Guys, here's an interesting new article from x-bit labs that talks about an online store that tried a number of cards, and had about a 30% failure rate. X-bit lab then says that probably the most likely explanation is that: ATI does use R300 cores that have bad pipelines in some of the 9500's, but at the same time yields have been good and demand for 9500's has also been so high that many have 8 fully functional pipelines.