In general, manufacturers and developers of graphics cards do not support overclocking, but in interviews they say that they do not restrict their customers from overclocking the graphics cards somehow. Nowadays more and more users try to transform their inexpensive graphics cards to something more powerful via setting the higher core-clock and memory clocks. Moreover, since the yields with common graphics chips are very high, they have better potential for working at much higher speeds and some graphics cards makers may purchase the cheaper GPUs, overclock them and sell for higher price, receiving additional profit. That is why ATI as well as 3Dlabs try not to let end-users as well as vendors to overclock their products (the latter does not apply to 3Dlabs).

Since ATI utilises the same R300 graphics chip for all the RADEON 9500 and 9700 graphics cards, it is a critical task for them not to allow any kinds of overclocking on some of them due to the reasons mentioned above. Currently ATI and their AIB partners sell the RADEON 9500 PRO and the RADEON 9700-based graphics cards with the special BIOS that does not allow overclocking. It is ridiculous, but in less than three weeks time ATI began to ship the mentioned products, hardware enthusiasts managed to find the way to modify BIOS settings that restricted the devices from being overclocked.

Voila! It works, click here for more details.

Reminder:

• This news-story is just a kind of “for information purposes only” and shouldn't be regarded as an appeal to perform any actions.
• These modifications may shorten your card's service life.
• Any sort of mechanical modifications deprives the users of the warranty.
• Should the graphics card or other components be wrecked, the users bear the complete responsibility for their actions.