ATI: Soft Modding Your ATI Radeon 9500
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DISCLAIMER: The methods outlined below can cause severe system instability or artifacting on some ATI Radeon 9500 video adapters. No guarantee of success is implied.
WARNING: Attempting this modification on any ATI video adapter besides the ATI Radeon 9500 will produce undesirable results, such as random crashes or a non-booting operating system.
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, ATTEMPT THIS MODIFICATION ON A NVIDIA-BASED VIDEO CARD. THIS GUIDE IS STRICTLY FOR THE ATI RADEON 9500.</TD><TD ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="220">
</TD></TR></TABLE>ATI: Soft Modding Your ATI Radeon 9500
Introduction:
You have one of the most powerful video cards on the planet and you want to push it even further. With this modification, you can utilize the official ATI Catalyst drivers & a couple of software patches to modify your ATI Radeon 9500 video card to perform like an ATI Radeon 9700. After the launch of the ATI Radeon 9700, ATI realized that they needed a product that still performed well (inline with or better than the NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 & 4400 series) and was more cost effective to produce. To remedy this problem, ATI disabled 4 of the 8 pipelines on the R300 GPU (used on the ATI Radeon 9700) and shipped them as the ATI Radeon 9500. With this modification, you can re-enable those 4 extra pipelines and gain a substantial increase in fill-rate.
Note: This modification can only be performed on systems running Microsoft Windows 2000 & Windows XP.
Software Required:
-> ATI Catalyst Driver 3.9 (V.6.14.10.6396)
-> Patched ati2mtag.sys (must match driver version)
-> FutureMark's 3DMark2003
-> FutureMark's 3DMark2001 SE
Steps To Perform The Modification:
1) Install the ATI Radeon 9500 into your PC (refer to the video card's documentation on how to do that).
2) Restart the PC and install the latest ATI Catalyst Drivers for it (currently 3.9).
3) Install 3DMark2001 SE & 3DMark2003 onto your system.
4) Run a default benchmark for each application and note the "Fill-Rate's" (both Single-Texturing & Multi-Texturing).
5) Unzip the "patched ati2mtag.sys" driver to the following directory: ("C:\ATI\support\wxp-w2k-7-95-031028m-011774c-efg\2KXP_INF\BX_xxx").
6) Navigate to the directory mentioned above and delete the original "ati2mtag.sy_" file.
7) Open Device Manager (Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager).
8) Expand the "Display Adapters" list.
9) Right click on the "Radeon 9700/9500 Series" device and choose "Update Driver".
10) Select the "I will choose the driver..." option.
11) Click the "Have Disk" button and navigate to the following directory: ("C:\ATI\support\wxp-w2k-7-95-031028m-011774c-efg\2KXP_INF\").
12) Select the appropriate driver (if you have multiple listings of drivers available, you can choose any of them as it does not matter which one you choose).
13) Proceed with the driver update.
14) Restart your PC.
15) Re-run the same default benchmarks for 3DMark2001SE & 3DMark2003, again noting the "Fill-Rate's" (both Single-Texturing & Multi-Texturing).
16) Compare the "after-mod" Fill-Rate values with the "before-mod" Fill-Rate values. You should see an increase.
Note: If you wish to enable overclocking on your ATI Radeon 9500, please download Warp11's Overclockable ATI Radeon BIOS and flash your card with it.
Originally found @ OCFAQ.com.
Instructions originally written by Wizzard.
Instructions adapted & re-vamped by SimGuy.
Files downloaded & organized by SimGuy.
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Comments
Article updated to reflect new patched Catalyst 3.5's
Article updated to reflect the new patched Catalyst 3.6's
I want to flash the 9500 Pro in System 1 to 9700 Pro. This has already been performed on the card in my System 2. (I purchased that card pre-owned in a private trade; so I wasn't the one that flashed it. Whatever he used, it was done correctly. System 2's 9500 Pro is definately faster than System 1's.)
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/ati_radeon_9500_pro_overclock/default.asp
The absolute worst thing that can happen during this modification is that the BIOS does not get completely flashed. If you have a backup of your original BIOS, just toss in an old PCI video adapter (leave the R9500 in there), start the system and re-flash with the original BIOS.
Good as new
I tried it. It WORKED, and how!
Check it out at this new thread.
A: Artifacting is when you get undesired 'dots' or patterns on screen. The theory as of now is that artifacts are caused by undocumented defects on the 9500 NP's disabled by the 9500 drivers. Worst case scenario, the unused pipelines have a possiblity of being broken, resulting crashing and not booting up. You might get a card that works flawlessly or one that doesn't. It's a gamble.
Q: I have artifacts. Is it possible to enable only 5, 6 or 7 pipelines?
A: Sorry. This is not possible. The GPU only supports running with four or eight rendering pipelines.
Q: If I have artifacts when using hacked drivers, will I also have them if I hardmod the card?
A: Yes. You will.
Unfortunately, you're outta luck EMT. It either works or it doesn't, and when you get those nasty artifacts, it didn't work. Sorry
Article updated to reflect the new patched Catalyst 3.7's
-> Added patched ati2mtag.sys file for Catalyst 3.8's
The reason I ask is because ATI changed the PCB design on the new Radeon 9500's to prevent the soft-mod from working.
That's bad news. But wait, I thought ATI wasn't making the 9500 anymore? Or is it just the 9500 Pro?
Well anyway, I purchased both of my cards through private deals. I don't know what their date of manufacture is - probably June 03 or earlier.
not sure what i did wrong the first time but thanks for you help!
Download the proper BIOS for your card and flash it (which will allow overclocking on the 9500).
Download Rage 3D Tweak @ www.rage3d.com, install it and overclock away.
Want a guide to OC'ing the 9500? http://forum.madshrimps.com/gotofaqlink.php?linkid=2182
but something went wrong, an error message came up and it completely ****ed over my card's bios. and now when i boot up my comp it just beeps and nothing happens.....so have i just completely trashed my new 9500 or is there any way to restore the old bios? please say there is
IF YOUR SYSTEM REFUSES TO BOOT AFTER THE FLASH:
There is always a chance that the BIOS flash will not work (through power fluctuations, corrupted downloads or acts of god). In order to repair your video adapter, you will have to install the PCI-based video adapter into a spare PCI slot to boot your PC to re-flash your video adapter with the original BIOS you saved in step 14. If you DID NOT save your original BIOS, you are hosed as your retailer will NOT honour the warranty after they discover you screwed your card up by BIOS flashing it with a NON-SUPPORTED BIOS.
LEAVE THE RADEON 9500 IN THE AGP SLOT.
1) Power down the PC and unplug it from the wall.
2) Remove the case cover.
3) Locate a spare PCI slot and install the PCI-based video adapter you have laying around.
4) Hook up your monitor to the PCI-based video adapter you have laying around.
5) Plug the PC back in and start it up with the Windows 98 Boot Disk in the floppy drive.
6) When presented with the Boot Menu, hit SHIFT+F5 to boot directly to the command prompt WITHOUT loading any software.
7) Once at the command prompt, remove the Windows 98 Boot Disk and insert the floppy disk containing the flash software and your backup video BIOS.
8) Change to the floppy drive by typing "A:" (without the quotes).
9) Flash your video adapter with your backup original video BIOS by typing the following command: flashrom -p 0 original.bin (the "0" is the number ZERO, not the letter "O" and original.bin is the name of your ORIGINAL BIOS file that you backed up).
10) After a few seconds, you will receive a message saying that the BIOS flash was successful.
11) Shut down the PC and remove the PCI-based video adapter.
12) Hook up your monitor back to the ATI Radeon 9500 Non-Pro AGP video adapter.
13) Start the PC. You should now be back to the same position you were before you started this guide.
Do what SimGuy said in his "How to fix a bad flash" post there, and flash back to your stock BIOS. Then try the software OC from the Omega driver.
If you need a copy of the ORIGINAL Sapphire 9500 NP 128 MB BIOS, you can grab it here, along with flashing utilities:
http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/bios.php
Is your Sapphire card PCB Black or Red? Are the DDR memory chips in a horizontal line across the top of the card (4 in a straight line) or are they in an L-shape (2 on top of the card, 2 down the right hand side).?
This is VERY important, as you need a red or black PCB card with the L-shape memory configuration in order to perform the 9500 -> 9700 softmod correctly.
theres another thing that i noticed is different as well. with the replacement 9500 card i got my 3dmark scores (before and after the softmod) are a few hundred points higher than my previous card even though they're the same model. what could i be doing wrong thats causing artifacts to come up without even overclocking the card?
These 9500's are really underclocked Radeon 9700's with only 4 of the 8 pipelines working. What the soft mod does is unlock those 4 other pipelines.
Now, this is a gamble, as there is a chance that even though you may be able to perform the soft-mod successfully, the 4 extra pipelines that you enabled with the soft-mod may not work correctly. There is nothing you can do about that then, as it is a hardware-level issue. On all of these Radeon 9500's with 8 pipelines, only the 4 that are required for normal operation are certified to work from the factory. The other 4 disabled pipelines MAY or MAY NOT work, but the factory does not check this. Because of this, even cards from the same batch don't soft-mod the same, as each card has a different chance of successfully soft-modding.
If you get artifacts after performing the soft-mod, unfortunately, you cannot soft-mod your 9500 into a 9700. It's best to just revert back to the 9500-operation mode and overclock the card.