9500 cracked to be a 9700

[funnyperson1]

the people at Xbit labs have done it again:beer:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1041719082

lol, i bet you Ati is red in the face because of this:devil:, though i feel that next time their clock lock protection might be far greater....

oh well we live for the moment right

[marcofra2000]

That's nice, now poeple can buy an ATI card cheap and get the speeds they deserve

[ByteWipe]

thats absolutely bonkers! but amazing at the same time!

how did sapphire think they could ship practically the same card and not think anyone would notice? im surprised ATi are letting them do it....

for a £140 card, you can get the same performance as a £200 one? I'd be surprised if these are still on the market....

[ByteWipe]

Just a quick peek at ebuyer.com, they're already not stocking the Sapphire 9500 128MB card anymore........ bit odd, seeing as they were about a week ago

[ByteWipe]

and they're not stocking them on insight.com/uk either!

[Holst]

I dont know whats up bytewype but I can still see them

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=44109

13 in stock.
I might try this if I can be assured that the bios flash is safe.

[funnyperson1]

the bios flash has done by many with 9500Pros and 9700 regular, its the whole solderin resistors thing that scares me lol

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by marcofra2000
That's nice, now poeple can buy an ATI card cheap and get the speeds they deserve

i dont know id say they are getting far more than what they deserve, but i think Saphire is definately getting what they deserve , i just hope that Ati wont find a better way to clock lock their video cards next time, because most of Nvidias releases have been too expensive for me to afford

[Holst]

Originally posted by funnyperson1
the bios flash has done by many with 9500Pros and 9700 regular, its the whole solderin resistors thing that scares me lol

Those resistors are easy, bios flash scares me casue if it goes wrong its very hard to fix.

[marcofra2000]

Originally posted by Holst


Those resistors are easy, bios flash scares me casue if it goes wrong its very hard to fix.

And the card could be useless if the flash is done wrong or improparly. If anyone going to try this?, well good luck

[ByteWipe]

Originally posted by Holst
I dont know whats up bytewype but I can still see them

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=44109

13 in stock.
I might try this if I can be assured that the bios flash is safe.

d'oh..... my bad, sorry.... seem to be doing lots of them lately

heres me thinking if you typed in Radeon 9500 in the quick search field it would bring up all the Radeon 9500s......

nothings that simple is it though!

[ByteWipe]

Originally posted by funnyperson1

its the whole solderin resistors thing that scares me lol

Get a 12w rated soldering iron and a 0.12mm soldering iron tip, along with a steady hand and good eyes, you should be alright!

Although i grant you your skeptisism (sp?), I wouldn't try it unless there are a fair few people who have successfully done it before me.

Originally posted by Holst


Those resistors are easy, bios flash scares me casue if it goes wrong its very hard to fix.

Couldn't you just shove in a PCI vid card into the machine, boot it up, and flash the 9500 back to its original bios?

I mean, this is presuming that the new bios was flashed successfully, and it just wasn't running because of the new bios.....

My brother is a lucky owner of a 9500, and is planning on doing this soon, I'll let you know how he gets on with it!

[Staz]

This is from the Rage3D forum

Originally posted by ChrisW

Thanks. You can also make a restore floppy. Just make a boot floppy, place the flashrom contents in the floppy, then place a backup on the floppy and name it "backup.rom". Now simply add a text file called "autoexec.bat" and put the following line in it:"flashrom -p 0 backup.rom". Now if you boot to that floppy, it will automatically restore your bios. I would recommend you do this before flashing as it saved me once.

I personally would be more worried about the soldering then the bios flash.

[ByteWipe]

Originally posted by Staz

I personally would be more worried about the soldering then the bios flash.

Unless the flashing procedure itself fails.....

[funnyperson1]

what someone at Rage3d mentioned intrigues me, even if you dont have a 9500 with the 256bit pcb then you could still use the hack to get a 9500Pro out of a 9500

ive never soldered and thats why the resistor part scares me, the flashing is simple and if it messes up, a pci card could help you reflash the backup

oh and i dont have a 9500 so im not doing this mod anyways lol

[Aedan]

Originally posted by ByteWipe
Get a 12w rated soldering iron and a 0.12mm soldering iron tip, along with a steady hand and good eyes, you should be alright!

Hmm, I do SMT stuff with a 50W grounded tip soldering iron and a fine top. 12W is too small.

Áedán

[ByteWipe]

Originally posted by Áedán


Hmm, I do SMT stuff with a 50W grounded tip soldering iron and a fine top. 12W is too small.

Áedán

Well, I can't express myself as a fountain of knowledge on soldering irons, because I'm not.

Just don't want anyone to do uber amounts of damage to their chip.

[MiGGinZ]

damn, i just postd thsis elsewher I was a little excited.

when the 9500's come down a bit I may try this wiht my l33t soldering skills.