Thomas said:
You were correct, and no, no 256 bit mem on the pro
Thomas.
Whoops. Sorry. Here's a post (below, long) from 'god knows where' that
clarifies...
You can also look at
http://www.tech-report.com/etc/comparo/graphics/ for
basic internal diffs between cards.
Only really useful for 9500 users btw...
S
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Ok
so to sum it up
buy a 9700Pro if u can afford one however a 9600Pro and a 9500Pro can
overclock to 9700Pro levels pretty much.
the following is RIPPED directly from someone called Creig on Anandtech
forums so THX CREIG!!!
Ok. Here are all the possible mods:
9500 NON-PRO 64 meg - Can be modded to an unofficial 64 meg 9500 Pro. Since
the chips are built on only one half of the board, the 64 meg NON-PRO is
limited to a 128 bit memory path. However, the unused four pipelines can be
enabled which gives you 8 pipelines on a 128 bit memory path. This is the
same as the 9500 Pro, but with only 64 megs. It can then be overclocked to
further enhance performance. Overclocking results can vary from board to
board depending on how well the GPU tolerates overclocking and the speed
rating of the memory chips.
9500 NON-PRO 128 meg - Can be modded into a 9700 ONLY if the memory
configuration is in a "L" configuration. The "L" configuration consists of
two chips above the GPU and two to the right hand side. Only this memory
configuration is moddable as it will be built on the PCB originally designed
for the 9700 which has a 256 bit memory path. The boards with the memory
chips in a straight row above the GPU are built on the PCB that was
specifically designed for the 9500. This board has a 128 bit memory path. No
software can ever change this fact.
The way ATI made these two different boards perform the same was that the
moddable "L" shaped memory boards came with only four pipelines enabled. So
they were 4 pipelines on a 256 memory bit path. The non-moddable "all in a
row" memory boards came with all 8 pipelines on a 128 memory bit path. All
the mod does is unlock the 4 unused pipelines on the "L" boards. It does
absolutely nothing to the size of the memory path. And so you end up with 8
pipelines and a 256 bit memory path which is identical to the 9700.
You can then overclock the board to 9700 speeds or above. Overclocking
results can vary from board to board depending on how well the GPU tolerates
overclocking and the speed rating of the memory chips. It is this unlocking
of pipelines combined with overclocking that has made this video card so
popular.
But as with all mods/overclocking, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). Some boards
came with GPUs that had one or more faulty pipelines. These were most likely
rejected 9700 GPUs. ATI disabled four of the pipelines and retested these
rejected cores. If the faulty pipeline was one of the four disabled then the
chip was used to make a 9500 NON-PRO. This was a good financial move for ATI
as it allowed them to use cores that would have otherwise been tossed in the
trash. However, the number of faulty cores that could still be reused was
not enough to keep full production of 9500 NON-PRO cards. So ATI
supplemented this with fully functional cores with 8 good pipelines and
simply disabled four of them.
Unfortunately for us hardware fanatics, this means that the whole 9500
NON-PRO mod is a bit of a gamble. Since some have good cores and some have
bad, there's no way to tell until you get it home and attempt it. Screen
"checkerboarding" and "visual artifacts" were the two most common symptoms
experienced with receiving a board with a bad pipelines. Before the software
mod was available, people hardware modded the boards with the same "some
good, some bad" results. This hardware mod does the exact same thing as the
software mod. So a board with artifacts using the software mod will have the
exact same problems if it were hard modded, and vice versa. I believe the
success rate of finding a good moddable board was around 60%. Unfortunately,
ATI has suspended production of the moddable version of the 9500 NON-PRO so
supply of this board is definitely limited and getting more so every day.
9500 PRO 128 meg - Cannot be modded, but can be overclocked. The 9500 PRO
comes from the factory with all 8 pipelines enabled. And it's built on the
128 bit memory path PCB. Since this board already has 8 pipelines, all you
can do to the 9500 PRO is overclock it. You can't mod it into anything else.
9700 128 meg - As above, the 9700 cannot be modded. It comes enabled with 8
pipelines on a 256 bit memory path. However, it can be overclocked to 9700
PRO levels. Overclocking results can vary from board to board depending on
how well the GPU tolerates overclocking and the speed rating of the memory
chips.
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