9500 -> 9700

[joker_927]

Has anyone done this and succeded?

Instead of buying a 9800 Pro, I thought of buying a 9500 and overclocking it to a 9700 Pro.

[joker_927]

bump

evidently tons of people have done it.

[washe]

some cards doesnt allow this because the ram, some of the capable card has an L shape on the board, those card can be modded out to 9700, With the Omega drivers you can mod out the card.

[Omardeth]

the 9500's that you could overclock like that aren't around anymore . and if you find one you will pay a premium for them . and it might not oc .

[rastorize]

I did it with great success...

I have a Sapphire 9500 pro purchased about 4 months ago. I used the Warp11 bios to flash the card...after flashing the bios using a floppy disk, I rebooted and Windows recognized the card as a 9700 pro. After reinstalling the drivers, I then overclocked the card to 9700 pro levels...and after 4 months, the card has remained rock solid and stable. By flashing the bios, you enable the 4 rendering pipelines that are disabled...and allow the card to be overclocked. The memory bandwidth is still limited physically, but for the most part, the card works and acts like a 9700 pro until you reach the higher resolutions...which is where it becomes limited.

[Bob The Great]

look on the card and see what type of memory it has too. The lower the number the better, for instance my 9800 is 3.0ns memory. that means I might be able to mod it to a 9800 pro, but the closing speed is 3.3. Anything above that and you can't. So anyway, different cards here, but the memory speed is important as well. And hey if it doesn't work you can usually revert unless you've caused major damage!

[tony_j15]

Instead of buying a 9800 Pro, I thought of buying a 9500 and overclocking it to a 9700 Pro.

First there is no guarantee of success. Second, even if you mod it out, it still does not perform as well as the 9700. My reccomendation is spend the 200 and just get the 9700.