Sapphire Radeon 9550 OC.

Hey everyone, i've been trying a few things out, like BIOS mods etc... And decided to post this...

Ok, on to the main topic of this post...

I have had an ATI Radeon 9550 for about 3 months now, i bought it because it was cheap, and had 256Mb Ram. And supported AGP 8x. Right now you can pick this card up for £30 (about $46)
It comes at stock speeds of 300Mhz GPU Core, and 200Mhz DDR RAM (400Mhz Effective) so i wondered about the overclocking possibilities of it... I decided to do some research and found ATItool, a simple utility designed for gathering information on, and overclocking an ATI graphics card.
Mine happened to be locked in overclocking... So, i was dissapointed.
I tried hacked Catalyst Drivers, but to no avail, no matter what it would reset itself to stock speeds when a 3d application was run, or after a few seconds...
Thats when it happened.

I found some information whilst looking to buy another of these cards for my GF, i wasn't expecting this, but, it turns out that the 9550 is actually a clocked down 9600 model.
Whats more, with a BIOS flash it could perform as one...

I researched and researched but couldn't build up the courage to try it out, i finally found all the information, files and manuals i could ever need (at techpowerup.com) and decided to proceed, i figured i still had my onboard graphics if need be, and these cards were cheap enough to replace.

So, December 22nd... I booted from a bootable CD available at techpowerup, and flashed my 9550's BIOS to a 9600XT's... And booted into windows...
Just then, horror struck...
Windows did not display correctly, in fact Artifacts cropped up allover the place, so, i rushed to open ATItool and clock my card back down to 9550 speeds.
I then headed over to ATI's website for the latest catalyst drivers, which is when Windows XP spotted the new graphics card and showed it as a 9600. I was amazed.

I downloaded the drivers, installed and reboted.
Windows looked much better and actually ran at resolutions higher than 800x600.
(I'm now running 1280x1024 @ 80Hz)
I had to once again clock down my card to stock speeds because of artifacts. Which is when it struck me...
What caused the artifacts ? the core ? or the RAM ?
(Worth noting that a 9550 runs at 300/200, wheras a 9600XT runs at 400/300)

I decided to keep the core at the same speeds, and see what it would take to cause artifacts using ATItool, i quickly realised my 9550 wouldn't take anythign above 223Mhz RAM (446Mhz effective)
So, i decided to clock it back to 9550 speeds.
And do what most people would think is best...

Benchmark baby :)
Ok, here goes, on 9600XT BIOS @ 9550 speeds i used Aquamark 03 to obtain a score of 20,342. I wasn't impressed.

So, i decided to find out what the GPU core would go upto... I initially started out by raising the Clock in 5Mhz increments. By the time i had hit 400Mhz i felt bored, and decided to go for 500Mhz, it would either die, or support it...
It supported it for split seconds before causing artifacts...
So, i went back down to 425Mhz... STABLE.
430Mhz... STABLE
435Mhz... STABLE
440Mhz... STABLE
450Mhz... STABLE
455Mhz... STABLE
460Mhz... STABLE
465Mhz... STABLE
I was shocked, no artifacts with RAM @ 200Mhz (400 effective)
So, i pushed it even furthur, tweaking in 5Mhz increments upto 480Mhz, where i thought i hit a black spot, it threw an artifact instantly. My heart sank...
So, i decided to knock it back 479Mhz.. and it ran fine for 15mins with no artifacts with RAM @ 200mhz.
I decided to be adventurous, and put the core up once more to 480Mhz.... No artifacts for 25mins, i was indeed surprised, and at this point i set the RAM to 220Mhz.
No artifacts.

All was going well, and better than planned.
So, i decided to benchmark. I will not tell you the results yet though.
Lets say the benchmark was stable.

I pushed the GPU even furthur, eventually reaching the sweet spot of 495.13Mhz.
Any higher and artifacts would occur.
At this rating, and with 220Mhz ram, i was feeling like a King.
I decided to bench.

Ok, here is my results.
Radeon 9550 Speeds (300Mhz GPU, 200Mhz RAM) - 20,342
Radeon 9550 OC (495Mhz GPU, 220Mhz RAM) - 26,478
As you can see its amazing what tweaking can do, i gained an extra 6,126 Points.

I'm astonished, and now have a graphics card running stable at 495/220 instead of 300/200.

(Oh, and i have ATItool launch with windows to set the memory speed down to 220 from 300 so i don't get artifacts.)

What do you reckon to my 65% GPU overclock ?

Buy fire insurance ;)

That sounds cool, I never knew you could do things like that. I only started hearing the term "BIOS Flash" after I joined this site. Still no idea what it's doing exactly, or how to do it...

But anyway, congrats! Way to stick it to the man. :D

Flashing your BIOS is simply replacing it with an updated version, or in my case, a totally different BIOS altogether.

I had to be careful because my graphics card comes in many variations, and so does the 9600XT. I had to make sure i got the right memory architecture etc. in my new BIOS.

No need for fire insurance, it runs cool to my amazement, no struggles, no lock-ups, no hassle ;)

You should see what the latest ATIx800 (or something) can be unlocked too, the lower end cards in that series can outperform the high end ones if you're lucky...