Poor radeon 9500 pro score?

**DuffMobile** · May 15th, 2003, 04:27 PM

I have a radeon 9500 pro and only can get around 9100 in 3dmark2001. Here are my system specs:

Win XP Pro
1.8 Ghz P4
512 MB ram
80 GB HD

I don't know why my score isn't higher. Please give me some tips!

**bladeoftruth** · May 15th, 2003, 11:01 PM

hmmm... is your 3d accel on full accel?

**DuffMobile** · May 16th, 2003, 12:18 AM

I'm assuming so, how would I change it?

**BFsoLo.** · May 16th, 2003, 01:03 AM

First off, make sure you have the new Catalyst 3.4 drivers and control panel.

http://mirror.ati.com/support/drivers/powered.html

I ran my Tyan Tachyon 9700 Pro at stock clock with default Contro Panel settings and scored 400+ higher in 3DMark03 putting me over the 5000 mark for the first time at stock speeds.

Let us know if your not so, somewhat, or very familiar with the ATI control panel settings. Also let us know if your Overclocking or not.

You should be getting around 11,000 in 3DMark2001se with that setup if all is running proper.

**vicarious george** · May 16th, 2003, 01:41 AM

Run "dxdiag".
Make sure "enable AGP texture acceleration" is checked.

**DuffMobile** · May 16th, 2003, 01:25 PM

I'm not terribly familiar with the ATI control panels and what settings I should use. They are all on defaults for now. I've tried using powerstrip to overclock and never gained any marks, only lost marks on some occasions. My 512 MB ram is 2100 DDR. Don't know if adding another 512 would help or not. I will check the AGP and full accel when I get back to my room. Thanks guys.

**rastorize** · May 16th, 2003, 03:24 PM

That's not too bad of a score. I have a 1.4 GHz P4 with 1GB RDRAM and I get just over 10,000 with my ATI 9500pro.

You can't overclock your ATI 9500 pro...it has a locked bios. You need to download an unlocked bios and flash your card. Your PC will then see it as a 9700 pro and you can up the memory and processor speeds...both the 9700pro and 9500pro are identical with one exception - the 9500pro has a 128 bit wide memory bus and the 9700pro has 256 bit wide. Nothing you can do about that. But they both have the same memory and GPU...only ATI clocked down the 9500pro.

For more info on the bios updates...see here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDA5
and here:
http://home.mindspring.com/~warp11/
and here:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdis...?s=&forumid=22

It worked great on my card...my 3dmark 2001 scores went from the high 8000's to just over 10,000. I was also able to get about 4600 on 3dm2003.

But...these are just synthetic benchmarks...if you're happy with the way your games play and their speed...then don't bother. There is always a chance when you overclock that you'll fry things.