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."

Comments

One for the price of two

[DasAlbatross]

This seems like a really good way to have to buy two graphics cards.

You Bastards!

[dark-br]

DMCA've killed Kenny!

Re:This is not a good idea.

[Sacarino]

Any significant change at the configuration might disbalance this unstable equilibrium.

...which leads to an inversely proportional reaction in the chamber injectors causing a core breach?

;)

Sounds to me like ...

[SuperDuG]

... a good way to throw $100 out the window. I know that this is a hardware hack that actually is rather impressive, but lets face it people, not everyone is really meant to use a soldering iron. This mod is nothing really new as things have been overclockable/upgradeable for quite some time.

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.

I dunno about ethics, but...

[anon*127.0.0.1]

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*

Convert ANY card

[mlknowle]

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!