Radeon drivers question...

Flashman

Hi,
If I install the Radeon 9700 drivers, on any Radeon, for instance the 9500, will it run at the 9700s clock speeds?

Anima

ROFL

Why would they sell the 9700 then?

Flashman

Haha yeah... well you may have heard this term before, but maybe I should repeat it: "OVERCLOCKING"

Anyway, I just want to know what happens when you install drivers designed for a faster card...

Dooom

are there specific radeon 9700 pro drivers? and where are they?! they might be the answer to my problems!!

Flashman

Just don't use the auto-detect in the ATI installation. Install the drivers manually, by changing the display adapter. You can choose your drivers from there.

Dooom

do i stop it doing it when installing the latest drivers? and how exactly do i stop it?

please.....have pitty on me....im tired...

Flashman

First, uninstall the previous drivers. Install Standard VGA drivers if it doesn't do it anyway. Then, after reboot, change adapter from display menu to whichever you want from the list...

Dooom

ahhhhhh....right. i'll try it tomorrow. im off to bed. thanks

Flashman

Good night

Flashman

Can no one answer my question? Would different drivers work on a slower card? And increase clock speeds? Or what would happen?

Raz

As far as I know there isn't specific drivers seperate for each card. The dish them out in a bundle. So you you have all the drivers for the 9000, 9500, 9700 etc all in the one bunch and you don't get to tell your computer "hey I want this driver only!"
I believe that's how it works with the nVidia Detonator drivers and I'm pretty sure it works the same way with the ATI ones aswell.
You may want to check it up in a bit more detail yourself though.

Flashman

Well I don't know about detonators, but I was able to do it with the catalysts, on what I think is a 9700 np. You just install the drivers manually through the display properties->adapter and there is a list of all the cards supported by the drivers.

BKtje

dont know if this is what ur asking but the easiest way to overclock your card is to get a special program to do it.

Captain Trips

Flashman, there were early 9500s that could be hacked to a 9700.
http://www.maxdownloads.com/~ian/wizzard/

BUT, it's highly unlikely you'd get performance gain, although the drivers would probably work fine (why not, they are trying to do the same thing only with less horsepower).

You need a Radeon 9500 Non-pro (NP) 128MB on a 9700 PCB. The 9700 pcb has 2 chips of RAM on top and 2 chips on the right of the GPU (L-shaped). The new 9500 pro pcb has 4 chips all on top of the GPU in a straight line. (that's a quote from the page).

Flashman

The reason I am asking is not so much for overclocking, but it is antoher problem: I have what I think is a Radeon 9700, but I'm not sure, and the drivers were auto-detecting it as a 9500.
So I changed the drivers manually, to the 9500 pro/9700 drivers, and everything seems to be working fine. But I don't have any way to test that it is actually working as a 9700, and not a 9500...

Captain Trips

When you say you think you have what does that mean? Or did you buy a used card?

This is what they say on DeisgnTechnica:
9. How can I tell the mod worked?

Download 3DMark01 if you havent already. Only run the fiillrate test. Under the multitexture test, you should be getting 2200+ M texels if all 8 pipelines are enabled. Half this if the mod didnt work.

That was the way they were testing to see if the 8 pipelines (aka, what is available to the fillrate test):
ATI 9700 Pro - The GPU is clocked at 325Mhz, 8 rendering pipelines, 256 bit memory bus, memory is clocked at 310 Mhz
ATI 9700 - The GPU has been detuned to 275Mhz, still 8 rendering pipelines, 256 bit memory bus, memory has been detuned to 270Mhz
ATI 9500 Pro - The GPU is clocked at 275Mhz, 8 rendering pipelines, card is detuned to 128 bit memory bus, and memory is at 270Mhz
ATI 9500 - The GPU is clocked at 275Mhz, 4 rendering pipelines cut out to leave 4, 128 bit memory bus, and memory is at 270Mhz

So it looks like if you get the higher rate on 3DMark01, you are getting as good as it gets. On my Xp2000+/9700Pro I get around 12000 on the whole test.

Also, if you are using linux you should be able to get the vendor ID information from the card when the kernel boots - I THINK! I can't remember as it's years since I was messing with that stuff.

Flashman

Cheers, I'll get 3dmark and see what results I get. The card is second hand, and I don't have linus to check the manufacturer id.