I bought my 9500 pro about a year and 3 months ago. First I had it in my old system (rig 2 in sig), now its in my new system (rig 1). The card is obviously my bottleneck in this system. Do you think it is worth it for me to upgrade? If so what to, I'm definately not spending over $500 Canadian.
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9500pro, time to upgrade?
- Thread starter Mojo
- Start date
The original 9500s couldn't even overclock at all without a BIOS flash - that's what he is talking about, not the 9500 -> 9700 mod.
A 9500 Pro overclocks pretty well - it IS just a 9700 core - so if you haven't tried overclocking it yet, that may be a good way to extend the life of the card.
A 9500 Pro overclocks pretty well - it IS just a 9700 core - so if you haven't tried overclocking it yet, that may be a good way to extend the life of the card.
The 9500 Pro isn't a 9700 core. It's still an r300, but the 9500 Pro uses a 128-bit memory interface, where as the 9700 Pro has the option enabled, allowing for a 256-bit memory interface.
You're still right though, I guess overclocking could help me out a bit. But it just doesn't seem worth it to increase the core and memory clock a few mHz in order to gain maybe 5-10%. All the while it's putting stress on my video card lowering it's lifespan.
$500 Canadian is around $350 or so American. I wonder how much 6800 NU's will be in the near future?
You're still right though, I guess overclocking could help me out a bit. But it just doesn't seem worth it to increase the core and memory clock a few mHz in order to gain maybe 5-10%. All the while it's putting stress on my video card lowering it's lifespan.
$500 Canadian is around $350 or so American. I wonder how much 6800 NU's will be in the near future?
The 256-bit vs 128-bit thing is controlled by the PCB, not the core. That's why the 9500s on the Pro PCB could be flashed to a full 9700 - 256-bit memory and 8-pipes. The 9500 Pro uses a different PCB than the non-pro that only HAS 128-bit access to the memory chips.
It IS the exact same core, though - completely identical. Almost all the early 9500 Pros (and non-Pros) could hit 9700 Pro speeds, since ATI wasn't speed binning them very well yet (I guess they assumed turning off the ability to overclock in the bios on the 9500s would prevent anyone from discovering this...of course, people quickly found ways around that).
The memory, of course, is a different matter altogether. They did use slower memory on the 9500s than the 9700s, so it will not clock as high. And, of course, it's 128-bit only instead of 256-bit, so there is only so much you can do with it.
Still, if you HAVEN'T overclocked it yet, I STRONGLY urge doing so. They are good overclockers, and you can get quite a speed boost for 'free' doing that. Something like 25% or so.
It IS the exact same core, though - completely identical. Almost all the early 9500 Pros (and non-Pros) could hit 9700 Pro speeds, since ATI wasn't speed binning them very well yet (I guess they assumed turning off the ability to overclock in the bios on the 9500s would prevent anyone from discovering this...of course, people quickly found ways around that).
The memory, of course, is a different matter altogether. They did use slower memory on the 9500s than the 9700s, so it will not clock as high. And, of course, it's 128-bit only instead of 256-bit, so there is only so much you can do with it.
Still, if you HAVEN'T overclocked it yet, I STRONGLY urge doing so. They are good overclockers, and you can get quite a speed boost for 'free' doing that. Something like 25% or so.
FWIW, on my 9500 Pro back in the day, I hit 405/324 on the core and memory. My score increase was only about 20% in 3dMark03, but, then, my memory did not overclock as well as many did.
That whole 'reduce the lifespan' thing is BS, btw. Oh, sure, excessive overclocking WILL reduce the lifespan of the electronics on the card. From roughly 100 years down to maybe 80 years or so.
But, then, I somehow doubt you planned on keeping your card for even 80 years, so what does it matter?
(Real number, btw - somebody on some forum bothered to calculate temperature effects on the various components used based on their publicly available rated specs. I think it was one of the manufacturer forums, actually, explaining why ATI's and nVidia's built-in auto-overclocking do not endanger their cards. Wish I could find the original document, but the general gist of it is that even the most extreme overclocking, with volt-mods and all, simply does not effect the life of a graphics card in any relevant way. Barring, of course, pushing it way too hard too fast and simply frying it. If you just bump the clocks up 10mhz at a time, then 5mhz, up until you see minor artifacts - then roll it back a little - there will be no risk to your card at all.)
That whole 'reduce the lifespan' thing is BS, btw. Oh, sure, excessive overclocking WILL reduce the lifespan of the electronics on the card. From roughly 100 years down to maybe 80 years or so.
But, then, I somehow doubt you planned on keeping your card for even 80 years, so what does it matter?
(Real number, btw - somebody on some forum bothered to calculate temperature effects on the various components used based on their publicly available rated specs. I think it was one of the manufacturer forums, actually, explaining why ATI's and nVidia's built-in auto-overclocking do not endanger their cards. Wish I could find the original document, but the general gist of it is that even the most extreme overclocking, with volt-mods and all, simply does not effect the life of a graphics card in any relevant way. Barring, of course, pushing it way too hard too fast and simply frying it. If you just bump the clocks up 10mhz at a time, then 5mhz, up until you see minor artifacts - then roll it back a little - there will be no risk to your card at all.)