- Mar 7, 2003
- 12,012
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- 40,790
Check this out, fellas.
I picked up a cheap 9500 non-pro 64MB on e-bay for $81, because I wanted to play with the softmod and see if I could turn the puppy into a PRO.
SO the card arrives, and guess what. It's a 128 MB version, with the "L" shaped memory! (256 bit memory bus)
I check the memory: crap. 3.6 NS Infineon. Ouch! Not much overclocking potential, I figure.
Well, I applied the softmod. ACK! Checkerboards. Damn, I figure. No performance out of this piece of junk. But what the hell, I'll try to overclock and see what happens.
Well, that 275 Mhx rated Infineon Memory went up to 315 Mhz without a hiccup. Hey, that's not too bad, I'm thinking. Let's see what this core can do! I start at 320.
On to 330... 340... 350... 360... 367. At 367, Powerstrip caps out. I'm at a completely stable 93 Mhz overclock, and the only reason I can't push the card any further is because the overclocking software doesn't even have an option to do so!
Current 3dMark03 score is 3438.
Sure, that's not huge, but I'm running an old ECS K7S5A motherboard with a slow SiS735 chipset, and my DDR is limited to 266. My CPU is an AthlonXP 2000+ (running at 1.66 Ghz)
I suspect that even though I'm limited to 4 pipelines, the GPU really takes advantage of the 256 bit bus when it's overclocked.
And it's not over yet... who knows how high this puppy will go when I have an OC tool that let's me find where the real limits are? I've heard of guys on the Rage3d forums who've pushed these things to over 415Mhz with stock cooling.
I can't wait to try Rivatuner, supposedly you can set the overclock limits far higher with that utility.
Not too shabby for a $81 card!
I picked up a cheap 9500 non-pro 64MB on e-bay for $81, because I wanted to play with the softmod and see if I could turn the puppy into a PRO.
SO the card arrives, and guess what. It's a 128 MB version, with the "L" shaped memory! (256 bit memory bus)
I check the memory: crap. 3.6 NS Infineon. Ouch! Not much overclocking potential, I figure.
Well, I applied the softmod. ACK! Checkerboards. Damn, I figure. No performance out of this piece of junk. But what the hell, I'll try to overclock and see what happens.
Well, that 275 Mhx rated Infineon Memory went up to 315 Mhz without a hiccup. Hey, that's not too bad, I'm thinking. Let's see what this core can do! I start at 320.
On to 330... 340... 350... 360... 367. At 367, Powerstrip caps out. I'm at a completely stable 93 Mhz overclock, and the only reason I can't push the card any further is because the overclocking software doesn't even have an option to do so!
Current 3dMark03 score is 3438.
Sure, that's not huge, but I'm running an old ECS K7S5A motherboard with a slow SiS735 chipset, and my DDR is limited to 266. My CPU is an AthlonXP 2000+ (running at 1.66 Ghz)
I suspect that even though I'm limited to 4 pipelines, the GPU really takes advantage of the 256 bit bus when it's overclocked.
And it's not over yet... who knows how high this puppy will go when I have an OC tool that let's me find where the real limits are? I've heard of guys on the Rage3d forums who've pushed these things to over 415Mhz with stock cooling.
I can't wait to try Rivatuner, supposedly you can set the overclock limits far higher with that utility.
Not too shabby for a $81 card!
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