Problems with Flashing

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Luna64

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I have a 9500 Pro card.


I flashed the BIOS so I could overclock it, but after doing this the card shows up in Windows / Linux as a 9700 Pro card.

I have had no performence problems with any games that I play, but when I install drivers for the card, is it going to apply 9700 Pro drivers ?

Or do the later Radeons all use the same drivers ?
The way I see it, it's going to think I have a 9700 Pro and install those drivers.

I am just wondering if it would be better performence wise for me to flash it back to the original BIOS (so it shows up as a 9500/9700) and then install my drivers.
 
All ATI cards use the same drivers... there's only one download (Catalyst 3.8 currently) for all cards. The only real difference in the 9500 Pro and the 9700 Pro is that the 9500 Pro has (I believe) 4 pixel pipelines disabled. Flashing to a 9700 Pro BIOS re-enables those 4 pipelines. Only problem would be if one of those 4 is damaged or corrupted in some way.
 
The 9500 pro has all pipes enabled. The 9600 pro has 4 of them disabled.
 
You're correct.. I looked at ATI's site after I posted and I stand corrected. :)
Since that's the case, does that mean the only difference between the 9500p & the 9700P is the clock speeds? It seems the 9500 is technically a better card than the 9600, which would explain why the 9500 is discontinued and the 9700 technically isn't.

err, that was rather ambiguous... I mean that would explain why the 9500 was discontinued immediately after the 9600/9800 cards were released and the 9700 wasn't. I think keeping the 9500 around would have cut into the 9600's sales (at least to the educated consumer)

edit: reviewing the specs between the 9500/9700, the 9500 is a 128bit memory interface, the 9700 is 256. Therein lies the biggest difference, I guess.
 
Both above comments are true. But back to the 9500 vs 9700.

The 9500 pro was discontinued due to cost of the die. The 9600 PRO only has 4 pipelines so the die is smaller and cheaper, also a new small geometry process allows faster clocks, less heat and smaller chip size. The 8 pipelines made the 9500 Pro chip as expensive as the 9700. They intentionally blocked the 9500 pro overclocking because it was too close in design to the 9700 pro. I think there was one other reduction in the 9500 pro (other than clock speed) but can't remember what it was (memory bus width maybe). But a 9500 pro with unlocked bios is so close to a 9700 pro they can be called the same.

And in some tests the 9500 Pro can beat a 9600 Pro. The extra pixel pipelines buy you a jump in rendering speed. The faster GPU and memory chips win in other tests.

My turn:

What bios did you load and from where?

Do you have the early board design that allowed turning the 9500 pro into the 9700 or is it a latter layout that limits the memory bandwidth.

What brand video memory and speed if you know?

I'm curious because I'm thinking about a flash next spring when I figure this card will start hitting it's limit at full texture settings.
 
Yes, I stated above that the 9500 pro only has a 128 bit memory bus, whereas the 9700 Pro has a 256bit memory bus. I have a Powercolor 9700 OEM, which is clocked lower than a Pro, but higher than a non pro... the highest speed I can clock it without crashing is 297core/290 memory. It has 3.3ns Infineon memory, so I think it can go to 300, but I haven't really tried it.
 
Originally posted by eddieb
The 9500 pro has all pipes enabled. The 9600 pro has 4 of them disabled.

no..

the 9600pro only HAS 4 pipes... the 9500 non-pro had 4 disabled...
 
Originally posted by cryogenic
You're correct.. I looked at ATI's site after I posted and I stand corrected. :)
Since that's the case, does that mean the only difference between the 9500p & the 9700P is the clock speeds? It seems the 9500 is technically a better card than the 9600, which would explain why the 9500 is discontinued and the 9700 technically isn't.

err, that was rather ambiguous... I mean that would explain why the 9500 was discontinued immediately after the 9600/9800 cards were released and the 9700 wasn't. I think keeping the 9500 around would have cut into the 9600's sales (at least to the educated consumer)

edit: reviewing the specs between the 9500/9700, the 9500 is a 128bit memory interface, the 9700 is 256. Therein lies the biggest difference, I guess.

the 9600 was the first ati card on the 0.13 micron process... vastly fewer transistors employed as well as smaller process== cheaper cost to manufacture/higher returns on sales as well as having lower power draw and therefore not requiring external power source like the other r3xx series cards...

memory interface as you mentioned is 128bit v/s 256 bit but also the 9700pro had better quality ram...

OTOH... the 9600pro also has good quality ram and can overclock ridiculously well... much better than the 9500pro...
 
Originally posted by Luna64
I have a 9500 Pro card.


I flashed the BIOS so I could overclock it, but after doing this the card shows up in Windows / Linux as a 9700 Pro card.

I have had no performence problems with any games that I play, but when I install drivers for the card, is it going to apply 9700 Pro drivers ?

Or do the later Radeons all use the same drivers ?
The way I see it, it's going to think I have a 9700 Pro and install those drivers.

I am just wondering if it would be better performence wise for me to flash it back to the original BIOS (so it shows up as a 9500/9700) and then install my drivers.

there should be a bios that unlocks overclocking as others have mentioned in this thread...

if it was instead the 9500 non-pro to 9700 non-pro flash you did... you could have a bit of a problem... :)

however from the sounds of it you should not really have any problems per se.. driver versions are the same and general architecture is the same... just memory bus is different...
 
Hmm.. so the 9500np = 4 pipelines... 9500P = 8 pipelines?
the 9500np having 8 total, but 4 disabled... seems that's how I'm understanding things here.. am I correct? (and yes, I'm aware that the 9600 has only 4 physical pipelines, all of which are enabled)
 
Originally posted by cryogenic
Hmm.. so the 9500np = 4 pipelines... 9500P = 8 pipelines?

yes...

however the 9500np's fall under 2 categories...

1 was crippled (ie broken ) pipelines... the 2nd was DISABLED pipelines...

flashing the bios enabled all 4 pipelines and you got a 256bit memory bus... ergo... a 9700np...

a little tweaking and the little baby became a mini monster :) for a tiny price..
 
Originally posted by cryogenic
which of course is one of the reasons ATI was so eager to kill it off

well that is one... but the better explanation is they could make the 9600pro's for a far lesser cost and still sell them for a good enough price to make a good profit...

ati after all is a business @ the end of the day :)
 
agreed... the 9600 Pros aren't bad at all... my friend has one and he likes it quite a bit. The 9500's being so powerful ties in with them making more money on the 9600's... the 9500's as you said before were made on the .18 micron process and were basically just a crippled 9700 for the most part... hence, costing them more money to make. Either way, they both handily put the smack down on the 5600 series cards from nVidia. ;) Gotta love the role reversal that's taken place... if I recall, back when the GF3 was releaed, ATI was still more or less laughed at and their drivers were crap. Now it seems to be the opposite. :)
 
Originally posted by cryogenic
agreed... the 9600 Pros aren't bad at all... my friend has one and he likes it quite a bit. The 9500's being so powerful ties in with them making more money on the 9600's... the 9500's as you said before were made on the .18 micron process and were basically just a crippled 9700 for the most part... hence, costing them more money to make. Either way, they both handily put the smack down on the 5600 series cards from nVidia. ;) Gotta love the role reversal that's taken place... if I recall, back when the GF3 was releaed, ATI was still more or less laughed at and their drivers were crap. Now it seems to be the opposite. :)

the 9500 series as well as the 9700 and 9800 series utilise the 0.15 micron process...

gpu's use a slightly different scaling than cpu's :)

@ the moment yes.. ati has the more powerful components on the market... in raw power... their dx9 cards are more powerful...

however nvidia 5700ultra is a good part and does quite well in its segment...

nvidia has its automatic shader replacement/ optimization algorithms @ work curently enabling improved speed... ati still outpaces nvidias competing parts and they should soon have their own drivers with automatic shader replacement/ optimizations and this should allow ati to keep its current lead till the next gen comes out..
 

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