Connect3d Radeon 9500 L RAM red pcb

[Scrounger]

FYI: Got two $149 cards from the connect3d store link. Placed order Tue morn and the box arrived Thur here in Washington state. Not bad for $7 UPS ground shipping charge. Retail boxes were in good shape and the sticker on the static bag was intact. Got one running right now no problems using the omega 9500 hack driver. Normal omega driver 3dmark03 score 2600, after hack 3900. Scored 922 with my old Ti200, and it was painful to watch. No visible artifacting and the artifact test tool bundled with the omega driver gave it a clean bill of health. I'll fire up #2 later and post if the results are any different.

 

[cockeyed]

There is an interesting article at Digit-Life that might shed some light on the 9500 mod.. Read sections 11 - Hidden surface removal (HSR) and 14 - conclusion. According to this article, HSR has something to do with the problems seen, when doing the mod.. It seems that if HSR can be disabled when the extra 4 pipes are opened, it just might work ok. They say they are working on this. Hope springs eternal!!

Also lookup part 1 of this article which goes into doing the mod, with some good pictures.
Linky for part 1

 

[Pothead]

Scrounger, so these cards are L shaped from connect3d?

 

[cockeyed]

Got my 9500 yesterday from Connect3D. It is exactly as pictured on their site. Red with L memory in a retail box. I bought it to replace a Ti4200 which is excellent, but I wanted a DVI output and DX9 which the 9500 provided. If I it would mod, it would be the gravy. I only play Tiger Woods 2003, which needs a lot of video power. The results are:

Installed with stock Cat3.7 driver and it worked flawlessly; picture quality and speed a notch above Ti4200 . Installed Omega (Cat37) and ran 3Dmark01; fill rate jumped to 1474/2144. The only thing I noticed a little different was in the lobby scene, the sunglasses had some small white flashing spots, which I didn't notice before. Running TW3K, the picture is perfect with all of the eye candy turned on and the game play is very smooth using 4xAA/8xAF. With the Ti4200, I had to use 2xAA/noAF to get smooth game play.

The atifact tester in Omega drivers, reports no artifacts in all tests. Right now I have it at 277/302 and all is well. My board has the 3.3 Infineon memory chips.

Hello Radeon 95/9700, goodbye Ti4200!

Good luck guys!

 

[Pothead]

cockeyed and others, how long did it take to get a confirmation email?

 

[cockeyed]

As I recall, I ordered it mid-day on 9/4 and received a confirmation ~6PM on 9/5 when it shipped. It took 4 days by UPS ground to get to me on 9/11.

 

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: cockeyed


The atifact tester in Omega drivers, reports no artifacts in all tests. Right now I have it at 277/302 and all is well. My board has the 3.3 Infineon memory chips.

Don't be shy with the core speed. My Sapphire 9500 did 361 core.

 

[Balael]

I so hope mine mods to a 9700, this would be a very wise $150 purchase to play half life 2 with. Any other succes stories ordering from connect3d themselves? Also, Would any serious heatsinks on the ram, and a better heatsink on the gpu itself help significantly? or not very much on these radeons?

PJ

 

[VTx]

Just got mine from the connect3d website. Applied w1zzards hack and got artifacts, same with omega drivers.

 

[Pothead]

Originally posted by: VTx
Just got mine from the connect3d website. Applied w1zzards hack and got artifacts, same with omega drivers.

well...looks like luck of the draw now :brokenheart:

 

[psloan]

bummer and I was just convising my self to return a geforece 5200 i just bought and replace it with this...... Is it still worth a try since VTx's find

 

[Pothead]

the 9500 is still better than the 5200..it's always been all about luck, some have been able to mod successfully while others have not.

 

[Johnbear007]

Originally posted by: psloan
bummer and I was just convising my self to return a geforece 5200 i just bought and replace it with this...... Is it still worth a try since VTx's find

the 9500 is FAR better still

 

[psloan]

thanks guys. Now I just have to see if Fry's is gona take the 5200 back

--pat

 

[Scrounger]

my #2 connect3d card had artifacts (green and purple checkerboard) right away in first 3dmark03 test with omega 9500 hack drivers. So that makes it 1 out of 2 for me. Both had L configured RAM, infineon 3.3 ns, on a red PCB just like the site showed.

Interestingly enough, the artifact tester program gave it a clean bill of health. So much for that.

 

[cockeyed]

Originally posted by: aldamon

Originally posted by: cockeyed


The atifact tester in Omega drivers, reports no artifacts in all tests. Right now I have it at 277/302 and all is well. My board has the 3.3 Infineon memory chips.

Don't be shy with the core speed. My Sapphire 9500 did 361 core.

Right now I'am at 300/300. The picture is excellent in 2D/3D and game play in Tiger Woods 2003 is smooth as glass. My Ti4200 has a fill rate of 458/521 and I now get 1519/2329. Still see some small spots in sunglasses in 3Dmark01; it almost looks like a reflection from the shell casings flying around. Everything else looks fine and the Artifact Tester reports no artifacts. I will probably try 325/300 later on.

A tip for those who are seeing artifacts: Use Driver Cleaner in safe mode to completely un-install old drivers and get Rage3D Tweaker to turn off some video functions; maybe that will help get you going.

 

[cockeyed]

Just a quick update. It's now running stable at 325/600 (virtually 9700 Pro); fill rate 1545/2503. Picture quality the same as before. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Also, I have to compliment the Omega driver guy who created an all-in-one solution that works well. I would suggest these as the driver of choice for the 9500 mod.

 

[JHeiderman]

Hey guys, I have been following the thread here pretty closely and I almost ready to pull the trigger on this from connect3d but I have one question that I haven't seen addressed. How well do the 9500 cards perform at stock?

I checked around for some benchmarks from some decent sites and no luck. You guys that have a card that didn't make the grade how is the performance? I mean, If I spring for the card and it doesn't mod did I just blow $150 on a card that performs at the level of my overclocked Ti4200 or do I have something that was a worthwhile upgrade? Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

- J

Scratch that... I just checked out the digit-life site and saw what I needed to see. Looks like it's just not worth it for me unless the card mods for sure.

 

[cockeyed]

I replaced a Gainward Golden Sample Ti4200 128mb (a terrific card) with the Connect3D 9500. Compared to the Ti4200, the stock 9500 holds its own and in some areas is better. 3Dmark01 scores are close but where the 9500 shines is when you turn on the AA/AF. The Ti4200 just can't keep up with it. As I've said before, I only play Tiger Woods 2003 which sucks up a lot of graphics power. The Ti 4200 with 2xAA/noAF and most eye candy on, played pretty well, but would get a little jerky from time to time. With the stock 9500 at 4xAA/8xAF, eye candy on, TW plays smooth and with the mod installed, it is excellent. 3Dmark01 for the 9500 was +20% better than the 4200 and double the single/multi fill rates. As long as you get the L memory card with the 256bus, it performs pretty good in stock setup. Digit-Life.com has reviews of the L mem 256bus 9500 which compare it to Ti4200 and others. The L mem 9500 outperforms an in-line mem 9500 by a bit. In my case, I decided that I would be happy if the mod didn't work as long as everything else worked better that it had with the Ti4200, plus I would have DX9 support and DVI for a future LCD. Just don't expect any gigantic gains over the Ti4200.

My mod has worked out for me, but I just found where a problem could exist in future DX9 games. See my next post for details.

 

[cockeyed]

HEADS UP GUYS! I've been stress testing my modded card and finally found something that produced a checkerboard pattern. It is a demo at the ATI site called "Non Photorealistic Rendering " designed for DX9 which can be DL'd (link below). When I run this demo, it produces a checkerboard all over the place. I installed the stock CAT37 and the demo works fine. There are other DX9 demos there that I have not DL'd. The mod works great for my current use, but it might not in the future on some games. It doesn't matter to me, but it is something to think about if you decide to buy.

Demo DL from http://ati.com/developer/demos/r9700.html

 

[psloan]

OK, I pulled the trigger. Fry's took back the geforce 5200, no questions asked. So I will give this a shot for the kids computer. Hopfuly this will be a step up from the card they have now, a 64mb geforce 4 mx 420. btw that card is almost as fast as the 5200 after a bit of tweaking.

--pat

 

[Scrounger]

cockeyed, I ran your demo on my softmod 9500 with no problems. It must vary from card-to-card.

Also, I did further testing during o/c with the artifact tester program and it doesn't have a clue. LOL! I had some serious problems with the display at 350 MHz core and it thought I should keep going. Has anyone ever gotten it to detect any artifacting? I wonder if it works only in specific instances or if it was just a BS program someone threw out there as a sick joke. PimpBlood 2.0 engine? Sounds like something a gangsta random name generator might kick out.

 

[cockeyed]

Scrounger - I'm glad to here the NPR demo worked on yours. I did DL and test the other demo's: Bear - Car - Render w/ Natural Light - Non Photorealistic Rendering (NPR). All worked fine except for the NPR one which checkerboarded. It's no big deal though, because I don't plan on running anything that looks like that demo. Those demos are all for DX9, so I think it's a fair test of the mod.. But it does point out that there was a reason why my GPU was made into a 9500 instead of a 9700.

Mine works well on my TW3 Golf game, 3Dmark01 and the ATI DX9 demos except for one, so I will leave the mod in place and run it at 300/300. My card does work well at 325/300, but I don't need that much power; I would rather it run cooler. Time to put the covers on. Good luck everyone!

 

[akaricke]

My Connect3d with omega runs them fine except the non photegenic test gives black "pixel" distortion
When the "edges" are turned on in the demo. Anyone else get this?

 

[akaricke]

Read the Half Life 2 Article on the Anandtech homepage. Nvidia has big time problems playing the game. My Geforce 4200ti is going on Ebay.