Got a 9600 non pro for a recently built PC. The fact that they don't come with fans is a bad issue as the one I got only gad a heatsink a little bigger than a matchbox. On running, especially in games, you could actually smell burning and the heatsink was too hot to touch. I managed to fit a 50mm fan onto it which made all the difference. While it wasn't locking up in games, I wouldn't have expected it to last long! Its also very difficult fitting specialised coolers onto them as they are covered in capacitors around the core unlike the pro model.

To remove any confusion over what I said, and what I meant.
I assumed that the 9600SE was built in the same manner as the 9500 which I was able to softmod to bring on 4 extra texture pipelines.
After some recent research lots of people are now stating that this isn’t possible with this design, only the 9500 and 9800Se.
In my defense I only added this statement after I used Softmodded drivers and noticed a small performance increase. But in retrospect this might have been down to other tweaks provided by that driver. Even on the 9500 the improvement wasn’t massive due to the bandwidth restrictions. I’m reliably told that the 9800SE mod is a more impressive improvement.
Hope that resolves any confusion.

No it doesnt really. The mod you referred to is impossible.

If you 'modded' the 9600se and thought you had activated extra pipelines then your score would increase massively. Also you could have checked with something like riva tuner how many pipes were being used.

I hope that clears up how to check if you have sucessfully opened up the extra pipelines. That and the fact that ONLY the 9800se and 9500 cards can be soft modded.

Pete

Soft modding a 9500 would probably give 2 - 4000 increase in score in 3dmarks2001. Although this isnt a definitive benchmark for realistic apps it does provide a decent insight into gains