A low cost 9700 variant from Dell: the 9700 TX [Archive]

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pxc

02-Dec-2002, 18:26

TX in the name stands for "Theater Mode", which allows viewing of DVDs on the monitor and TV at the same time, according to the delltalk moderator: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_video&message.id=48721#M48734 .

I got one of these in a Dimension 8250 I ordered and received last week. The core speed is 263MHz and the memory speed is 523MHz. The memory width is 256-bit.

There is some assorted weirdness with the card that is causing trouble, and I think that was done on purpose. The Adapter String on the card is blank. Drivers beyond 6193 don't seem to work with the card and will turn off all acceleration on reboot, although it works fine the first time after installing before rebooting.

Also *no* overclocking programs can read the clocks on the card. I used RadEdit and the 3DMark2001 MT fillrate score to verify core clock speed (2080MT/s = ~260MHz). That also leads to another problem. It's not possible to publish 3DMark2001 scores since the card is reported as "Generc VGA".

BIOS clock speed tweaking by imaging, using RadEdit and flashing back doesn't work. Changing the clock speed from default (+/- just 6.75MHz) makes a screen full of colored snow when the desktop is displayed in Windows.

But it is fast and it was dirt cheap, so I'm not too disappointed.

Dell has the cards as an option in the US and German sites.

KnightBreed

02-Dec-2002, 18:34

Perhaps this thread would be better suited here (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13)?

Nagorak

03-Dec-2002, 01:52

First open up your case and check out the card and make sure it resembles other R9700 cards and isn't a totally new design. Once you've verified that it's the standard 9700 design, then search online for a Radeon 9700 retail BIOS and flash it. If it works the card should be detected as a Radeon 9700 retail... On the other hand, if it doesn't work, you'll end up with a blank screen. So be sure to make a batch file to flash back to the standard BIOS and put it on floppy just in case (comp will still load with incorrect, but you'll have to do everything blind...so, it's probably best if you just put it in the autoexec.bat on a floppy that you can pop in the drive in case of emergency).

pxc

03-Dec-2002, 07:19

The card is just a regular 9700. I've already removed it, stripped off the heatsink and examined it thoroughly.

2 problems: First, I can't find a regular retail 9700 BIOS. I have a 9700Pro BIOS and a 9500 Pro BIOS (useless for me), but I can't use the current beta of RadEdit to turn down the clocks to a more reasonable level.

Secondly, the card has Infineon memory and there seems to be memory specific BIOS files from others' screenshots I've seen of RadEdit on 9700 BIOS files. Unfortunately, all I have seen are screenshots of Samsung BIOS images. Remember this isn't PC memory where it's standardized and has a helper EEPROM with SPD data. Using the wrong memory-type specific BIOS could make a blank screen (or worse) after a flash a real possibility.

I'm pretty sure the tweaking and driver problem is a lack of Adapter String on the card. Whether that's stored in the flashable serial ROM or not is a mystery to me still since I can't find anyone to do the simple task of opening display properties, clicking Advanced and telling me what the **Adapter String** (NOT Adapter Type) says on the Adapter tab for the 9700. I could tell if the string is in the ROM image or not if I could get that info. Otherwise, it would be necessary to get a tweak program that blindly writes to the card registers to overclock it instead of trying to detect the card since that doesn't work.

I can understand ATi wanting to lock the cards to prevent overclocking, but this is taking it too far by preventing driver upgrades and disabling a standard program like 3DMark2001 from submitting scores. What were they thinking?

pxc

03-Dec-2002, 07:33

First open up your case

Sorry, forgot to laugh at that comment. I'm not some newbie. I normally build my own, but it's hard to argue with a $400 total shipped after rebates P4 2.4 533MHz FSB/256MB PC1066/Radeon 9700TX system at that price. I don't mind a prebuilt system that's this cheap, fast and quiet.

I've already filled up the case with my usual hardware and everything is running well. Out with the DVD-ROM and cheap 30GB hard drive, in with the 52x24x52 CD-RW and DVR-104 DVD-RW, 2 x 60GB RAID and controller, FireWire and creative digital VCR cards.

I also tested it as it arrived... same detection/overclocking/driver problems when it was factory fresh, plus I made a Ghost image of the drive before I turned it on for the first time so I can easily return it back to "new as shipped". It took several hours of trial and error to narrow down the problems to what I described above. I have little doubt that the solution to this problem will be an updated 9700 TX BIOS+driver set and/or a replacement card.

Ichneumon

03-Dec-2002, 08:41

pxc

03-Dec-2002, 14:13

Have you tried Rage3D Tweak (http://www.rage3d.com/r3dtweak) for testing overclocking? If that program does fail to OC the card, if you'd you let me know the PCI Device ID for that card i'll get it added. It's possible that card has a non-standard ATI ID which I haven't implemented in r6probe yet.

Yes, I've tried it and it gives N/A for both clocks. I made a feedback at rage3d.com in the tweaking forum. Look in the sticky Rage3D tweak thread, I left the last message there with a link to the description of the problem and a dump of WIYP.

jvd

03-Dec-2002, 22:01

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7163&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

retail bios

Tagrineth

04-Dec-2002, 01:26

Sorry, forgot to laugh at that comment. I'm not some newbie. I normally build my own, but it's hard to argue with a $400 total shipped after rebates P4 2.4 533MHz FSB/256MB PC1066/Radeon 9700TX system at that price. I don't mind a prebuilt system that's this cheap, fast and quiet.

Oh. Shit. That. Is. Tempting. :o

Tahir2

04-Dec-2002, 02:42

pxc

04-Dec-2002, 02:48

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7163&perpage=15&pagenum ber=1

retail bios

I found a similar thread at Rage3d with more BIOS downloads and a fixed RadEdit 1.1D. I modified (changed vendor to ATi, core and memory to 280MHz default and TV out from PAL to NTSC) and flashed a 8004 BIOS on this card and now tweaking works fine. Thanks for the link, though.

Ichneumon, the Rage3D tweaker works great with the new BIOS. Very nice display properties addon you made there.

McElvis

04-Dec-2002, 13:43

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7163&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

retail bios

I found a similar thread at Rage3d with more BIOS downloads and a fixed RadEdit 1.1D. I modified (changed vendor to ATi, core and memory to 280MHz default and TV out from PAL to NTSC) and flashed a 8004 BIOS on this card and now tweaking works fine. Thanks for the link, though.

Ichneumon, the Rage3D tweaker works great with the new BIOS. Very nice display properties addon you made there.

So what are the max speeds you can get out of it now?

jvd

04-Dec-2002, 15:02

no problem. Btw my card runs at 350/350 notice a nice increase in my ut23k scores at 1280 x 1076 (I think this is right , i allways mess these up) and 6x fsaa and 16tap aniso . fps about 6-10 more.

pxc

04-Dec-2002, 21:17

So what are the max speeds you can get out of it now?

I've tried up to 300MHz core speed with the original heatsink, but that gives artifacts in a closed case. I backed down to 290MHz core speed and it works perfectly in everything. I haven't pushed the memory past 290MHz DDR yet, but it should probably do at least 300-310MHz DDR stable. I didn't have much time last night when I finally flashed the BIOS, just enough time to test 2 speeds with several 3DMark2001 loops and play games for a few minutes. I'll know how high the memory is stable up to tonight.

Edit: The memory *is* the problem: Infineon 3.6ns SGRAM won't budge past 295MHz DDR (590MHz) without giving artifacts. It must be that the memory timings are more aggressive than I expected. The core is happy at 310MHz so far.

Ichneumon

09-Dec-2002, 04:39

I've added support for overclocking the 9700TX to Rage3D Tweak.
The full new version will be out in a couple days. Until then, use the following files with the current version.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=1331587061#post1331587061

Nappe1

10-Dec-2002, 12:01

...1280 x 1076 (I think this is right , i allways mess these up).

ooops... ;)
how about 1280x1024? ;)

sorry... I couldn't resist.