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ardb
Journeyman III

Radeon 9600XT serious hardware help needed!

Hi, I need some help with some oldish 4 and 8 output graphics cards based on the Radeon 9600 chipset. Our software writes to the cards directly, and we get two refresh rates out them, that we'll imaginatively call slow and fast!

We can see differences in the hardware between the two, specifically the PCI bridge chip and the GPUs, which are either 216T9NFBGA13FH on the fast boards, and 216T9NDBGA13FH on the slow boards.

Can anybody help with appropriate datasheets or tech info as to the difference between the two boards, and why one set might be quicker updating than the other?

We're up for buying either chipset and swopping the chips over if this is required (yes, they are BGA packages, we are both desperate and slightly mental... as well as having some friends with useful tools!) Needless to say we can't get any more cards, and we're stuck with a long life support contract that means changing the cards for this particular case isn't an option - between a rock and a hard place is an understatement!

Is there a BIOS update we could flash into the GPUs to help us out?

Any help gratefully receieved,

Alex

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bridgman
Staff

Are the BIOS images the same on the two cards ? IIRC the VBIOS code sets clock rates and a number of other things which could affect performance.

It seems unlikely that the chips themselves would make the difference assuming things like memory bus width and interconnect are the same, but there is a good chance that different chips might be set up differently by the VBIOS.

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