ATI radeon 9500 pro Questions

[Kronik Reloader]

I just got this card , I know everything there is to know about nvidia cards but ATI is a whole new scene for me , so can anyone tell me the best drivers , settings , and so on to get the best performance out of this card

i just switched from a gf4 mx 440 64mb ddr to a 9500pro 128mb ddr with dx9 support and 8x agp

computer specs are this
Amd xp 2000 @ 1,83ghz
asus a7v8x-x motherboard
Via kt 400 chipset
768mb ram ( pc 2100)
onboard sound ( or should i use my crappy soundblaster LIve VALUE!)
Lg-52-24-52 burner
cd-rom
floppy
Windows Xp with SP1
Dx 9
catalyst drivers 3.6 for the card

Any help would be appreciated

Ps: if anyone knows how to OC this card plz let me know and also why does this card only score 10200 in 3dmark 2001 se?

[eagle1]

Update your Via 4 in 1 driver package.
Go to www.rage3d.com and download some utilities.
About overclocking, do a search in this site and you'll find some threads relating to this.
Also, ATi has their Catalyst driver set (much like Nvidia has their Detonators). Another cool set of drivers can be found here:

http://www.omegacorner.com/

[Kronik Reloader]

Thx alot , any other stuff i should know ?

[hotgoober53033]

I have the same set-up and bought a Radeon 9500. I had the hardest time getting it to install. Especially the catalyst control. And when that was install it slowed everything down with big lags.

Anyone else come accross this? I'm dying to get this to work right.

THANKS

[eagle1]

Are you sure nothing is conflicting with the card?
Have you tried different versions of the drivers (the catalyst)?
Have you tried the omega drivers that I pointed out earlier?

[hotgoober53033]

Hey thanks for the response. Yeah disabled everything. Got the new via 4-in-1.

Gonna check out the omgea stuff right now.

[mike_sanfil]

I have hear that you can flash the bios with the 9700pro one, and get better performance. I have even heard speculation that the 9500 is almost the same card as the 9700, with different bios. (Just what I heard)

It's actually a hardware difference, if I'm not mistaken. The processor is the same, but they disable four of the eight pipes or something goofy. You can turn a 9500P into a 9700P from what I've read, though I've never tried. I'm happy enough with my 9500P.

[311Sam]

yea use omega's drivers. His drivers also have the option of unlocking it to a 9700 automatically. Whether that card is softmoddable or not i dont know, some are and some arnt

[Willy Red]

I was thinking about my Geforce 4 MX440 right now and how it doesn't have pixel and vertex shader support. So is there a BIOS that I can flash my card with so that vertex and pixel shader support will be unlocked(like flash it with a Geforce 3 TI BIOS)? I am just curious about that.