I recently got a Radeon 9500 Saphire card. Its a great card by itself, but it has a unique feature. Its crippled. In reality, it was made from a 9700 core. They crippled 4 of the pipelines to sell it as a cheaper card. People realized this and modified the driver, so that the extra 4 pipelines could be used. Check out this site for more details:

 

http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/index.php

 

You MUST get a 9500 that has the "L" shaped memory, not the "I" memory. The L memory is the crippled 9700 and is 256 bit, the I is 128 bit and is NOT a crippled 9700. You can softmod it as well, but it only turns in to a 9500 Pro.

 

The 9700 NP 256-bit can turn into a full 9700 NP. This is the one I bought:

 

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?pid=6538&sid=623DS5XPVT8L8PR2MF54VV8BSVFV1VU0#

 

Its also a Saphire, which has the added benefit of being unlocked for Overclocking, and it OC's well. I applied the softmod, no artifacts at all. The softmod consists of replacing a single DLL. No changes to the card. If it doesnt work or artifacts, just replace the old DLL. I nearly doubled my 3dsMarl score.

 

Hurry though! The cards are quickly being sold, and ATI is no longer making this type of card (the crippled version). They were losing too much money on them :)

Glad I could help. Make sure you run it through the entire 3DMark test or something similar to look for artifacts. From what I've heard, the artifacts are either non-existant (Like mine. I get a block in the upper right everyonce in a while), or extremely bad (bad checkerboard pattern everywhere).

My god, this sure feels like a goldmine. Absolutely mind numbing stuff...

Indeed. Makes you wonder why ATI didnt see this in advance. Oh well, cheap card for us, lots of power! :)