Radeon 9500 Mod To Radeon 9700

[MrBling]

As you know that Radeon 9500 differs from Radeon 9700 series due to reduced number of pipelines to 4. However, it is now possible that you can transform it into a Radeon 9700 and overclockability can be improved by much. When you remove the cooler, you can see some resistors on the GPU package. Just re-solder resistor at position 2-3 to 1-2 and your Radeon 9500 will be modded into Radeon 9700. Flash the Radeon 9500 BIOS using the modified BIOS to unlock the core/mem frequency default locked by the ATi to prevent overclocking. The core clock can be pushed as much as to 370Mhz and as a result, it runs faster than the Radeon 9700 Pro.

This is pirated from VR-Zone, so take it with a grain of salt if you will.
Figured someone here would probably find it interesting and I hadn't seen any posts about it.

hm.. seems someone already posted about this.. I must be getting blind from old age.
Ignore this post.

[muisejt]

easy enough to do if I had a hot air solder tool and solder paste, be cheaper to just buy the 9700 Pro

[sharkypinoy]

Originally posted by muisejt
easy enough to do if I had a hot air solder tool and solder paste, be cheaper to just buy the 9700 Pro

how much would it cost to get a hot air sholder tool and solder paste???

i mean the difference between the cards here in canada is around 350$.. so if its cheaper then 350.. then yes go its better just to get the 9700 pro

[muisejt]

the price difference is more like $250 Canadian

to get a cheap hot air setup you are looking at atleast $600 US from what I've seen

[Doomah]

Originally posted by muisejt
to get a cheap hot air setup you are looking at atleast $600 US from what I've seen

For a soldering gun and some solder wire?? Yikes.

Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong thing, but you can pick up a decent soldering kit for under or around 50 dollars. You could probably get one of those little 'pencil' soldering things even cheaper.

The question is do you really want to put the gun near your shiny new 9500??

[richardginn]

http://www.hand-tools-power-tools.co..._equipment.htm

This website is selling a soldering gun for 9.99

[Greg]

Actually I was reading about the same thing on a polish site.
http://www.pclab.pl/?art=&sid=1572
What they did was use a normal soldering gun, with some silver wire added on to the tip of the soldering gun for extensions so as to enable working on a smaller scale (most soldering guns are too big for these little things.)
They got it working, although it took them a few attempts and the solder didn't look too pretty. But who cares how it looks, as long as it works, right?
As for putting a gun to a shiny 9500, well... the payoffs IS pretty damn good, i guess it all depends on how comfortable you are with soldering. Maybe someone can get more info on this as to the rating of the resistor used, and if you can substitute it with some radioshack resistor in case you wreck the original? That would be my biggest fear, wrecking the resistor somehow.
Maybe Tom's hardware can make a video on how to do this, they seem to like to make videos.
Sounds like one hell of a cool Mod to me.

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by Greg
Actually I was reading about the same thing on a polish site.
http://www.pclab.pl/?art=&sid=1572
What they did was use a normal soldering gun, with some silver wire added on to the tip of the soldering gun for extensions so as to enable working on a smaller scale (most soldering guns are too big for these little things.)
They got it working, although it took them a few attempts and the solder didn't look too pretty. But who cares how it looks, as long as it works, right?
As for putting a gun to a shiny 9500, well... the payoffs IS pretty damn good, i guess it all depends on how comfortable you are with soldering. Maybe someone can get more info on this as to the rating of the resistor used, and if you can substitute it with some radioshack resistor in case you wreck the original? That would be my biggest fear, wrecking the resistor somehow.
Maybe Tom's hardware can make a video on how to do this, they seem to like to make videos.
Sounds like one hell of a cool Mod to me.

i used to assemble micro-pc boards with all those tiny resistors and capacitors. it's really not hard at all. all you need are some decent tweezers, a solder paste gun, and a soldering iron... just squirt a tiny bit of the solder paste, then hold the reistor in place and add the soldering iron to the flux/paste for about 1 sec. it's also good to have flux remover because that paste crap leaves flux everywhere... the end product is a very nice machine-made-looking solder joint. my work was such a masterpiece

also i'm not sure you can damage the resistor(wreck it) without trying to... usually it's the capacitors that will get messed up from crappy soldering skills(like overheating the joint)
i could be wrong, i didnt know too much of the scientific aspects of it, just how to do the crap efficiently.

damn, now i'm going to have to go out and get me one of these boards...

[muisejt]

hot air uses guess what, hot air! there is no physical touching required. this tool would be the proper way to solder/unsolder SMT components and is really easy to do compared to trying to do it with an pencil iron. to unsolder a SMT resistor just go back and forth with the hot air for a couple seconds and pull it off with tweezers. to solder, dab some solder paste on the pads put the resistor in place and pass the hot air over it for a couple seconds and you're done

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by muisejt
hot air uses guess what, hot air! there is no physical touching required. this tool would be the proper way to solder/unsolder SMT components and is really easy to do compared to trying to do it with an pencil iron. to unsolder a SMT resistor just go back and forth with the hot air for a couple seconds and pull it off with tweezers. to solder, dab some solder paste on the pads put the resistor in place and pass the hot air over it for a couple seconds and you're done

cool, i never had access to one of those... how wide is the nozzle?
btw, when you're taught how to do it the old fasion way(as long as you have good tools) it's pretty easy

i couldnt imagine doing it with solder wire though... the paste gun is da business!

[fobugee]

Ok, from what i read, this is what i understood:

ONLY the Radeon 9500 with 128 MB Ram is able to mod to a 9700. The 9500 PRO can NOT be modded, nor can the 9500 64 MB.

Ok, i've found the 9500 128 MB selling at Ncix for $280 CAN. Now, the 9700 128 MB is selling at www.pccanada.com for $365 CAN. So i'd be paying $85 more, but i wouldn't hafta solder my card (which i'm real scared of doing). So really, its not THAT much of a bargain...

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by fobugee
Ok, from what i read, this is what i understood:

ONLY the Radeon 9500 with 128 MB Ram is able to mod to a 9700. The 9500 PRO can NOT be modded, nor can the 9500 64 MB.

Ok, i've found the 9500 128 MB selling at Ncix for $280 CAN. Now, the 9700 128 MB is selling at www.pccanada.com for $365 CAN. So i'd be paying $85 more, but i wouldn't hafta solder my card (which i'm real scared of doing). So really, its not THAT much of a bargain...

http://www.ncix.com/canada/

edit: more specifically: http://www.ncix.com/canada/productdetail.php?sku=8933

ok, so is this mod REAL or just a RUMOR?
or can no one verify?

[s1203372]

Originally posted by Kero-chan


cool, i never had access to one of those... how wide is the nozzle?
btw, when you're taught how to do it the old fasion way(as long as you have good tools) it's pretty easy

i couldnt imagine doing it with solder wire though... the paste gun is da business!

I do a fair amount of SMT work modding up hardware for testing. A much cheaper method that's about as easy as the hot air guns for 2 connection parts (resistors, caps, etc.) is to get 2 soldering irons. Hold one in each hand, and use the tips like tweezers on each end of the resistor. It will come right up. This doesn't work nearly as well as the hot air guns once you get to 3 pins or more though. To resolder, don't even bother with solder paste. There should already be plenty of solder on the pad, just place the resistor on the pads where it should go, and touch both ends at once with the soldering irons. Again - use them like tweezers. The solder will melt, and the resistor drops right down. If there isn't enough solder already there, use some solder wire and melt a little onto the pad.

It's really quite easy. If you are nervous, try it on a dead board first.

[videobruce]

Be sure you get a GROUNDED iron! With non-grounded irons there is the potential for high voltage on the tip (for PCB's anyway). Don't go to RS for your iron. Invest in a solder station. Better control over tempuature, convienance of a holder and they are grounded. I recomend the WTCPS from Weller. Around $100. Made in USA and very good quality! I have two and wouldn't solder without. Reaches 800 degrees within 60 seconds as oppose to minutes with the pencil irons, maintains that temperature all the time.

[s1203372]

Originally posted by videobruce
Be sure you get a GROUNDED iron! With non-grounded irons there is the potential for high voltage on the tip (for PCB's anyway). Don't go to RS for your iron. Invest in a solder station. Better control over tempuature, convienance of a holder and they are grounded. I recomend the WTCPS from Weller. Around $100. Made in USA and very good quality! I have two and wouldn't solder without. Reaches 800 degrees within 60 seconds as oppose to minutes with the pencil irons, maintains that temperature all the time.

I second the motion. A good Weller soldering station is a worthwhile investment if you do much electronics work.