YMMV - ATI Atlantis Radeon 9500 128MB Video Card w/TV-Out & DVI by SapphireTech -- 162.99 @ GoogleGear

[lastig21]

Yes . .Red PCB with L Shaped memory

 

[przero]

I would think your numbers would be higher wouldn't you? That's odd. My hack with the black has the same +/- as yours. Go figure.

 

[lastig21]

I guess it is possible that my hack just took it to a pro. I'm using the catalyst 3.1 drivers, so it doesn't register different (still reads 9500). I was really expecting numbers in the 13's, but oh well. I haven't done an operating system reinstall. I uninstalled the drivers for my 8500, put in the 9500, installed the 3.1's rebooted and installed the hack. I had wondered if it didn't work, but my fill rate registers as 2150. I am still happy with the card, and might try to troubleshoot the low numbers later. I'm just happy that my 1942 no longer looks like a slide show when i get in the jet.

 

[Dragoon42]

i think scores with this card is also dependent on how well your system is (if you converted it to 9700 that is)

 

[Finalnight]

256 bit doesnt really show its stuff til you have 4xAA+ and high resolutions running. Thats probably why his red scores seemed so low.

 

[MaskedAvenger]

My scores were in line with Lastig21's.

My processor is a 1.8GHz P4 oc'd to 2.1. For whatever reason, my system has never earned high 3DMarks scores. The 4200 I replaced with the 9500 (or should I say 9700) always received sub mid-pack scores. But then again, I set 3DMarks to do 3 loops of the benchmark, since I want my system to be stable and am not looking to get higher scores for just their own sake.

I haven't installed Directx9, or tried the latest 3DMarks test. But my scores are 23% higher than the base 9500 scores before the mod & oc'ing, games are running fast and smooth, and my PC is stable, so I'm happy.

 

[azoomee]

Wierd,
I did the update to the 9700 and when I rebooted, I got the blue screen of death with windows XP. ugh.

I reinstalled the old drivers to get it back to normal.

 

[ninethirty]

hmmm...my results seem to be somewhere in the middle. My card is the red one; after hours wrestling with the drivers to get it to run 3d games at all (ended up doing an OS reinstall, just because it needed to be done on that system anyway) I got to try the hack. My numbers are lower than most up here so far -- started at about 9600 w/ 3DMark2k1se before the hack and about 11500 after. I've got an XP 1700+ but it's still running at stock speeds (I'll push the FSB up later today, see how that helps). Card is running at 300/300; I think I could push it to 320 core / 300 memory.
I ended up getting side-effects though -- about 40 black pixels in two vertical, staggered lines. Just on the border of being a nuisance and real problem. Luckily switching between hacked and non-hacked is just renaming a .vxd file and rebooting; I'm thinking I'll use the hacked version for games that need the extra ooomph (Unreal 2...) and the non-hacked for everything else.

Kind of a pain, but still quite nice overall. Yes, it's definitely YMMV.

 

[Chu]

Hrmmmmmm . . . just got a reply back from googlegear. They'll RMA for a red one. And I have a red one on order from allstarshop . . .

I guess the first working one goes in my comp., and the other on ebay, unless someone here wants it.

-Chu

 

[Jtrav]

I had the black pixels also but I got rid of them by changing a driver setting (deactivating hierachal z or zmask I forget which) using rTool. For some reason this is the only utility that fixed it. Its solely in german, but pretty easy to understand.

PM me for more info

 

[elanarchist]

Interesting, anyone notice that they've changed the picture on the product page? Good thing I did a screen cap of it before.

 

[Finalnight]

GOT MINE TODAY! RED L shaped! Put on wizard drivers, 3dmark03 went from 2700 to 3800, VERY faint checkerboarding on Pixel Shader 1.0, NONE on Pixel Shader 2.0
will run more tests. yay.

 

[saltedeggman]

Originally posted by: Finalnight
GOT MINE TODAY! RED L shaped! Put on wizard drivers, 3dmark03 went from 2700 to 3800, VERY faint checkerboarding on Pixel Shader 1.0, NONE on Pixel Shader 2.0
will run more tests. yay.

you got a red pcb and L-shaped memory from google?

 

[saltedeggman]

Originally posted by: Chu
Hrmmmmmm . . . just got a reply back from googlegear. They'll RMA for a red one. And I have a red one on order from allstarshop . . .

I guess the first working one goes in my comp., and the other on ebay, unless someone here wants it.

-Chu

i sent a two emails and have yet to heard from them

 

[elanarchist]

Originally posted by: saltedeggman

Originally posted by: Chu
Hrmmmmmm . . . just got a reply back from googlegear. They'll RMA for a red one. And I have a red one on order from allstarshop . . .

I guess the first working one goes in my comp., and the other on ebay, unless someone here wants it.

-Chu

i sent a two emails and have yet to heard from them

Same here...

 

[Finalnight]

YEP, from googlegear, have had "slight" artifacting, barely noticable, in the full screen shader test in 01 and 03, nothing in games yet, I think I have one pipeline down, I think I am gonna keep it, any opinions?

 

[shortnugly]

Just got the 9500, red pcb, l-shaped configuration from googlegear today.

Looks brand new.

One thing though. All the capacitors & on the card have a blue marker swipe on the top of them.

Why?

Did anyone else have these marks on their cards?

Just curious, haven't gotten around to installing and hacking the card yet.

 

[SDOG34]

I got two of them and both had marker on the capacitors...neither was hackable. There is not necessarily a correlation though. Contrary to the immense success of most ppl in this thread this deal is still a gamble. If you got a hackable card, be VERY thankful...my bro and I are both out of luck.

 

[Finalnight]

I am pretty sure mine is brand new, one thing, the screw hole on the bracket seemed a little bent around its edges, but it was the opposite direction than a screw would go, I am having a faint translucent checkerboard pattern in only a couple of textures on a few games, not very noticible, do you think i should keep it, managed to get to 330/300 so far.

 

[Parasitic]

AllStarShop has dropped the price on the 9500 128MBnp red boards...now $163.
Anyone have any luck with softmod on those?

 

[VirginiaDonkey]

My 8500 has the marks as well.....I think it means maybe those caps passed inspection????

I don't think it has anything to do with being non-hackable

 

[Chu]

Originally posted by: shortnugly
Just got the 9500, red pcb, l-shaped configuration from googlegear today.

Looks brand new.

One thing though. All the capacitors & on the card have a blue marker swipe on the top of them.

Why?

Did anyone else have these marks on their cards?

Just curious, haven't gotten around to installing and hacking the card yet.

Probably to verify them as good @ sapphire. I had these same marks on my black 9500.

-Chu

 

[Chu]

Originally posted by: Finalnight
I am pretty sure mine is brand new, one thing, the screw hole on the bracket seemed a little bent around its edges, but it was the opposite direction than a screw would go, I am having a faint translucent checkerboard pattern in only a couple of textures on a few games, not very noticible, do you think i should keep it, managed to get to 330/300 so far.

Your the one who has to deal with it, I really don't know why your asking us.

Seriously, these posts appear all the time (but usually not in FS/FT, since the actuial mod is usually not discussed here for obvious reasons) and I don't understand why people think that someone else is a good judge of what they find acceptable.

-Chu

 

[Chu]

Originally posted by: lastig21
I guess it is possible that my hack just took it to a pro. I'm using the catalyst 3.1 drivers, so it doesn't register different (still reads 9500). I was really expecting numbers in the 13's, but oh well. I haven't done an operating system reinstall. I uninstalled the drivers for my 8500, put in the 9500, installed the 3.1's rebooted and installed the hack. I had wondered if it didn't work, but my fill rate registers as 2150. I am still happy with the card, and might try to troubleshoot the low numbers later. I'm just happy that my 1942 no longer looks like a slide show when i get in the jet.

Wondering, what video card are you upgrading from? BF1942 works great on my Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO. Sim City 4 on the other hand . . .

God, never though SIM CITY would be the game that finally forced me to upgrade.

-Chu

 

[Jugernot]

A friend bought one of these and I'm trying it out for him.. it's a red L shaped memory model. I tried doing the hack, but kept getting corruptions and lockups in my 2d (sort of a blocky corruption in the desktop, is this the checkerboard?) ... didn't even get achance to run 3d stuff. Any ideas?

Jugs