old school 9600 pro

Shane

Shane

Super Moderator
Staff member
Im putting this card back to good use in my HTPC....i took off the fan and heatsink to clean and re-apply some nice clean AS5 and noticed on the actual gpu chip....it doesnt say Ati Radeon 9600 pro.....it infact says Ati Radeon mobility 9700?

wth? lol....its shows up as a 9600 pro? anyone fill me in on this one?
 
Chips are named as well as graphics cards, the same chip can be used in different cards, like RV770 in 4xxx series, they all have the same chip, but are different in performance, This is because how are they clocked on both gpu and memory and also memory buffer. Hope it helps :D
 
They are probably physically the same card, however the lower model probably has a firmware lock on some extra features/pipes. It is cheaper for them to make one card for several models and then firmware lock the features, that way they only need to manufacture one card.

I have the 9800 Pro in an older system and I could look at it later on.
 
tlarkin said:
They are probably physically the same card, however the lower model probably has a firmware lock on some extra features/pipes. It is cheaper for them to make one card for several models and then firmware lock the features, that way they only need to manufacture one card.

I have the 9800 Pro in an older system and I could look at it later on.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your replies.

So....the gpu on the card is actualy a lower clocked Ati Radeon mobility 9700? and they changed the bios to say its a 9600 pro?

could it be changed back with a new bios?
 
Nevakonaza said:
Thanks for your replies.

So....the gpu on the card is actualy a lower clocked Ati Radeon mobility 9700? and they changed the bios to say its a 9600 pro?

could it be changed back with a new bios?
Click to expand...

A lot of times they are physically the exact same card, but the firmware locks out certain features. There are plenty of haxies out there that open up those pipes google search your exact card to find out
 
I have the same 9600/9700 chip on my laptop (e-machine AMD Athlon 2.0GHz 64-bit). Its 5 years old and now I'm encountering graphic problems. I already connected an external monitor so I don't think its the display. Do you think I need a new card? Is it worth paying labor for someone to solder on another used card or should I get a new system altogether? I payed about $1200 for it, 5 years ago. It freezes sometimes when I run CS:S or other graphic intensive programs, and I've been pushing the limit on the 60GB hard drive for sometime lol.
 
Anyone? I'd like to find out sometime soon if its worth it having my laptop repaired or if I should just get another computer (probably a desktop this time, I don't take my laptop places very often)
 
Yuep, that's how my radeon 9700 XTi was. It was actually a 9800XT but the firmware "downgraded" it to a 9700XTi. It took a little bit of tweaking but I was able to put the 9800xt firmware on it :P
 
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