9500//9700//9800 Pro?

S

StealthyFish

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 2, 2005
Messages
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does anyone know where I could find a 9500Pro or 9700Pro for around 5 - 10 dollars + 5 dollar shipping? I wanna play around with one, but I can't find one anywhere. A 9800Pro would be nice as well =)
 
I doubt it...those are still decent cards and can run anywhere from 40-50 if they are in good condition. I found one on craigslist for $20...thats the lowest i've seen them anywhere. newegg still carries a 9700pro for 54.99
 
Riddlinkidstoner said:
I doubt it...those are still decent cards and can run anywhere from 40-50 if they are in good condition. I found one on craigslist for $20...thats the lowest i've seen them anywhere. newegg still carries a 9700pro for 54.99
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yea :( it's kind of ridiculous since a 7600GT is now around 100 dollars, which is just 46 dollars more.... and performs about 4 times faster
 
7600GT = PCI-E
95/6/700 pro = AGP

AGP is still expensive :D Although at that price range I'd just go for a 66xx+ series.
 
Riddlinkidstoner said:
7600GT = PCI-E
95/6/700 pro = AGP

AGP is still expensive :D Although at that price range I'd just go for a 66xx+ series.
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I think I figured that out, since I've got a custom built computer and a 7600GT... anyway, so it's pretty much impossible to find anything like a 9500 Pro or something for a couple of dollars? I've heard of that thing be able to flash and overclock to a 9800Pro. I just want something to practice modding.
 
well.. you heard wrong i think. From what i remember you could take a plain vanilla 9500 and if you were lucky you could mod the card to behave like a 9700
not 9700 pro mind you. simple 9700.

from my experience around 75% of the propercards were able to pull the trick, the rest sort of worked but you had artifacts as it seems some of the 4 pipelines were malfunctioning

BUT you need to find a 9500 NON pro thatwas built on the same pcb as the 9700. These had diference from the "inferiro" 9500 64M cards.

you see the 9500 pro already had 8 pipelines, but it had half the memmory bandwidth of the 9700/9700 pros. 128 vs 256 and they were wired diferently so you couldnt mod them to 9700s

on the other hand the "good" 9500s had 4 enabled pipelines and again 128 bit bus BUT if you were able to enable the 4 "disabled " pipelines, they use the remaining 128 bit bus so to speak so you end up with a 256 bit bus.

the GOOD cards had the memory chips in an L pattern, 2 above the core and two to the side, while the BAD ( boooh his bad card..) ones had all the 4 memory chips in a straight line above the core.

on to the modding: there were two ways to do it,...one by hacking the driver ( but you had to redo it everytime you wanted to install newer drivers.. otherwise you were lft wit the old one.s. not bad if you ask me as no driver would offer a 100% increase in performance like the mod...

the second and hardest way was to mod the card, using conductive ink to connect a resistor to another, then flash with a 9700 bios ..and pronto you had a 9700
usually these could be overclocked to a bit more than a 9700 , and close to stock 9700 pro speeds, rarely more...but 9700 pros could go much higher.

hop i helped.. and good luck finding a 9500 non pro.. these were rare card,s great value for money, but i think they were in stores for 7-8 months or maybe less....Xmas 2002 to summer 2003 or so. 9700s ( especially pros had also faster memory chips (2,8ns), and most 9500s had 3.6ns ones.. so you couldnt easily clock the memory as high as the 9700s. The best 9500s were the Saphire ones as they had 3.3ns memory which was better than the rest.


how do i know it?? i modded 2 of those for me and then another 8 for friends of mine. I would first check with the driver hack to see if the pipelines were ok (we bought 13 cards IIRc and 3 of them had artifacts= damaged pipelines...), and then i did the hard mod...
 
Check the trading section on this forum. There's someone selling a 9800 -> 9800 XT (flashed) with an aftermarket cooler for $27. Another guy is selling a 9800 XT or a 9800 Pro for $40 or $50. $10 won't get you a 9500 or a 9700 unless you find a really, really good deal.
 
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