OC = Overclock!

last month, i bought ATI Radeon 9500 (non pro) 128MB graphic card! of course, i was aiming to softmod it into 9700 potentially!.

but, but, but, i failed. and for this reason, i got ill....upset! i really will not trust OEM product at all in the future! the hidden 4 rendering pipes are f*cked ...after activated them, i saw many artifacted....damn it! more, when i start a small game, it hangs,,,,kill me!

i spent 1 whole week to recover my broken heart! including went to Malaysia for holiday!..anyway, i finally felt ok...

however,,,last nite, i was shocked and sad again..,.(crying!)
i used 3Dmark03 to test my card. there are 4 testing games in 3Dmark03, in the 2nd game, my fps is never more than 10,,,,aiya, sometimes even 1 fps....ft!(of course, i know those games are too pre-aged,very detailed graphics)..and at last, i scored 1790! tian ah! after that, i never gave up, i then OC my core to 350MHz/300MHz...again, it scored my 2150...i dun satisfied, so further OC some more. of course, u know the concequences: when i overclocked Ram to 340Mhz, my PC hangs,,,ok, i restarted! when i oc Core to 400MHz, got many artifacts....sigh...

finally, the best and safest pait is 375MHz/300MHz..scored me 2252!...no suprise! it is just so so card..sigh, my $290...


ok,,lastly, i wanna say: if u guys, gaming bums, wanna pick up a good graphic card! \

1. pls dun buy OEM product(even though i should not blame OEM too much), i suggest Sappire;

2. Red PCB board (for ATI only) is most potential to overclock, and i suggest everyone should overclock own graphic card(of course,not too much. and u have to know ur card RAM capibility, for mine 9500, RAM is based on 3.6ns technology, so max speed is 300Mhz, if u overclock more, then card is in danger. for Core, i think at least 50-100Mhz u can overclock it)

3. pay attention to Rendering pipes of the card, 4 and 8 pipes are totally different in terms of performance!, and also memory interface bandwith, 128 and 256 Mb are also very different if u choose the 8 rendering pipes card. for Core, i really dun think it does matter much, (anyway, core is also potentiallly able to be overclocked !hehe)

4. best buy: around $350 one- Radeon 9500 pro, Geforce FX5600! of course, if u r rich, can also buy 9800 or FX5900!heheh. anyway, if just want a so so card, then buy Geforce4 MX 440 or Ti 4200, or Radeon 9200(if still got 8500 in market, then buy 8500) these cards have nice butget, less than $200, but not support DirectX 9.0, which is the trend of games!


ok,,,i stop here, and hope u gamers can choose a best card with ur gaming life!

dual Xeon P4 2.8GHz, 2GB Ram, 140GB RAID harddisk....Plus Quadro FX500 graphic card!!!!

no need to explain how good it the system performance, rite?

ok. now i talk about the graphic card, Quadro FX500 128MB, which costs around $500 US dollars...core/Ram is 270/486Mhz...

3Dmark 2001 SE: 8800
3Dmark 2003 with patch 330 : 1490


hahah,,,generally even worse than my ATI Radeon 9500 128MB...hohoho!


conclusion: even though this is the very professional series card, but perhaps is not so suitable for gaming anyway, as i found that it is very bad when testing texture and shaders...and also pixel pipes also too few...

thus, even though this card is using the same design board as Geforce FX5600, but, but, it is truely not dedicated or suitable for gaming..especially after thinking of its "high" price, which is same as Radeon 9800 pro...

final word: for those guys willing to softmount their cards to Quadro ones,,pls consider it a bit! Quadro is only for professional Video, graphic editing works,perhaps...at least from my test, i feel so! of course, perhaps Quadro FX900 is farking good,,but heheh, expect those special institutes, where else have it? anyway, in one shot: nowadays, there is no single card that is great for all aspects, even Quadro, instead, we only can say, some cards r good at certain aspects only...

no one card will win all!

it has 8 pipelines, same as 9700 and 9800. with 4 pipelines only, 9500 can never make it to 9700 or 9800...

coz of this, it does have a hardware limitation, which is the memory interface bandwidth, 128Mb, rather than 256Mb in 9500 and 9700! and of course, this is due to the memory chips allocation, where 9500 pro RAMs share the channels..

thus, 9500 pro will not be 9700!

however, 9500 can, as it has the same board as 9700, (at least the first bath of the produnts are, i think after ATI knew this mounting things, ATI had worked on this...so now got rare chance to get this kind of 9500 liao).......ok.. the bois of them are different, so when windows start, it reads the different product IDs from BOIS, one is 9500, the other is 9700....heheh, u know , from this, we can guess that, ATI just design the same board, but modify a bit, so they make different products...Business Thinking leh!!!


anyway, i think nowadays, there are really few 9500 non pro in the market,,perhaps China may have,,,en...and even have, those cards are either in store one(little chance), or refunded one. i think mine is probabilty the latter case! as mine is OEM one, so i cannot know if this one is refunded product or not! and from my softmount failure,,,heheh, i guess so lah...

lastly, this is just gumbling! (in fact, i now very suggest 9500 pro...owesome card!)

boring