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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.
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.
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
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
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?
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?
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.
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?
;)
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
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
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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?
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?
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'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!
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?
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 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.
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...
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).
</sarcasm>
today is spelling optional day.
I tried this on my old-skool 32mb radeon. It exploded. Is that bad? Morrowind did run smooth for .0000001 seconds, though.