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How to change your Radeon 9500 into a 9700
Ian Bell writes "We have just posted a very difficult guide to turning your ATI Radeon 9500 into a 9700. But you have to have the correct 9500. A 9500 with 4 rendering pipelines, modified to enable all 8 pipelines, will effectively double the memory bus, if you have the extra 64 Meg of memory to attach it to. We will explain below which card to acquire for this awesome graphics card transformation. Check out how to do this yourself and get the power of a 9700 at half the price." Update: 01/19 18:33 GMT by T : And for those running Windows, Sanity writes "Aside from the hardware mod, there is a program called Riva Tuner that has, among other things, a software mod for unlocking those gates, plus overclocking to a full 9700 pro! Gives me more $$$ to spend on cool stuff."
This seems like a really good way to have to buy two graphics cards.
Well, you might get lucky and have good memory in the new 'enabled' section, allowing you to have the 9700.
Or, you might get zilch - since that's why those are 9500's and not 9700's. That memory is suspect.
Would it be illegal for people to modify these 9500's then sell them on somewhere like eBay for example? You could probably make a killing.
so to get top headline at slashdot these days only requires a 100 line html document describing what you might do over the next three years?
The DMCA is a Copyright Act. It makes circumvention of protected copyrighted works. What copy protection scheme does this mod allow us to circumvent? Of course, blaming the DMCA for everything is always acceptable.
Dunno about the guide for modding video cards but they should have used one for they webserver, already /.ted :/
This mod and its possible failure modes have been discussed on the rage3d forums.
It seems the best theory as to why some checkerboard and some do not, is that the 9500 uses binned chips, where not all eight texture pipelines necessarily operate correctly at normal speeds, voltages, or possibly at all.
The mod apparently works by unlocking or changing a hard-wired ID field, which then allows the 9700 bios to be used on the 9500 board.
Yet today's article says:
Oh yeah! "We". I'm sure you thought of it first. Not even a single mention of the Russian hackers who first came up with this easy hack. Not really brain surgery. Few people I know hacked up the board in less than few hours.
how smart is this? what if u mess it up then you have nothing.
Note that this only applies to the 9500 and not the 9500 PRO.
This hack has been crawling around the boards for a while and it seems fairly legit. The basic layout and architecture of the 9500 and 9700 are the same and this hack attempts to:
1) Re-enable the extra pixel pipelines that are present on the 9500 just not enable. A simple resister swap near the gpu is required.
2) Flash the bios of the 9500 with a 9700 bios image.
3) Overclock the 9500's core clock to compete with 9700.
4) (Optional) Add more memory.
The biggest problem I see is that the stock memory on the 9500 is of a cheaper variety and isn't rated for the frequency that a 9700 operates at.
So, even if you indeed have the skills/luck involved to pull off this cute hack, then you'll not necessarily be able to compete with a 9700.
My advice, go with the 9500 Pro. Out of the box it's only a step slower than the 9700 Pro and costs half the coin of a 9700/9700 Pro.
But if you've got a 9500 in your machine and some time/money to spare. Why not see if you can achieve great things with a minimum cost?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1042
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&t
Betcha he feels like a turkey for posting his story now...
Is it just me, or has their site ALREADY fallen over?
You know I have been tinkering with computer equipment since HeathKit. Yep, OLD SKOOl, bread boarding and soldering, and learned a great deal by doing it.
I love the hacker ethic, kludge something until it works. Sometimes you have to, sometimes you want to, and sometimes just for the hell of it.
I understand trying to save a few bucks, but COME ON PEOPLE.
What I am seeing more and more is these whack hardware hacks which 20% of the time do increase the hardware potential and the 80% fry whatever you are fooling with. So you clean the part of real good, RMA it, and get a new one. Screwing the rest of the world in the process cause you wanted to hack it.
I remember in the day of the Celeron 300A, I was working in a shop that sold them hand over fist. And we got them back hand over fist due to over clockers"Dunna what happened man, just didn't work one day, I didn't over clock it though, musta been defective"
You futz up the graphic card, clean the solder off, and bring it back to Best Buy. They don't look it, they just give you another, and prices go up.
But everyone doesn't take that into account when they bring it back.
I don;t have unlimited funds, but I know you get what you pay for.
People that buy that Athlon 1800, cheap ass board, cheap ass fan, cheap ass power supply, overclock it, then spend 200 bucks on cooling, which could have applied to just buying a better cheap, board, and power supply.
And what scares me is this is the next generation of admins. I see the result now in the field. Some young computer whiz has outfitted an entire office with no name stuff, only a years guarantee, then he quits, six months later stuff starts to go out. And I have to tell them they have to buy new stuff cause they nearly new stuff was crap.
So I ask the community this. If you mod it and fry it. Throw it in the garbage, dont make me pay by bringing it back or RMA ing New Egg. But howsa about this. If it ain't broke. Don't fuck with it.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I have a friend that just did the software mod, and that alone nearly doubled his 3D mark. I would have to say with the ease and relative safety of the software mod, its probably best not to get greedy and kill your card. At least that my opinion. Either way my gForce 3 is starting to feel a little inferior.
"I am the Flail of God!" -Genghis Kahn
You look too much like a troll, troll.
Try refining your technique.
DMCA've killed Kenny!
I don't think so, if you go by that logic then unlocking your cpu so you can overclock it is also stealing. If you can get more out of your own property by changing the way it works, how is this even morally wrong?
It's a well known problem in EE design that this disbalancing might result in unstable, chaotic behavior. This is particulary problematic because the basic design of most electric circuit contains a large Kalman-Barsharotiwz feedback filter. Together with the missing stability this creates an undamped increasing oszillation which will basically blow up your entire set up. EE PhD's will surely known this as the Lillehammer effect.
So the only conclusion can be: Keep your hands off, bugger !
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
When you purchase an engine, it is yours to modify. For instance, you may bore over the cylinders and as a result get more power from the engine. You may also purchase a video card and increase overclock it to make it run faster.
When you purchase a video card, however, and "unlock" a feature that is only meant to be purchased, isn't that stealing?
is there a similar guide to turning my geforce2 into a geforce4 ti 4600?
This looks like stealing. Does it look like stealing to anyone else?
Bringing up ethics on Slashdot? Prepare to be seriously flamed.
I would not go so far as to call it stealing, but I would question the ethics of it (just as you did). Many companies are surviving on razor-thin profit margins in the PC hardware sector and this kind of thing is going to hurt them if it's done by people who would have otherwise bought the more expensive card.
On the other hand, I think that it's likely that this procedure will result in a lot of incompetent people destroying their cards, so maybe it won't hurt ATI so badly in the long run.
No, it's not stealing. For it to be stealing, you would have to take something without the owner's consent. As it is, you're simply depriving them of money you _otherwise_ might have given them, had you not known how to turn a 9500 into a 9700. That's not theft at all.
Maybe ATi could argue that they're entitled to the money - that these people are enjoying the benefits of owning a 9700 card without having paid for one. But they haven't _stolen_ it, they've simply obtained the benefits by unconventional means. AFAIK there's no law against upgrading and overclocking; maybe there was something in the EULA for the drivers, but apart from that there's no problem.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
They disabled access to a their work (the other parts of the board).
You are circumventing this technical access method to gain access to their work.
Pretty straightforward to me.
But it is still a dumb law.
Is it just me, or does overclocking end up costing more in the long run. I went through my over clocking phase a couple years ago. And had some fast computers for about a year. Then they just started to go haywire. Looking back, I would have saved money (and had some great linux boxes) if I would have just got a dell. Colin McNamara
The same ppl who brought you the SoftQuadro(4) hack. One that allows you to use Quadro drivers on geforce cards. Unwinder 'at' Guru3d.com
I can get more out of my TV decoder box by changing the way it works, so that it decodes everything whether I pay it to or not. Is this even morally wrong?
I'm denying some pay-TV company the earnings it otherwise might have had, just as by hacking a 9500 into a 9700 I'm denying ATi the earnings _they_ otherwise might have had. In neither case am I stealing, but people who would never say that upgrading a video card is wrong would usually say that pirating pay-TV is wrong. Where's the moral difference?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I just think the person who took the shots showing a burned copy of a game was idiotic enough... Sides, Radion sucks :P
The one thing that bothers me is the "Turn your 9500 into a 9700" that's not really true, see a 9700 was meant to run like a 9700 and a 9500 is meant to run like a 9500, this will be more or less a memory/speed upgrade for a 9500.
I seriously doubt that ATI would try to keep the market inflated by purposefully dumbing down a high end card, this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life. It's not like Intel has ever used a pIII chip with the cache disabled/ripped out for celerons before. I mean jeeze people why would a hardware company want to make something intentionally slower, it's not as if 3 steps from the top cards cost nearly 200% less. Next someone is going to tell me it costs roughly $18 to manufacture a Radeon 9700. I tell you, it's all lies, all lies.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
sPh
Well, I'd have to agree with you in terms of a money-saving standpoint, but, you have to admit it's pretty cool. On the other hand, it does make you question...
If you, as an end user, can overclock the 9500 to the 9700 pro for little money, then what the hell are they charging so much more money for the 9700?
It would be hard for me, if I cared, to know that those pixel pipelines were sitting there, unused. You know, "because they were there." It looks fun to do, regardless of whether you need it or not.
Recursive (adj.): see 'Recursive'
I figure that the lost profits from people who buy a 9500 instead of a 9700 will be more the compensated for by the folks who mung the mod up and have to go buy another video card.
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if ATI leaked this mod in the first place. Just think of all the money they save on voided warrantys alone. Not to mention tech support...
"Hello, ATI technical support. Can I help you?"
"Yeah, I have a problem with my video card. It keeps locking up"
"I see... what kind of card is it?"
"Well, it's a 9500, but I modded it so that..."
*click*
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Obviously your write up was crap, and wtf possessed you to submit it under "usa" and not "hardware" ?
I do wish people would stop pasting their rejected submissions every time a similar story gets posted on the front page. It doesn't make you look "cooler" because you thought if it first. Jeez.
Now you have to buy the better processor, spread that cooling shit over it, place a copper wafer, and put on the huge 70 db fan, and it is a normal Athlon installation now.
Changing the way your TV decoder works isn't morally wrong, and you should be well within your rights todo what you want with it.
Using your modified hardware to TAKE from the TV company is where it becomes wrong. And that's where the stealing is.
Overclocking your cpu or modifying your 9500 doesn't involve taking anything from anyone against their wishes.
"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" I was under the impression that things are News when they are new and not News 6 days later.... Surely its the editors that write the stories and put them into the correct areas... submit should just be for sources of news.
I don't think it is.
Still, there's a difference.
The TV-company is selling you the channels as a service, and by cracking your TV-decoder you're taking that service without paying.
ATI is selling you the 9700 with extra memory. By doing the "improve the card"-thingie yourself you're doing the service to yourself. No "taking" involved.
Get over it.
- Initial investment is one half of the cost of a Radeon 9700
- You screw it up in any one of a hundred different ways and the magic smoke escapes
- You get pissed off and purchase a the new GeForce card when it comes out instead
Final cost is nearly twice a Radeon 9700. Hmmm...- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
A Radeon 9700 has lots of pipelines, as many as so eight, so if I upgraded my Radeon I would have the equivilent of 2 normal graphics cards. [Thanks to the GIAA (Graphics Industry Association of America]
Thats where you're wrong. Things are not news when they are new. Things are news when they get posted on /.
Until then, they don't really exist.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Also, it can be a good way to make use of parts which are out-of-spec for the higher performance version.
sPh
Johansen vs Mitsu knives. The customer had purchased a steak knife and was caught slicing bread with it...
FRA: STFU GTFO
Here's a lot easier guide to turn 9500 into 9700.
It's a software upgrade.
Please mod this up.
The problem is that when you get a cable box from the cable company, you're renting it, you don't own it.
Also, the DMCA doesn't forbid you doing this hardware mod. If it did apply to this (which I'm not sure it does), it would forbid the act of telling other people how to do it. Kinda like a Linux help channel. "I figured out how to do it, but RTFM and figure it out for yourself."
"The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?" -- Richard Bach, Illusions
actually I bought cheap athlon (1G) old one, and cheap mobo, but spent most of the money on a good case and silent cpu cooler and + silent fans etc..
don't need the speed anyway.
puto
Actually, this will work to convert ANY card into a 9700 - simply take the card (no matter how old) and jam your soldering gun into it, go to CompUSA and buy a 9700. Easy as that!
Real geeks *never* call tech support lines....
Thanks to W1zzard, you can now mod a 9500 into 9700 without soldering on your (expensive) card!
news:
http://www.radeonthetop.com/news.php?id=667 (french)
download:
http://www.maxdownloads.com/~ian/wizzard/
Apparently there's a way to do this completely in software -- no hardware modifications required.
I have heard many stories whereby modifying a 9500 into a 9700 resulted in disaster -- sometimes the 9500 simply isn't good enough to perform at those levels. At least software gives you the option of reversing the damage.
People seem to have the ethos in computing of buying the cheapest junk with the highest specs possible, not realizing that they just supported junk instead of quality. This is how quality is ratcheted lower, and it becomes difficult or impossible to find anything decent. $15 PSUs that weigh maybe .5 lbs are frighteningly common, as are CAT5 cables thinner than a drinking straw, motherboards with %20 defect rates, and on-board audio that just crackles instead of recording.
I don't agree that "if it ain't broke, don't fuck with it," as tweaking and playing are both very natural and very educational: but don't return it. You broke it: you fix it. If you can't fix it: you buy one that can do what you wanted it to do in the first place. But don't fall into the pit of buyers remorse by getting a wall-mart, emachines, or other low-quality computer to save a few dollars, then chop it up to try and compensate for not buying something that could satisfy you. Buy and support the things that you want. And always, always do your research. If you could spend 3 hours finding out what the best available PSU for your system is, you could save 6 hours later on trying to cut it open and cool it.
(Which reminds me, my PSU is too loud. Where did my Dremel go?)
-C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
First of all, the cost of producing a product doesn't have anywhere near the effect on market price that most people think it does. Market price is determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves: at price x consumers are willing to buy y units and producers are willing to sell z units; the market price is the x such that y == z. Some people, however, would only be willing to buy at a lower price, but would be willing to settle for a lower end product at that lower price. The producers would be willing to sell the product at that lower price, but they also want to sell it at the higher price to the people who would be willing to pay more. So they sell the same product at different prices, and disable a few features on the units sold at the lower price so that they don't simply have everyone buying at that lower price. It's just one way of charging more to the people who are willing to pay more. Really, when a theater sells matinee (sp?) showings of a film, they're doing the exact same thing from an economic point of view.
Same here. It got rejected ages ago, too. Slashdot stories are like wine...they get better with age...or at least they think so.
already slashdotted ...
Denken hilft.
This reminds me of when the Radeon LE came out ($71) and by doing a couple simple things with some 3rd party software and the windows registry, you could make it perform the same as a Radeon DDR, which sold for about $139 at the time.
You futz up the graphic card, clean the solder off, and bring it back to Best Buy. They don't look it, they just give you another, and prices go up.
But everyone doesn't take that into account when they bring it back.
You don't understand how capitalism works. ATI is charging significantly more for a Radeon 9700 than a Radeon 9500 (a difference of about $100), even though the hardware is almost exactly the same. It follows that they're setting the price at what they feel the market will bear. This has nothing to do with how much it costs to make these things.
A few returned units may cut into ATI's profits (insignificantly), but they will have no effect on that magic price at which their profit is maximized. The same argument has been used against shoplifting and file sharing -- while these activities may be illegal (unlike modifying your own hardware), the argument is just as flawed. Why do CDs/Computer Parts/foo cost so much? Because that's what people are willing pay.
Lets look at this in 2 ways why it is NOT stealing from Ati, or the consumer. For years, people with Nvidia cards have been using coolbits or some other software hack to enable overclocking on their Geforce and Tnt Cards. With the GF4 series, it's easily possible to make a Ti4200 run as fast as a Ti4600, depending on who makes the card. Now people that argue that these people are buying this card instead of the $399 Ti4600, dont you realize that the people that perform these kinds of "hacks" probably don't have the money to buy a $399 video card, so as such they buy a cheaper on and overclock it. Thus nvidia sells a cheaper card, instead of no card at all.
Also, the same applies to this ati hack. While many people can afford the 9500, far less are willing to spring for the 9700. As such, ATI is STILL selling cards. Bottom line, if it is moving product out the door, it's a good business deal. Add this to the fact that ATI may entice former nvidia-only people to try their products, and this software hack (the hardware hack is no longer necessary with Wizzards and Rivatuner software hacks out) becomes a means for ATI to get a load of free press/publicity/interest, and sell some cards.
3-Server OC-3 Linux Counter-Strike Cluster
www.rnp.ca
>>If you, as an end user, can overclock the 9500 to the 9700 pro for little money, then what the hell are they charging so much more money for the 9700?
:)
Well, if you don't want to pay market prices for the stuff you want, you'll just have to do without it untill the price drops. And by that time, you'll want the latest and greatest which will be as expensive as the latest and greatest is now.
I can hack my 1974 Chevy Impala's 350 engine into a nitris driven speed machine/death-trap, relatively cheaply. And I can also blow it, and myself to hell trying. Or I can buy a new high performace sports car. Becasue I appreciate what I have and I don't want to destroy it, and because I can't afford to upgrade, I do without.
And I strive to figure out how to better myself so that one day maybe I can earn enough money to upgrade.
Or I could just dump the Chevy and buy a Harley.
Huh?
Lets say that it was always legal to modify anything you bought, hardware, software or data. It would be still illegal to distribute copies of other people's code without permission, but not to post any new code that modifies its behavior. So what's the big deal?
Obviously ATI makes money selling cheaper cards. So they would still sell them and turn profit even if a cheap, legal mod kit was available. If 9500 is in fact artifically crippled, they would probably just remove the performance restriction and everyone would have more fun gaming than now. ATI would still have an option of selling a high end card that really has better hardware or low end that is really cheaper to make. If 9500 is a defective 9700, ATI might provide a control panel that lets users turn on extra features at their own risk. Remember that NVIDIA does have an overclocking control panel? Windows XP Home addition will either have the same featues as XP Pro or will have the extra code really compiled out rather than just artifically disabled. In the later case, home users will have a leaner, faster OS.
Shareware programmers will release two versions of their code. The free version will not have any timeout, nagging dialogs or ads, because those might be removed by a legal patch. Instead if will just not have code for certain features. This is mostly a win to the users, because low-budget or low-need people will have free software without getting annoyed and spamed.
Sample music will be distributed as 24KHz MP3s or clips. Or perhaps, a couple of songs in an album will be free in full quality. When you pay for music, you will get a full-quality MP3. You just will not be allowed to distribute it. Perhaps it will be watermarked to try to catch you. It will not be illegal to try to remove watermarks, but you will be scared to post a file because you can never know if you removed all of them unless you really mess up file's quality.
All I see is benefit to the users and only a slight challenge to manufacturers. There will be some companies for which current system is so ingrained in their business that they would go under. Some other companies will make less money. But its not the purpose of the law to guarantee that everyone makes as much money as they want. Just that someone is motivated enough to create and manufacture new products.
Here are the facts: Because the layout of the Radeon 9500 128MB is similar to the 9700, they use a very similar pcb, so similar in fact that it is nearly identical (including the additional 256-bit memory and the "sleeping" extra 4 texture pipelines). Sapphire NON PRO Radeon 9500 128MB with 3.3ns video ram work without artifacts about 95% of the time. I've been reading the forums over at www.rage3d.com and all in all it's a pretty solid mod. Here's where you get the software, no need to solder: http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/ Enjoy.
In addition to the theft question, I'm wondering if the DMCA could come into play.
Could the manufacturer claim that their product was reverse engineered? After all, you had to 'hack'/study/modify the product in order to get the new functionality.
Scary stuff. Very scary.
Huh?
I was just refering to the hardware method in my post. The software method, while easier, is also a risk.
The software method attempts to push the card beyond its factor tested limits. Most of the chips on the 9500's probably can remain stable at 9700 speeds but you're in danger of frying your memory, as stated above.
As it is, you're simply depriving them of money you _otherwise_ might have given them, had you not known how to turn a 9500 into a 9700. That's not theft at all.
So downloading mp3s isn't theft either then?? Cause all i'm doing is depriving them of money I MIGHT have given them, if I didn't know about mp3s that is.
Man, that got slashdotted fast for a Sunday. I've mirrored the article, and it's got a nasty long url. Here's a tinyurl to it: http://tinyurl.com/4ui.
I have a saphire 9500np 128mb with 3.3ns infineon memorty. The latest version of rivatuner has a Script that will modify the drivers in software to change the id needed to enable the extra pipelines.(the hardware mod simply changes the device id). Many have experienced checkerboard like artifacts after enabling the pipelines but still a performance increase. In my case I have no artifacts. I experienced a 2000 point increase in 3dMark scores using the default settings. ... the site is slashdotted I dont know if it mentions the software mod but from comments it seems as though it doesnt.
This mod works. But it is a lottery on weather your cards pipelines will. I would recommend grabbing rivatuner and using the script and save yourself from soldiering and flashing the bios (save your warranty too).
You are modifying things you dont *own*, only have a *right to use* ( under restrictions set forth in your EULA ) .
Plus it smells of 'reverse engineering'..
Today, both of these gets you in trouble.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It [bans] circumvention of protected copyrighted works.
No, 17 USC 1201(a) bans circumvention of access control on works under any Title 17 monopoly. Copyright is only a small part of Title 17, which also includes protection of original circuits (chapter 9) and original vessel hull designs (chapter 13).
What copy protection scheme does this mod allow us to circumvent?
This mod circumvents the part of the board that controls access to the extra Radeon 9700 functional units on the chip. Because the chip's layout is a mask work under 17 USC chapter 9, it's a "work protected under this title" for the purposes of section 1201.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No, because that was I "meant" to get when I purchased the video card. Seriously, how is it that what companies "meant" is now of moral and even legal (e.g. DMCA) relevance?
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
...into key chain material. If it were as simple as changing a jumper setting, maybe ATI would have something to worry about. Otherwise, ATI should just shrug and say WTF.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
It would be hard for me, if I cared, to know that those pixel pipelines were sitting there, unused. You know, "because they were there." It looks fun to do, regardless of whether you need it or not.
Well, in answer to your first question, most likely they're charging more for the top of the line product to help make up for R&D costs. "But that same R&D made both boards, so why shouldn't the 9500 pay the same amount for it?" Cause then they get undercut on the low end. Welcome to how the computer business works. The early adopters who absolutely gotta have the latest greatest toy end up subsidizing R&D.
As for the second part of your post, it's worth noting that it's not unusual in cases like this where you have two different levels of chips, that the chips used in the lower level are actually defectives from the premiere chip - in other words, they tested it, found out some of the pipelines didn't work and sold it as a 4 pipeline 9500. Intel used to do the same thing with non-math coprocessor chips and AMD has done the same thing with the Athlon MP's.
Why?
Please show me which page in eBay's questionable items policy prohibits selling modified products other than video game consoles modified to play imported video games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
sPh
I just did this at home. FYI a Radeon 9700 (non pro) sells for about $225 on pricewatch. Once the bios is reflashed that card can be clocked up to the exact same memory and core speed as the Radeon 9700 Pro. I've been gaming on it for weeks and it's rock solid stable. It's very easy to turn your $225 card into a $380 card, and you don't have to solder anything. As always YMMV
I agree that a lot of overclocking being done these days is just for bragging rights, but, with all the crippling of higher-end components, just to create artificial price tiers, there are definitely opportunities to get that free upgrade with a little tinkering.
How many is a few? Do you know how many people will return boards because of this? I doubt its more than 2-3. Maybe a few hundreds, possibly thousands. ATI's current profits are around 4 million (taken from their Q1 2003 report (PDF). Call it a 1,000 boards at $100 per chip. Sounds good to me. That's 2.5% of their total profits. Is that really so insignificant?
They could have placed a OTP fuse inside the chip which downgrades the chip from a 9700 to a 9500 but not the other way. The fuse could be set via a test mode so no extra pins or resistors are needed. Sometimes I think these companies (ie ATI and AMD) go the simple route so that people find out and the mod community gets all exicted about that product.
Aren't hardcovers usually printed on acid-free paper so they don't turn yellow and fall apart 10 years down the road?
I'm sure even with High Quality components, the cost of the parts is a small fraction of $400.
However, what about the employees? What about the engineers, designers, leaders, managers? What about the people coordinating the soldering? What about the training dollars?
What about the machines and assembly lines that make these graphic cards? Are they free, too? The heat, the electricity? The chairs and computers?
Marketing, advertising, insurance for employees, and lawyers aren't free, either.
But even with the above restraints, another company could make a Radeon 9700 clone much cheaper, and I don't mean a Chinese sweat shop. I mean, say, a company in Canada making an identical clone manufacturing the 9700 for a cheaper cost with the same quality, selling it for half the price, and still make tons of money off it?
How could that (theoretically) be possible?
BECAUSE YOU'RE FORGETTING THAT ATI had to spend $$$$ in Research and Development, prototyping, training, and paying top dollar for engineers and designers. Many mistakes and failed efforts, many successful runs exploited for improvement.
A clone company would not have to pay these costs if they ripped off the design. GET IT? That's why new video cards cost so much, because the manufacturer (in this case ATI) had to RESEARCH THE THING it's making. That, and the fact that since the LATEST and the GREATEST video card was made for early adopters/hardcore gamers, they pay the biggest fee. Versions of the Card are priced cheaper for less demanding markets. Even though most of the technology is the same for the 9500, it is the early adopters that are the reason that ATI made 9700 the HIGHEST instead of just stopping at 9500, and that extra "R&D" cost makes sense.
And why is everybody upset about a company making a profit? Are you people crazy?
The company has to pay for their investment, then a lot of the money left over is put back into future R & D.
ATI designed, developed, and manufactures the best (consumer?) graphics card in the world. That takes lots of Research and Development $$.
Also, I am pretty sure what you described about misrepresenting equipment you broke is illegal.
File sharing has almost no R & D costs, (at least not in the millions and billions of USD).
Cover your eyes and click this link!
People seem to have the ethos in computing of buying the cheapest junk with the highest specs possible, not realizing that they just supported junk instead of quality. This is how quality is ratcheted lower, and it becomes difficult or impossible to find anything decent.
That may well be true, but what the heck does it have to do with this story?
Most of people don't need highest-end hardware that is not expensive only because of it's (supposed) quality, but mostly because it's a luxury, a rarity. That DOES NOT make the lower end items of same kind any junk.
There may well be some graphics card manufacturers that use cheapest crap possible (remember the bad image quality on lots of geforce cards some time ago because of bad components on filter?), and some of them may even build radeons, but 9500 as a chip is no more piece of junk than 9700(PRO) is.
And what comes to grandparent posts "saving a few bucks", there's about two hundred euro (That's here, and I couldn't care less what it's in US), difference, to the some people, that is a HUGE amount of money.
tweaking and playing are both very natural and very educational: but don't return it. You broke it: you fix it.
On this, I mostly agree, if you start physically modifying a piece of hardware, anything that goes wrong is your responsibility, it's got nothing to do with manufacturing or material defects that warranty is supposed to pay for.
Welcome to the computer industry.
Still to this day, you can pay IBM to come out and flip a switch on your mainframe that doubles it's speed. IBM makes no secret out of the fact that your system shipped with half the CPUs inactive.
There's a very good reason for this -- If ATI/IBM/etc had to design a "low end" product from the ground up, the R&D costs would be so great that they couldn't price it low enough.
So they cripple their existing high-end product and put an attractive price on it. The high-end customers pay R&D, and they gain marketshare with the low-end folks.
How about getting a 256-bit 9500, modding it over to a 9700, then overclocking to 9700 pro. So you are getting a $380 part for $160.
Journal
I'm wondering if the DMCA could come into play.
It sure could. I described the details of such an application of the DMCA in another comment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
make it perform the same as a Radeon DDR
For me, DDR performs perfectly well even with an old beat-up TNT2.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes it does. The DMCA (17 USC 1201(a)) bans not only manufacture and sale but also use of devices that circumvent access controls to a work under a Title 17 monopoly. The graphics processor on a Radeon video card is such a work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
AFAIK there's no law against upgrading and overclocking
Other than this?
Will I retire or break 10K?
For the soldering part that is:
1) Use low heat and good solder a 63/27 tin content.
2) Use a small tip, and I mean small, not the stock screwdriver tip!
3) Use flux, most people don't and wonder why the solder doesn't melt.
4) If you dont want the little SMD to "stick" to anything else, cover the other solder point with a little oil (just clean it when you are done)
5) Don't get frustrated, just take a break if you feel yourself getting worked up.
6) Do use an ESD strap and make sure you and the strap are grounded.
7) If you have not done much soldering don't do it, unless you have money to burn along with your finger tips.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
This is the first I've heard of this. Maybe you've been creating your own daemons?
Let's say that you want a 9700, but can't afford it because you've only got so much money. However, you can afford the cheaper 9500 and still ahve a little left over. How much do you think a professional modder will charge to modify a 9500?
I would be willing to bet that most pro modders would charge you at least $40. How many pro modders will give you a %100 chance of it working?
If you know how to modify a graphics card it's cheaper. But the unmodded card costs more then the different between the 2 cards. So WHY? If you mess it up. Or more likley, the cheap card is just not modifiable, then you've wasted everyone's time and money.
Most people doing this are hobbiests, who are trying to squeeze every penny. Why? Cause playing with their computers is more important then using them.
>This looks like stealing. Does it look like stealing to anyone else?
You have provided no evidence of anyone stealing; you have no reason to show guilt: some people are buying Radeon 9500 models and behold they are owned by them and discovered they are realy a 9700 model in disguise! Speaking in another capacity, this is truly grounds for lawsuit unto ATI for deceptive marketing.
Of'course, I think ATI is making good products, yet the age-old concern of theft still arises and you have honestly and bravly asked that age-old question: Is it stealing when we bought a product and discovered it to be another more costly product and by our respect of returning products for refund that occur in the opposite occurence, do we return our products to ATI? Here's your answer: a financial transaction took place, you are under contracted law that may or may not allow you to return a product that had been sold upon the truths as being lawfully or unlawfully guise.
So, my joke for you is...Take it back to ATI, tell them they sold you a ATI Radeon 9700 and they'll give you company credit of the value of that Radeon 9700 to apply for the selection of another product and possibly you will get a refund.
OK I'M JOKING! Think of it as another way: ATI has given you a benefit (or blessing, if you will) and they have given you an incompletly implemented Radeon 9700, marketed as a 9500 and sold half price, and it is up to your own time or skill or merit to finish their incomplete manufacture to a complete Radeon 9700.
Hey, if someone gave you a Manshion that was half-finished/half-destroyed, would you thank them or tell them it would be a steal for you to purchase it from them at such a low cost? It's the market, buddy. ATI is aware of this and perhaps due to the 9500 and 9700 being under ATI's poor marketers, they'll change or have already changed the future Radeon 9500 to be a more deceptive and unmodifiable Radeon 9700 product that proves to require more time or skill or merit for the owner to complete its manufacture.
I remember the ol' Total Recal movie that makes me laugh... Douglas Quait wakes up in a Taxi, the driver is a robot. The transcript is like this:
Quait: How did I get here?
Taxi: I'm sorry, will you please re-phrase your question.
Quait: How did I get in this Taxi?
Taxi: The door opened, you got in...Hell of a day, isn't it?
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
If you fry your card attempting this and then try to RMA it then of course it is stealing. If you fry your card attempting this and then say "well, that's the risk I took trying this", and then you go buy yourself another card - then of course there isn't a problem.
C'mon boys and girls, even six year old kids can grasp THIS level of right vs. wrong.
#DeleteChrome
You /. guys are no fun. Somebody comes out with a really nifty hack, and all you guys talk about is how dangerous it is. People who live on the edge like this generally know what they're doing and go in accepting the risk. Personally, I do this stuff occasionally (I OC'ed a 300A, joined the L1 bridges on an Athlon and modded my MP3 player) and I go in fully aware that I might be throwing $200 down the tube. That's okay, because I never try it unless I can afford to replace it if something goes wrong. If something doesn't go wrong, then I just saved a few bucks. So far, I'm ahead. The 300A and the Athlon are still running, but I killed the screen on my MP3 player (which gives me an excuse to get an iPod :)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
tinyurl seems to be a euphemism for "wide fucking anus".
>And what scares me is this is the next generation of admins. I see the result now in the field. Some young computer whiz has outfitted an entire office with no name stuff, only a years guarantee, then he quits, six months later stuff starts to go out. And I have to tell them they have to buy new stuff cause they nearly new stuff was crap.
While I agree with everything else you've said, I have to dissent on this.
Honestly, when you buy a Compaq, Dell, HP, or whatever brand name PC, you're buying into the fact that they can repair/replace it, which means that you are at their mercy for quality of service -- there's nothing you can do yourself to get things up and running.
If the company has computer staff, they should be fixing it. Anyone who has dealt with machines from major manufacturers knows they are nothing but the worst PITA ever made, in every way possible (all the way to the point of proprietary memory somtimes!) when it comes to repairing it yourself.
By buying non-brand name system he has left the new workers with something they can fix without having to depend on one company. If the CD-ROM breaks, they don't need to call up Compaq and wait 3 days for a replacement with the screw holes in exactly the right place to ship -- they can walk down to the local computer store and buy a new one on the spot, not to mention one made by the same company as Compaq would have sent you, but also for about $300 cheaper.
And, while you might think he bought "crap", I can tell you with great certainty that that "crap" are exactly the same parts in the name brand computer, except that the "crap" he bought conforms to standards, whereas the OEM part is irreplaceable except by the OEM.
Example: Does the name PC Chips make your skin crawl? Probably. Did you know that many of the boards in brand name computers were made by them?
I'm supposing not...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You couldn't sell them as 9700's, but you could sell them as modified 9500's that run at 9700 speeds.
The problem, as everyone is pointing out, is that this is a very tricky hack, and that there's a very good chance that the 9500 you buy will not be physically capable of the hack. For the entrepreneur, that means that every 9500 worked on that doesn't result in a speed increase will have to be resold for well *below* cost, since it may be damaged and is no longer under warranty. Secondly, you have to figure out how many failed attempts you will have before you have a successful one (let's say the ratio is 5 to 1); and probably one of those 5 is totally unusable and unresellable. Now we can figure out your profit per "good" card. Add up the cost of your losses on the 5 bad cards, and add that amount to the cost of the one "good" card you are selling (which, BTW, you have to sell for a good discount below the 9700's price). Assuming you made a profit at that point, you then have to divide your profit by the total amount of hours you have invested in both modifying AND selling all of the cards.
By comparison, what's your opportunity cost? That is, what is the highest compensation alternatives you are giving up to spend time on this project (selling linux systems on eBay, delivering pizzas, etc.), and which is the better time investment?
Selling hacks and sophisticated hardware upgrades on eBay really only makes sense when the profit potential is significant enough for you to absorb all of the losses of failed attempts (not in this case, because the 9700 effectively sets a price cap on the project).
I just happen to work in this industy. :)
it will take someone with exceptional soldering skills to pull this off, as too much heat will ruin that resistor.
my advise to anyone doing this is to get a friend that can solder well, or works in electronics.
I work with these components every day, all day. and its not all its cracked up to be.
Use a low wattage iron, I recommend doing it as quickly as possible, the componenets are not forgiving!
If you burn it, well... get another one
If you ruin your card, you have been warned.
Get yourself a low wattage iron, some flux and some SMT wick and do it right. and some solvents to clean the flux then your done.
Do it carefully!
Remember where you're posting. This is
More like "Duh!"
Maybe you commented before the "Funny" moderation to the parent post, but c'mon!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Assumming you wrote your own 9700 BIOS implementation and didn't violate copyright to get it. You could buy a 9700 to get a legal copy of the BIOS, but then you don't need to buy the 9500 and fsck with it anyway...
The author posts the hack on an offshore machine pseudonymously, beyond the reach of DMCA. The end users can't be caught as they can't be detected, and by sweeps for "infringers" the vendors would only alienate their current and prospective customers. Corporate lawyers have nobody to go after, end users win.
The russians are way smarter than us. But their women have huge turd cutters and bad teeth, so I think that its a fair trade.
I can file suit for just about anything and just about any law. Does that mean the law states that my claim has any base? Wait for decisions before declaring that it's policy.
This comment is not insightful, its a basic, I mean BASIC, misunderstanding of macroeconomic priciples. These principles are true whether you're capitalist, socialist, communist, or spacemanfrommarsist.
You said:
"They don't look it, they just give you another, and prices go up."
No, this causes a hit to the bottom line of the company, but it does not make the price go up.
Your wrong thinking goes like this:
"Company A has to make profit. $10 a card. So if they sold 100,000 of them. they make $1,000,000. BUT, if somebody returns a card and gets another one, they're out, say, $200. And since the company still needs that profit, they need to raise the price slightly on the remaining graphics cards they sell".
That sounds really reasonable, but its completely false. Its only true in a monopoly situation.
My favorite example I use on kids like you is the soft drink in the grocery store.
Lets say a soft drink sells in Safeway for $1/can. That's just the going rate. Everybody sells soda for $1/can. But Safeway has a problem. The kids who go into Safeway are stealing. They're little rat bastards who should have their hands cut off, but nonetheless, they're stealing soda. Lots of soda. I mean, every other can is stolen.
So...in your theory, Safeway will raise the price of soda. Maybe as high as $1.50 to make up their loss. This has a nice "moral" ring to it, because "we all pay for theft", right?".
No no no no no no no. Wrong.
Soda costs $1/can. It just does. Safeway can raise their ASKING price to anything they damned well please, but the store down the street will still be selling it for $1/can. So if Safeway raises the price, people just go to the store next door.
So what can Safeway do? They can (a) raise the price and have no sales of soft drinks (b) Continue to sell soft drinks at the going price and take a hit to the bottom line (i.e. their margin) (c) Install a security system (d) stop selling soft drinks.
So the *market* won't allow them to raise the price.
This translates to computer parts very nicely, because althought an ATI and nVidia aren't quite the same, they're close enough in economic terms force the price of these video cards *regardless* of the theft rate or return rate.
So when these kids are cheating the store and ATI, they're not raising the price, they're hitting the margin of both the retailer and ATI. Morally and legally what they're doing is wrong. But it has very little effect on the selling prices of graphics cards.
Incidentally, this is why strong copy protection always *raises* prices. Once a product no longer has to compete with itself, the price will go up.
Why do you think Turbo Tax is $10 more expensive this year?
Why is this significant? Because it undercuts the theory that software piracy drives prices up. It doesn't. From a consumer standpoint, at least in the medium term, piracy is great because it means (a) immediate free pricing and (b) medium term lower prices because consumers will simply copy the software if prices are too high.
You are f'ing welcome for this econ lesson.
"contains a large Kalman-Barsharotiwz feedback filter."
One assums Kalman and Brasharotiwz are your gay lovers?
The firmware is not yours, it belongs to ATI, you have a licence to use only. You do not own the software contained inside.
While we can debate their ablity to re-possess your card, they can revoke your right to *use* it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, I don't know why people OC stuff either. I mean, bacj when the Celly 300a came out, I bought one and an Abit mobo, and overclocked it to 450 Mhz with a standard $15 Coolmaster Fan. I didn't even have to up the voltage for the CPU to work at 450. The 300a cost $139 and the true 450 would have cost me $550 at the time. Oh wait, that must be the reason. It saved me $400 dollars. People really are stupid.
</sarcasm>
today is spelling optional day.
So downloading mp3s isn't theft either then?? Cause all i'm doing is depriving them of money I MIGHT have given them, if I didn't know about mp3s that is. p?No, it's not theft. It's copyright infringement, which is an entirely different crime.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
If you really believe that each GPU costs ATI $100 to build then I've got a bridge in brooklyn that I'd like to sell you.
"While we can debate their ablity to re-possess your card, they can revoke your right to *use* it."
Uh. Right. Exactly how would this be accomplished.
Oh, and try not to use "in theory" in your answer.
You can tell your a pussy if:
1) You don't like football because its too "violent"
2) Someone shows you a cool hardware hack and you wonder (for real) if you're breaking a license.
3) The first thing you noticed was that I used "your" instead of "you're".
Well did you, pussy boy?
I tried this on my old-skool 32mb radeon. It exploded. Is that bad? Morrowind did run smooth for .0000001 seconds, though.
Uh, I don't think you've ever done purchasing in a corporate environment. In a small firm you might get away with it but a larger company would rather pack a machine up and send it off to La La land to get repaired. It isn't a technical challenge to replace the part but it is a red tape hassle. Companies don't want people on the clock driving around because they are liable if anything happens to them. Obviously there's exceptions where the person's job description includes driving around but computer techs rarely have this included.
It is also a political problem. If the tech manager is allowed to build a bunch of custom computer systems the computer illiterate in the company are at their mercy. Upper management is not going to buy a system that gives a middle manager complete control over like that. They'd rather spend more time/money buying from Compaq or IBM so any problem can be outsourced and the IT department gets to do as little as possible.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
>Uh, I don't think you've ever done purchasing in a corporate environment. In a small firm you might get away with it but a larger company would rather pack a machine up and send it off to La La land to get repaired.
;-)
:-) [ Well, I know they'd do it, hell, I would and I'm planning to open one. ]
Oh I have (not done it, but witnessed it). I've worked for one, the red tape, as you might say, is staggaringly stupid. I think I counted the steps involved in buying a dozen Bic pens once. It was seven steps, IIRC, and involved up to 5 people. Which explains why we have no pens, and no money.
>Companies don't want people on the clock driving around because they are liable if anything happens to them
Oh yeah, liability. The greatest way to kill productivity.
One could always pay the guy at the local computer company $50 to bring a shipment to your door. My bets are on that he would do it, assuming you're only a few minutes away. And fast.
>If the tech manager is allowed to build a bunch of custom computer systems the computer illiterate in the company are at their mercy. Upper management is not going to buy a system that gives a middle manager complete control over like that.
You are so right. God, I hate all the lameness that goes on in big companies, which explains why I want to open a small one. My (internal) company motto: We have zero tolerance for internal bullshit. Period.
But, honestly, apart from the stupidities as barriers, which are you more than correct in mentioning, I still think it's a good idea to build your own. But then, I guess I've shown I'm biased, so my opinion gets derated.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Aren't hardcovers usually printed on acid-free paper .snip.
Many more are now, than they used to be, but not all. On the other hand, paperback paper quality has gone up as well (think trade paperbacks, not mass market.)
I dunno, I buy hardcovers cause the type is easier on my eyes, and I like collecting books with dust jackets. However, I rarely buy HCs new - I'll buy remaindered and used books instead, often times cheaper than a new paperback edition. I used to buy book club editions, but with the cost of shipping as it is, it's cheaper buying the discounted original publisher hardcover off of Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
1) Use low heat and good solder. 63/37 lead/tin content. I like Kester, because it's consistant. YMMV. Don't use 63/27, or your card will be 10% slower.
2) A large tip can be filed down to a small one. Sometimes they're copper, sometimes they're iron. Either is soft enough to be easily worked, but copper can get rather flimsy if filed down too small; be careful with it.
3) Avoid acid flux like you find at the hardware store. Acid flux is for plumbing projects, where it's actually desirous to have a bit of metal eaten away to get a clean surface to accept solder. With SMD work, a little bit of metal disappearing can mean that -all- of it disappearing. Water-soluable flux is available, and works fine. Look for it if you have any intent on cleaning the board once you're done with it. Otherwise, rosin flux is fine, but can be difficult to clean in a world without CFCs.
4) There is no 4)
5) Work slow. Double-check what you've done, and then check it again.
6) Ground yourself. Ground your work area, if conductive. Avoid working on surfaces capable of holding a static charge, which could discharge through the part you're working on into your grounded body. Wooden benches are good for this. Failing that, a disposable pie pan, aluminum foil, or other metallic kitchen object would probably be fine.
7) If you have not done much soldering, you wouldn't have read this far. Thus, I suggest that you not undertake any project involving surface-mount components, and get back to wasting time on Slashdot in between gaming sessions of humanly indiscernable framerate on your Radeon 9500. You'll thank me later.
Kid-proof tablet..
Why should i tune (or damage) my hardware with a solderiron when i can replace this shit at ebay's against a faster card? but i guess there are enough dumbasses who'll try this and waste their time and hardware.. :)
has articles about ATI like this...
you know they have make it....
Care to point someone to proof of your claims?
t em =2701501425&category=16037
t em =3001937771&category=294
t em =3001937771&category=294
Did any of the people who modded this up bother to verify these claims?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
Or do a search for iOpener...
Or do a search for TiVo and find items like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
" If you, as an end user, can overclock the 9500 to the 9700 pro for little money, then what the hell are they charging so much more money for the 9700?"
Because the 9700s can be guaranteed to operate at that clock rate. The 9500s can only be guaranteed to operate at a reduced clock rate and/or with fewer pipelines. You ignored the statistics that say that 80% of the time this mod will result in a fried card because the extra pipelines you enabled were defective.
Essentially, the 9700s are expensive because they are the "real deal". The 9500s are best described as "factory reject" 9700s that ATi figured out how to salvage from total loss - Fortunately, the design of the 9700 allows the bad circuity to be disabled, allowing the card to function properly and with guaranteed (but lower) performance, rather than going into the trash.
In the 20% of cases where the card doesn't die, I wouldn't trust it anyway, because most likely it failed QA testing for 9700 functionality in some way.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Turn your 2400 baud modem into a 9600 baud modem just by replacing the UART chip!
I spent some time searching from ATI's homepage to work out what products to look for that contain the correct chip with 128MB DDR. Here are the results:
PowerColor(CPTECH): Evil Commando X Radeon 9500 AGP 8x Accelerator (XR95-B3)
Sapphire: Atlantis Radeon 9500 (128MB DDR), 1024-2C07-00-SA
Super: Radeon 9500 (128MB DDR), T50101-950
These are the only ones I could find from all of ATI's partners websites. Anyone know of any others?
You ignored the statistics that say that 80% of the time this mod will result in a fried card because the extra pipelines you enabled were defective.
Atually, the article was slashdotted at the time of posting. The IBM story really explains the (sometimes silly) but sensible practice of feature-disabling. Agh well.
If I had a 9500, I don't think I'd try this, hrm. It's pretty cool, actually, that ATI found a way to deal with their mistakes other than junking them.
Recursive (adj.): see 'Recursive'
It is a known fact that the 486SX was just a 486DX with the math coprocessor portion disabled. Most people believe that this is for the same reasons - The FPU portion was defective, so Intel salvaged the CPU by disabling it and making it a 486SX.
I think the same thing occurred in some Celeron vs. PIII and Duron vs. Athlon incarnations - In some cases, the dies and design were different, but I think in others, Intel/AMD salvaged CPUs with defective caches by disabling the defective portion and releasing a "budget" CPU with half the cache.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Well technically since you cant enter a contract, you aren't legally allowed to use the product.
Or your parents are libel for your actions, depending on the jurisdiction in your area.
( not saying I agree with this nonsense, or the enforceability of the silly EULA's.. I'm only talking about the letter of the law here..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to
develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmers
Manual.
-- Andrew Hume
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