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How to change your Radeon 9500 into a 9700

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the some-elbow-work-required dept.

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."

25 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. One for the price of two by DasAlbatross · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:One for the price of two by KingDaveRa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I thought that. Bugger up the original card, and you then have to go buy a replacement - so you either pay twice and end up with 1 working card, or pay even more the second time, get the performance you wanted from the mod, but for much more than the face price. Modding like this is a bit over the top. There's being economical, and then there's just being plain tight.

    2. Re:One for the price of two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not quite. Most of these 9500 to 9700 articles fail to mention that there is a very good chance that one of the four extra pipelines will be defective. To increase the yield rate, many 9700 boards (the board used on the Sapphire 9500) with defective pipelines are made to use four of the working pipelines in 128 bit memory/4 pipeline mode with microcode. Other defects that don't affect the the card in 9500 mode are also possible. So when you pay $160 for your 9500 you might just get what you paid for. (Yay for RMAs)

  2. uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  3. selling these by SnAzBaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:selling these by mindstrm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No.. as long as you didn't pretend it was a 9700. You have the right to re-sell it however you want.

      However.. that doesn't mean that ATI won't find some bullshit reason to sue you and throw confusion on the whole issue to make you look like a bad guy. (presuming you are in America, where this kind of things is all so common)

      Remember when US Robotics had a fit becase they were selling their Dual Standard modems at twice the price of their Sporster (single standard), yet using the same board/chipset? Someone published an init string that would enable dual mode on the sporster.... and ATI had a fit, trying to say it was copyrigh violation, illegal, etcetera.

    2. Re:selling these by spectral · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, I remember that.. whooo boy, that was a mess. To this date I still have no clue why ATI went nuts for people hacking USR modems, but there doesn't need to be a reason. :)

  4. The DMCA has nothing to do with this. by KPU · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:The DMCA has nothing to do with this. by tuxlove · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The DMCA is a Copyright Act. It makes circumvention of protected copyrighted works. What copy protection scheme does this mod allow us to circumvent?

      Since this mod apparently requires you to flash the 9500 with the 9700 firmware, you would at very least be violating copyright on the 9700 firmware. Unless, of course, you somehow paid for a copy of the 9700 firmware. The only way I know to do that would be to buy a 9700, and not actually use it.

  5. Read other fora before attempting ... by HalfFlat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. What a rippoff by cioxx · · Score: 4, Informative
    This guide appeared on a russian site on January 5th.

    Yet today's article says:
    "We have just posted a very difficult guide to turning your ATI Radeon 9500 into a 9700..."

    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.

  7. Word to the Wary by Azerphale · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  8. Some links by Gyan · · Score: 4, Informative


    http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=10425 78 447

    http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&th re adid=33658209

  9. This is getting to be a little too much... by puto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  10. Software mod by muzzynat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  11. You Bastards! by dark-br · · Score: 4, Funny

    DMCA've killed Kenny!

  12. Re:Do we not care about ethics? by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This looks like stealing. Does it look like stealing to anyone else?

    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.
  13. Re:This is not a good idea. by Sacarino · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  14. Sounds to me like ... by SuperDuG · · Score: 4, Funny
    ... 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.

    --
    Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
    1. Re:Sounds to me like ... by Minupla · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not that I don't agree with you in this case, but there have been cases, historically speaking, of companies releasing two models for marketing reasons and finding it cheaper to make a hard coded 'feature switch'. I recall a hard drive of olde that could be upgraded to twice the size. The engineers designed a drive. Marketing decided they needed one half the size too. It was cheaper and faster to do a mode switch then it was to pay the extra engineering and manufactering costs to build a second model of HDD.

      See also the 'flippy discs' of the C-64 era. It was cheaper/easier for companies to use the double sided media they used on other systems, then produce new single sided floppies just for the c-64 market. You punched a second hole in the floppy, and turn it over.

      Again, I don't argue that's what ATI is doing here. I personally agree with the person above who suggested they're probably using 'bin chips' that for some reason didn't make the cut for the 9700 boards.

      So you pays your monies and you takes your chances. Mmmm I love the smell of newbies with solder suckers in the morning :). As for me, I know my skills do not extend into the land of hot insterments of destruction, so I'll take a pass :)

      --
      On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
  15. I dunno about ethics, but... by anon*127.0.0.1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!
  16. Re:This is getting to be a little too much... by sphealey · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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, product line differentiation and price discimination is one of the basic tools for a consumer products company to make money. The best example is book publishing: if you look at the production cost of a hardcover you will see it really isn't much more than for a paperback (something like $1 vs 0.50) but those who want hardcovers are willing to pay 4x what the paperback buyer will pay. Typically the premium version pays the development costs and the stockholders, while the budget version pays the rest of the bills.

    Also, it can be a good way to make use of parts which are out-of-spec for the higher performance version.

    sPh

  17. Convert ANY card by mlknowle · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!

  18. Don't do this, overclock a Radeon 9700 NON pro by crstophr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  19. Some tips. by Martigan80 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!)