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ATI's RADEON 9500 PRO Overclocked
December 20, 2002 Brandon Bell

Summary: If you've read our previous RADEON 9700 articles, you probably know by now just how robust it is at overclocking. So when we couldn't overclock the RADEON 9500 PRO, we were incredibly disappointed. But thanks to the efforts of Kip Hardina, ATI's RADEON 9500 PRO can now be overclocked! Is it just as capable an overclocker as the RADEON 9700 PRO? Find out in today's article!


IntroductionPage:: ( 1 / 13 )

Here at FiringSquad we’re always eager to overclock the hardware that we receive for testing. Whether it’s a motherboard, CPU, or video card, we’re always looking to push the boundaries of performance, and overclocking is often the best way to accomplish this. So when we were unable to overclock the ATI RADEON 9500 PRO board we reviewed last month, we were quite disappointed.

Sure, we loved the performance of the RADEON 9500 PRO at stock clock speeds, after all the RADEON 9500 PRO offered performance that was more than a match for NVIDIA’s GeForce4 Ti 4200 (its intended competition), in fact we found it to be a superior solution to NVIDIA’s current flagship, the GeForce4 Ti 4600. But, the enthusiast side of us wanted to see just a bit more.

What really got us though, was just the week before publishing our RADEON 9500 PRO review we’d heard so much about its overclocking potential. Representatives from Sapphire spoke of it as if it were the second coming: they said it was not only capable of dusting GeForce4 Ti 4600, when overclocked it became quite a competitor to RADEON 9700! When we asked them how high the RADEON 9500 PRO could be clocked they wouldn’t give us any definite figures, but they did indicate that it was just as robust at overclocking as the RADEON 9700 PRO. Knowing we had so much overclocking potential just out of our reach was downright frustrating!

Overclocking the RADEON 9500 PRO

Fortunately, all that has changed. Thanks to the efforts of one inquiring ATI owner, Kip Hardina (warp11) RADEON 9500 PRO owners can now overclock their boards! The procedure isn’t as painless as adjusting a slider however, end users will have to download and install Kip’s warp11 BIOS. We can verify its integrity however, Kip emailed the file to us Wednesday afternoon and we’ve been running it practically nonstop since then. Over the course of countless 3DMark runs the system has locked up once, but other than that it has been rock solid.

For installation instructions we highly suggest you follow the steps outlined in the Rage3D forums. First, backup your original RADEON 9500 PRO BIOS to a bootable floppy disk. Then go ahead and flash your RADEON 9500 PRO BIOS with the warp11 BIOS (9500WARP.bin) that enables overclocking (Kip suggests using ATIFlash Version 2 for flashing your RADEON 9500 PRO BIOS). 3DChipset.com is currently hosting the BIOS and the flash utility in one convenient zip file that we suggest you pick up.

Again, flashing your video card’s BIOS is not for the faint of heart. If unsuccessful, it can ruin your video card. Fortunately it isn’t a difficult thing to do, but you will need a basic amount of DOS knowledge as well as familiarity with BIOS flashing in general. Backup your original BIOS beforehand and use the atiflash –f –p 0 9500warp.bin (those are all zeros and not the letter o) command to enable overclocking. Then, once you’ve updated to the warp11 BIOS, you can use the latest version of a third-party overclocking tool such as Rage3D Tweaker or Powerstrip to overclock your RADEON 9500 PRO card. If things do go wrong, keep in mind that flashing your BIOS will void your warranty. Don’t hold us, 3DChipset.com, or Kip liable for ruining your video card. You’ve been warned.

To answer the question we know you’re all dying to ask, we were able to successfully overclock our RADEON 9500 PRO board to a core clock of 355MHz and a memory clock of 315MHz! That’s an increase of 23% and 14% respectively! Read on to see how the RADEON 9500 PRO performs at those clock speeds!





SIDEBAR: Remember, the RADEON 9500 PRO sports the 8-pixel pipeline architecture


from the RADEON 9700 series while the RADEON 9500 only has four


pixel pipelines



Test SystemsPage:: ( 2 / 13 )

System Setup


Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz

MSI 845PE Max2-FIR Motherboard (845PE)

256MB Mushkin PC3200 (operating at DDR333) SDRAM

ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI RADEON 9500
ATI RADEON 9700
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO
Driver version Catalyst 2.5

ASUS V9280S @ 250MHz/513MHz
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 reference
Detonator version 40.72 (WHQL-certified)

30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

Benchmarks


3D Mark 2001 Second Edition Build 330 – 32-bit color
Quake III: Arena version 1.17
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (Elephant Atrium demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003
Comanche 4
Jedi Knight II



SIDEBAR: Did you know that ATI is officially selling their RADEON 8500LE cards

for $79?


3D Mark 2001Page:: ( 3 / 13 )

3DMark 2001 - DirectX 8





Notes

Overclocking the RADEON 9500 PRO yielded us an additional 13% in 3DMark 2001SE at 1280x1024, the overclocked card comes within 4% of a stock RADEON 9700.


SIDEBAR: ATI's board partners will also be selling RADEON 8500 cards under the

RADEON 9100 moniker


Serious Sam 2Page:: ( 4 / 13 )

Serious Sam 2 - OpenGL






Notes

We see a nice 7% performance improvement in Serious Sam 2 at 1280x1024x32 as a result of overclocking, that figure jumps to 13% at 1600x1200. ATI’s RADEON 9700 series still remains on top though, the overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO card trails by seven percentage points at 1600x1200.



SIDEBAR: We certainly understand why ATI has locked the clock frequency of the

RADEON 9500 PRO, it's an excellent overclocker and they'd rather see

consumers spend that money on RADEON 9700 PRO, which can be overclocked


Quake IIIPage:: ( 5 / 13 )

Quake III - High Quality






Notes

The margin between the RADEON 9500 PRO at stock speeds versus overclocked increases in Quake 3, at 1280x1024x32 a 15% gap exists. Once the resolution is cranked up to 1600x1200, that lead increases to 17%. Again, the RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9700 PRO still come out on top, but the overclocked card is able to close the margin a little.


SIDEBAR: DirectX 9 is here!


Comanche 4Page:: ( 6 / 13 )

Comanche 4 demo






Notes

Comanche 4 is rather CPU-limited, making it less suitable than the previous benchmarks for judging performance, but you can still see some gains once you crank up the screen resolution (8% at 1600x1200).

SIDEBAR: We can't wait to see 3DMark 2003 (which is based on DX9), we've heard

some pretty good things about it


Unreal Tournament 2003Page:: ( 7 / 13 )

Unreal Tournament 2003 - flyby






Unreal Tournament 2003 - botmatch






Notes

We’ll hold our thoughts to just the UT flyby demo scores, as those are the main figures we’re interested in looking at here. Once again we see a double-digit performance increase once the RADEON 9500 PRO is overclocked, but it just isn’t enough to overtake the regular RADEON 9700. While the RADEON 9700 sports a 256-bit memory interface (that offers it 17.6GB/sec bandwidth) the RADEON 9500 PRO’s 128-bit interface just can’t provide enough bandwidth to allow it to keep up with the RADEON 9700 at high resolutions. The RADEON 9700 also has a whopping fill-rate advantage over RADEON 9500 PRO.


SIDEBAR: VisionTek is back, and they've switched camps: they now plan to produce

cards based on ATI cores!


Jedi Knight IIPage:: ( 8 / 13 )

Jedi Knight II – High Quality






Notes

Like Comanche 4, Jedi Knight II is highly CPU dependant, which is why you don’t see a large difference between the two RADEON 9500 PRO configurations at lower resolutions. At 1600x1200 however, the margin opens up to 11%.




SIDEBAR: Where did the name RADEON come from anyway?


4x Anti-AliasingPage:: ( 9 / 13 )

Quake III – High Quality






Notes

The overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO offers a 16% performance improvement over the stock RADEON 9500 PRO at 1280x1024, which increases slightly at 1600x1200.



SIDEBAR: The RADEON 9500 PRO sells for an MSRP of $220


8x Anisotropic filteringPage:: ( 10 / 13 )

Quake III – High Quality








SIDEBAR: What did you think of that Splinter Cell demo that was just released

yesterday? Pretty short huh?


4x AA/8x AnisoPage:: ( 11 / 13 )

Quake III – High Quality











SIDEBAR: We were hoping to have received a few third-party RADEON 9500 PRO cards

by now, it looks like we'll have to wait until 2003.


UT 4x AA/8x AnisoPage:: ( 12 / 13 )

Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby






Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch






Notes

Here’s where the first big surprise comes in, the overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO is actually able to overtake RADEON 9700 in testing with Unreal Tournament 2003 once anistropic filtering and anti-aliasing are enabled. Considering the RADEON 9700’s enormous fill rate and memory bandwidth advantage, we were pretty shocked to see this!





SIDEBAR: How 'bout them Lakers!? Doh!


Final ThoughtsPage:: ( 13 / 13 )

First off, all enthusiast RADEON 9500 PRO owners owe Kip Hardina a word of thanks. His 9500WARP BIOS enables’ overclocking on the RADEON 9500 PRO as well as the RADEON 9700. Apparently, if it were up to ATI, the only card owners that would be overclocking their video cards would be RADEON 9700 PRO users. The rest were left out in the dark. Kip’s BIOS performs 100% as advertised and, if installed properly, won’t compromise the reliability of your video card. Kudos to Kip for making all this possible.

UPDATE 12/21/02: We originally stated that the 9500WARP BIOS also works on the RADEON 9700 (non-PRO), that is incorrect. Kip is currently hard at work on overclocking BIOS updates for the RADEON 9000, RADEON 9500, and RADEON 9700 (all non-PRO), so owners of those cards will soon have Kip to thank as well.

Once overclocked, the RADEON 9500 PRO becomes an even more remarkable performer. The entire GeForce4 series is left in the dust, and in some cases we’ve seen that RADEON 9500 PRO is capable of outperforming a vanilla RADEON 9700! ATI must have felt that an overclocked RADEON 9500 PRO would have been too tempting for most gamers to pass up, hurting RADEON 9700 sales. There’s no doubt that this has certainly happened to some extent with GeForce4, although we do feel that this argument applies more to the RADEON 9700 rather than the RADEON 9500 PRO, as its 128-bit memory interface holds it back in many tests.

In any case, RADEON 9500 PRO overclocking is finally here, and if you crave the best performance possible, you should definitely give the 9500WARP BIOS a try. Just be sure to back up your original BIOS, and if you feel uncomfortable about it, consult the help of a friend. Once your RADEON 9500 PRO is armed with the 9500WARP BIOS, we doubt you’ll ever go back!



SIDEBAR: Do you plan on overclocking your RADEON 9500 PRO, or are you happy with its default performance? Speak!


© Copyright 2003 FS Media, Inc.
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