success and failure with these cards, checkerboarding is very blatant and you won't miss it when you see it. It is swatches of the screen that seem to have purple and/or green checkerboard pattern overlaid. Seems to occur in triangular patches. Draw an imaginary X across your screen from corner to corner to divide it into north/south/east/west quadrants. Sometimes one or two of these quadrants will be entirely covered with the checkerboard pattern. It usually seems to flicker in and out depending on what is being rendered.

In my experience, missing pixels in the battle for proxycon/troll's lair tests come from excessive core overclocking. Little veritcal bar-code looking artifacts seem to come from excessive memory overclocking. You didn't mention overclocking but if you are you might try turning it down a few notches. I have yet to get the artifact tester program bundled with the Omega drivers to detect any kind of problem so I would ignore that if I were you.

Originally posted by: Baraguoin
Just got one yesterday from Connect 3d. installed the omega drivers and ran 3dMark03. Looked fine in the Wings of Fury test but getting missing pixels etc.. (checkerboard I guess, I'm new to all this) in Battle of Proxycon and Troll's Lair. Ran the normal omega drivers and reran 3dMark and no artifcats. I guess I'll try to return this one. The one I got wasn't actually wrapped in plastic as I'd imagine a new retail one would be and I'm guessing that they just shipped me somebody's return (?).

 

[Scrounger]

Originally posted by: Avalon

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!

You shouldn't have any power supply problems getting to 320 core 310 memory or whatever 9700 pro runs. The big question is will your card do it? The core will probably run 320 easy but the 3.3 ns infineon memory might not do much more than 300. Just have to try it and run 3dmark or a game to see what happens once things get warmed up. As in my previous post look for missing pixels in proxycon/troll's lair for an overworked core, and bar-code corruption from memory problems. If you really overshoot your memory, even the desktop will show problems.

The last two cards I bought would do 330/305 + softmod and 350/310 no softmod (checkerboard at any speed) with no cooling modifications to the cards. I have a system crappier than yours (A7V333 with a 1 gig Tbird running at 1333 via FSB increase and 300w PS) so don't worry about that part.

 

[Avalon]

Thanks a bunch, gonna give overclocking a try around those numbers and look and see what happens...will let you all know if I get increased artifacting and whatnot (I'm pretty sure a lot of artifacting some of you are getting are from overclocking after softmod)

 

[Avalon]

The most my card could handle was 300/280 without artifacts
I got just about a 200 point increase in 3dmark 2003 but...I think I'll just leave the card at the default 275/270
I don't see much point in putting strain on a card just to acheive negligible gains
I was able to run it at 320/310, but the card certainly didn't like it
I was getting pixelation rips on the screen during battle of proxycon, trolls lair, and mother nature
although I must say, THEN I did notice a significant performance increase
however, I aborted the tests as I didn't want my card running like that in fear of it overheating (so I have no score to report to you)
would definitely like to thank everyone for the help they've posted in this thread
and certainly thanks to the originator of this post, as I wouldn't have found the card without it

 

[MaxDepth]

No more 9500 on the Connect3d site. Newegg shows no such card, either.

Are they all gone?

And does the black one at neweeg softmod like the red one?

 

[Pothead]

as with the red, you need the black with the L shaped memory. Just like the red ones, some will softmod, some will not.

 

[MaxDepth]

the red original at Connect3d
For $149 (didn't see the side panel there.)
$143 here you pay +$14 to be guaranteed an 'L' shaped memory card.

And $166 elsewhere.

 

[mutant]

Decent price from Enet Marketing but extremely scary Reseller ratings for last 6 months!

Looks like Connect3d US online store has some in stock.

BTW, No dice for me when I tried softmodding a Connect3D card. Got checkerboard on almost all the 3dMark03 demos. I might try OC'ing a little to try to recoup.

 

[svidanag]

I just got my Connect3d card today. The memory is straight!!! And the box was all ratty, and everything was opened. I am sending this thing straight back. Beware!

 

[ferrarifreak93]

anyone else get an order from connect3d.com? I don't want to buy from them if they are selling only straight ram boards.