Making a 9700 out of a 9500?

[Evildead666]

Saw this just now.

)http://www.overclockers.ru/news/news...&id=1041715156

I don't read russian too good.

The benches look interesting. as they would.

Anyone here willing to give a short translation?


Price/performance would be thru the roof if this were true.

(heres wishing

[GT98]

Interesting....though I thought that the 9500 only has a 128bit bus vs the 9700 256bit bus.

[Evildead666]

Yup. but the 4600 has enough bandwidth on a 128bit bus.
What i think is that thwy have activated unused pipelines in the core itself. The memory bandwidth is quite high anyway.
The R300 core is the same, and if there is performance increase, it must come from the core. 4 pipes and 1 TMU per pipe isn't gonna have that great an increase.
they benched against radeon 9700 pro. the simple "hacked" benches are about 9700 non-pro levels...
the 9500 chips could be untested R300 cores, or with 1 or 2 pipes not functioning, hell knows.
I just think this is good if it works!!

[Topha]

nice, very nice
9700 is too expensive, 9500 not fast enough (relative too my old card, that is), seems like the perfect solution

[Evildead666]

Hmm, effectively they would be turning it into a 9500pro then, but they flashed it with the 9700 bios (why did that work?).

[Guru]

http://uk.altavista.com/babelfish

Is converted RADEON 9500 V OF RADEON of 9700 | tshinyuead | 00:19

As is known, on the base of the architecture Of re00 the company ATI let out whole series of the chips:RADEON 9700 About, RADEON 9700, RADEON 9500 About, RADEON 9500.The first two versions, RADEON 9700 about RADEON 9700, are characterized by only clock frequencies:videokarty on the base RADEON 9700 about work at frequencies OF E2SHCH/'20(EY0DDR) MHz, and RADEON 9700 - 2"shch/shchya0(2"0ddr) MHz.RADEON 9500 about differs from them the reduced by busbar/tire memory - it has the 128- bit busbar/tire DDR SDRAM.And finally the weakest version - RADEON 9500.It has 4 piksel'nykh conveyors instead of eight, which have its three of the "elders of brother".

Videokarty on the base ATI RADEON 9500 have 128- bit or 256- bit busbar/tire depending on a quantity of video memory.Since these pays are done on PCHB from RADEON 9700, the 'ya-megabaytnye versions, which have exactly half of microcircuits, have exactly "upolovinennuyu" busbar/tire of memory from RADEON 9700, i.e., 128 bits.Then the y28-megabaytnye pays, which have 8 microcircuits of memory, established/installed exactly as on RADEON 9700, have the "valuable" 256- bit busbar/tire of memory.

The impression is created in appearance of the chips of new rule from ATI, that they all are identical.I.e., the off 4 conveyors on RADEON 9500 can be in any manner included.Unfortunately, the attempts to include the missing conveyors by program method did not thus far prove their justifiability.However, as showed our studies, to by apparatus make RADEON 9700 of RADEON 9500 is nevertheless possible .For this it suffices attentively to look to the exterior view of chips (to the left - photo RADEON 9700, to the right - RADEON 9500):





It is evident on the photo that one of the resistors, arranged/located on the base layer of chip RADEON 9500, is located in other position.We explained under close examination of the chips of entire rule that this resistor was arranged/located precisely so (2-3) only on the chips RADEON 9500, which have 4 working piksel'nykh conveyors.On all remaining chips, which have 8 piksel'nykh conveyors, it stands differently (1-2).Thus, we act - we resolder resistor to another position (1-2).If suddenly you it lose, that nemudreno - painfully already it small,it is possible to establish/install another - the resistance of these resistors is equal to 6,8 k :



It is prepared.Final chord - we stitch through into altered y28-megabaytnuyu videokartu on the base RADEON 9500 from To sappyuire...:



... the "broken up" BIOS from Yuerchules RADEON 9700, undertaken from the page of sharpyy .Thus, it is prepared.Let us test? It works!!!Total calculation - overklokery against ATI - 2:0! .

Let us try dispersal/acceleration.On the pay does stand the memory from Infineon with the cycle time 3.6 ns; therefore memory did drive away not quickly?to 300 MHz .nucleus/kernel?it is much better, from 275 to 370 MHz .

Thus, in the testing is participated:1 - pay Of sappyuire RADEON of 9500 y28M without the alteration, 2?pay with the alteration, 3 - with the alteration and the dispersal/acceleration, 4 - as cherished target/purpose?RADEON 9700 pro. the test system:Intel Pya 2800 MHz, MB. ASUS PYAS8KH (SiS 648), 512 MB. DDR SDRAM PCH2"00, Shindoshs KHP, DirechtKh 9, Chatalyst 3.0.Tuning the quality of drawing into Tsuakee arena?to the maximum, in UT200E - Tekhture Of detail:yuigyuest, Shorld Of detail:yuigyuest, Chyuarachter Of detail:yuigyuest, Pyuysichs Of detail:normal, Chyuarachter Of syuadoshs:it, Dynamich Of ligyuting:it, Detail Of tekhtures:it, Prozhechtors:it, Dechals:it, Choronas:it, Dechal Of stay:normal, To foliage:it, Trilinear Of filtering:it.





Altered and driven away pay on the base RADEON of 9500 udelala RADEON 9700 pro. Of overklokery against ATI?3:0! I think, about the difference in the prices pays on the base RADEON 9500 and RADEON 9700 about and speaking is not worth.However, RADEON of 9500 128 MB. does stand today in Moscow approximately 200 u.e., and RADEON 9700 about?350 to u.e.The features of poberi, I love ATI!

[Evildead666]

Yup, thats about as much as i understood when reading the russian.
So it would work only on the 9500 non-pro boards with 128mb of memory, built on 9700 pcb.
just have to wait and see if anyone can reproduce these results...

[borat]

what bios are they using for this as im gonna buy one to test it, if it fails ill just send it back and say it arrived broken.

[Wombat]

Well, I've been reading this:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33654157

[Evildead666]

AFAIK its the one from Warp11, the 9700 non-pro bios.
theres a link to it on that page...

http://home.mindspring.com/~warp11/

there.

[Gurm]

There's a discussion of this over at Driver Heaven, amongst the geeks who know what they're doing with this stuff.

Look in the Radeon forum under "current cards discussion".

- Gurm

[Evildead666]

Full translation over here at Digit Life:

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?1070#1070

[knirfie]

ok, if this works i know wich card i'm getting.

[Admiral]

Let's see if I get it.

You use atiflash to dump your bios on file: atiflash -s 0 original.bin

get hold of a hex editor, open the bios file with it and go to Address Line: 00000070h where you change:

44 76 4E 37 91 08 02 10 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

to

44 76 4E 37 90 08 02 10 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

save the modified bios with a different name than the original bios (keep the original for backup)

use atiflash to flash the modified bios: atiflash -f -p 0 newbios.bin

Reboot and hope for the best, if not, you better have a PCI card and a copy of the original bios to reflash.


Last step: drool over a 9500 128mb (with 9700 PCB) or 9700 card

Guess I'll repeat the last step for a few months

[the maddman]

This only seems to work for the 9500's on 9700 boards, they really are opening up the 256bit memory bus. So if you're lucky enough to get a 128mb 9500 on a 9700 PCB, you can do this, I think. I just bought a 9700pro and a 9700 non pro, so I ain't trying this!