radeon 9600

[Austin]

9500, 9500PRO and 9700 were all locked via the BIOS, (almost always) needed a BIOS flash in order to allow o/c'ing tools to set the clocks, then you could set a clock speed on boot up BUT I'd much rather have a known 100% stable clock set in the BIOS as a perminent thing. I believe it is possible to flash a 9700PRO BIOS to a 9500-9700 but wouldn't trust doing it, that's if the card could do 325/310. Setting the clocks must be a simple BIOS edit away though ...

[malfunction]

Austin - this one's been a long time coming but basically I've flashed the BIOS on my card no problems. I used a combination of tools to do it in the end - the DOS bios editor didn't calculate the clocks correctly (it basically set them *MUCH* higher than I'd input and the card wouldn't boot - thank crunchie I have a old PCI card lying around!) and the first windows editor I used wouldn't go high enough! Unfortunately in the end it was all for nothing as the b*stards at ATI are still checking the clocks on the card and know that something's wrong - any driver > 3.4 actually fails to recognise the card at the overclocked settings - windows starts in VGA mode!

Tools I used in the end:

flashrom 2.17 (search for flashrom217.zip - dump your original BIOS from DOS and boot back into windows to edit the clocks)

radedit 1.1 (search for radedit1102.zip and *don't* use the DOS editor included)

biosedit 2.5 (biosedit25.zip - this one let me set the clocks higher than radedit but radedit also lets you edit other parts of the bios)

[Austin]

Thanks for the info. I'll have a look and see if the same holds true for the 9500PRO. Most things had serious trouble telling the 9500 series apart from the 9700 series so there is a chance even ATI can't combat the 9500PRO with updated drivers (ie > CAT3.4). Will post back if/when I can.

[Ice Kay]

how do you unlock the bios for a 9600 np ? and where to download the relevnt tools from ?

[Austin]

http://www.3dchipset.com/bios/ati/flash/

I've only flashed the 9500PRO, seems things may be trickier for 9600?

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Ice Kay
how do you unlock the bios for a 9600 np ? and where to download the relevnt tools from ?

Austin's got the address for you... Basically I'm working on my 9600 np now - trying to find out if something in the drivers can be disabled or something in the BIOS can be changed to stop the drivers from resetting the clocks. AFAIK it has to be the drivers that are resetting the clock speed (you *can* set it in the BIOS and you *can* overclock with the 3.4 CATs - just anything later than that is checking the card and won't play along if you've overclocked)

[malfunction]

Hurrah...

Found something.

There's a patch you can run with RivaTuner that hacks the driver so that it doesn't reset your card back to default speeds. Tested and working with my (sapphire) 9600 np and 3.7 CATs (BTW 3.8 is supposedly out today - not on ATI's site yet though)...

Linky:

http://download.guru3d.com/pafiledb....on=file&id=680

(BTW if you care to read through the patch file you'll probably think you can manually edit the file yourself in your fav. hex editor... *However* - I tried it and got a blue screen on startup. I've now run the script instead and a compare on the 2 files shows that it's updating more than the sequence shown in the patch file - 2 bytes more - which is presumably a checksum)

[malfunction]

Just downloaded the 3.8 CATs and the patch doesn't work - though it's easy to get working - open up the patch file in a text editor go to the [Certified12] section and change:

Src0	= c1 e8 1b 83 e0 0f 83 e9 2c 6a 01 5b 0f 84 ee 00 00 00 49 0f 84 bd 00 00 00 49 49 0f 84 9d 00 00 00 49 49 75

to:

Src0	= c1 e8 1b 83 e0 0f 83 e9 2c 6a 01 5b 0f 84 f8 00 00 00 49 0f 84 bd 00 00 00 49 49 0f 84 9d 00 00 00 49 49 75

And:

Off0	= 0008947e

To:

Off0	= 000894cc

[Ice Kay]

Does it matter if you use the omega drivers ?

[Ice Kay]

Linky:

http://download.guru3d.com/pafiledb....on=file&id=680

Cant seem to d/l that file.

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Ice Kay
Does it matter if you use the omega drivers ?

If I'm honest I've got no idea - I *believe* the Omega drivers only alter the registry settings not the actual driver files - but then again this might be something that can be disabled through a registry key too.

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Ice Kay
Cant seem to d/l that file.

No problem here - are you using getright or similar? If so you might want to try a straight download

[Ice Kay]

Got it downloaded into the the rivatuner directory.

I then double click the file ATIOverclockingAntiprotection w2k rts

in the directory

C:\D Drive\gfx crad utils\Unlocking bios\PatchScripts\ATIOverclockingAntiprotection

A dialogue box pops up I click next and i get stuck here, what file am i supposed to open at this stage ?

[malfunction]

"ati2mtag.sys" which (assuming you're running Win2K) is in c:\winnt\system32\drivers (unless you've installed windows somewhere else anyway!)

[Ice Kay]

well running win xp pro sp1, went inot c:\windows\system32\drivers

Ran the patch, changed the clockspeed using radclocker but it still goes back to the default clock speed.

or am i supposed to use rivatuner to change the speed ?

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Ice Kay
well running win xp pro sp1, went inot c:\windows\system32\drivers

Ran the patch, changed the clockspeed using radclocker but it still goes back to the default clock speed.

or am i supposed to use rivatuner to change the speed ?

Should have said before - you have to reboot. Also - running 2 overclocking tools at the same time might cause some problems.