to overclock? (radeon 9500 pro)

[siegecraft4]

I just purchased an ATI Radeon 9500 pro. I have already read the threads about the bios flash that makes the card overclockable. From what I am reading there is no way to permanently loose your card by flashing as long as you restore the original bios if a problem occurs. Am I getting the right impression? Also, is this really worth it? I don't really care about 3d mark scores. Is there a noticable real world performance increase in games? Finally, if i did dedide to do this, is it possible to do it with the stock cooler/fan and without ramsinks? Thank for the advice...

 

[nja469]

I got an Sapphire card about 2 weeks ago and immediately flashed the BIOS and it worked w/o any issues. WinXP booted and recognized it now as a 9700 PRO. Overclocking is useful if you play games that are graphic intense, there's less lag and action games can run faster and smoother if the card can keep up, etc. I don't excessively OC the card, but when I play GTA or whatever I like to turn up AF and AA features to make the graphics and details even clearer and more like-life, and in this case higher core clock and card mem speeds are beneficial; allowing you to continue playing how you want to, but with better quality w/o suffering lag. I'm conservative, to where I just OC my 9500 to about 9700PRO speeds giving me $300 card performance for $165! I use the standard heatsink and the card is usually cool to touch, no reason to go and possibly destroy warranty coverage over a heatsink/fan that might only cool it a degree of two.