[G4] Re: identifying a Radeon 8500

[Ralph Garrett]

On Dec 9, 2004, at 10:24, Sean Collins wrote:
>
>> there is no
>> real difference except that the PC card had a faster core clock speed
>> (275 v. 250 MHz).
>
> I wasn't aware of that.  Depending on how ATI implemented the core 
> clock, a flashed PC card may or may not still run at 275.
>
> If the clock multiplier is coded in the firmware, then the flashed 
> card will run at 250.  If it is hard coded on the circuit board, or 
> w/in another chip, then the flashed card will still be running at 275. 
>  If it IS a flashed PC card, and still running at 275, that could be 
> the cause of the problem.
>
> Neither System Profiler or the ATI Utility reports clock speed.  I'm 
> not aware of any utility that will report video clock.


The core and memory speed are set in the ROM and PC versions of the 
card came with several different speeds for the core and memory, 
depending on the memory chips installed on the card. I don't know of 
anything that reports core and memory clock speed either but it can be 
adjusted. The MacBidouille ToolKit allows you to adjust the ROM speed 
for both core and memory before flashing the card. Get it here 
ftp://ftp.cybercoment.com/pub/macgeforce/MBToolKit.tgz
Use an ftp client to DL. Drop the ROM on the app and type in the values 
you want to test. Some PC cards  have to be slowed down to 235 or 
slower to run reliably.

Ralph