sapphire relabeling 9800 xt to 9800 pro!?

I purchased a Newegg refurbed Saphire 9800 Pro 256mb, OEM on mar 15th for 228.00, free shipping. Got it today and after making sure it would overclock to XT levels, and the chipset read r360, flashed it to ATI 9800XT hynix ram bios. It's happily playing Farcry at 1024x res with highest video settings. So far, the slowest I have seen in Farcry has been 53 fps using Fraps. It still wont do Farcry at 1280x1024 on highest settings, but will on high setting. But seeing fps get down to 27-28fps. Still very Playable.
UT2004 is at 1280x1024, everything maxed out, never gets below 150fps. I am also using the Omega 2.5.22 drivers at high quality.
I changed from an ATI 9700 pro and don't let anyone tell you that it's not worth the upgrade from a 9700 pro to a 9800 pro. BIG difference. Even the IQ is noticeablely better.
As far as overclocking goes, the best the core will do is 414 and the memory will hit 389 with no artifacts. This is with stock cooling. I am going to tap my old Alpha PAl 66 to fit and cut some ramsinks just to cool it down, not for overclocking. Overdrive says 68C after 45-50 m inutes of UT2k4. Too hot for my tastes. And I have a 120mm Panaflo blowing directly onto the vidcard.
Haven't loaded up 3DMark cause there's a lot people showing scores with comparable systems, so I feel that I am close.

Main Rig:
AMD 2400+ Mobile at 2532mhz (211x12) 1.825vcore
Gigabyte 700n pro2 mb NF2
1gb Mushkin 3200 lvl 2 at 2-3-3-10 2.8vdimm
1 WD Raptor 36gb Sata (system drive)
1 WD 160gb sata (no raid)
4 WDJ 120 ide
Pioneer slot load 16x DVD
Liteon 851s 8x dvd-rw
Digital Doc 5
Water cooled w/2 Black Ice Extreme rads and 2 Panaflow 120mm 1A's (one is blowhole, one is backplane mounted)

robowang, install rivatuner and read the more-realworld like temps there. control tab shows me 56°C while riva says 36°C - and rivatuner actually reads another temp and it also shows decimals not just the fat numbers... btw nice fps in farcry. my old palo1800+ running default speeds give me something like 30fps min with the 9800 @slightly below xt-speeds... oh and core temps go up then to 42°C on both my cpu and my gpu :)

I'll bet the 128mb Pro's that have the R360 core(apparently there are some of floating around), are the one's that like the XT BIOS flash. That might explain why some people have good luck with the flash while many others do not.

Hey 2fast better talk to that guy from the XT vmod thread that revived his XT:D

hey guys,

Just got my refurbished(looks brand new!) 9800pro from newegg.

It DOES have the hynix 2.5 memory chips and the r360 core!

Flashed the XT bios and got 440/375 with no artifacts with stock cooling. can't wait to put my MCW50-T on it to cool it down!

what other program besides rivatuner do you use to monitor taemperature of the card? ATM,I'm using atitool,but I don't think it has a temp indicator.

I haven't loaded rivatuner yet because the omega guy says it may have conflicts with his driver. So, at this time, I am stuck with overdrive.
If the chipset hadn't said r360, I wouldn't have flashed a new bios as it would run 412/365 stock. However, I had the r360 and thought it would be nice to get the few extra optimizations and overdrive from it. I am sure that the card was a refurb because it would not oc very well (414/385). But, I think it will do better once I get a better cooling solution on it.
I have a homemade water block that would fit, but my case is pretty full as it is, and it wouldn't take much to drill and tap an old Alpha PEP 66 that I have, plus I have a drawer full of heatsink material I can cut for ramsinks.
If it wasn't for the heat (and you can feel the heat a couple inches from the card) I would just keep it as a stock 9800xt for the 228.00 I paid. I paid 329.00 for my 9700 pro just last Febuary!
Compared to the 9700 pro (still a great vidcard), Farcry plays very smoothly with all settings highest and looks very sharp at 1024. With the 9700, I had to play it with medium settings with just a couple set to high.
I have gotten two refurb vidcards from newegg that "checkered" right off and had to send them back. One was an AIW 9700 pro, and the other (2 weeks ago) was a Sapphire 9800 pro 256mb "Ultimate", which, by the way, is NOT a rebadged XT. So I guess it was worth the rma as I would not have gotten this card.
I got lucky, this time, and am happy.

slapped a waterblock on mine and run it in a passive system ~435 core, 392 mem (no sinks yet).. we'll see... water temps should be around +30°C

Haven't checked in on this thread for quite some time, but as an update, now that the temps are starting to warm up here in Cali, my card is getting incredibly hot. This is with a stock Athlon XP cooler slapped on there... overdrive is reporting the temps @ idle 55c in a 75f room. I might have to watercool this badboy.

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Originally posted by G H Z
Hey 2fast better talk to that guy from the XT vmod thread that revived his XT:D

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It is alive! Just ran a 7921 3D03 with it last week.

Its warming up here bigtime too. My CPU load temp is up by ~5c, and the air coming out the back is getting on the "hot" side, instead of just warm.

I won't have to back down my clocks on the CPU but I will on the GPU...gonna run the card stock from now on as im seeing artifacts after a while (what game needs more than 412/730 anyway?).

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Originally posted by Soulburner
Its warming up here bigtime too. My CPU load temp is up by ~5c, and the air coming out the back is getting on the "hot" side, instead of just warm.

I won't have to back down my clocks on the CPU but I will on the GPU...gonna run the card stock from now on as im seeing artifacts after a while (what game needs more than 412/730 anyway?).

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Doom I:D

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Originally posted by aoc007
Doom I:D

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Doom I is definately a monster on the pipelines... I might just have to get another prommy for my card to run it at an acceptable framerate. :D BTW aoc007, where in the Bay you from?

Soulburner... I know your HSF is pretty damn chunky, larger then my stock Athlon cooler, but I actually have to clock mine down to 370/380 to run BFV for just an hour or I get constant drops back out to the desktop. I'm thinkin it might just be the game needing a patch, but lowering the clocks does stabilize it a lot. Same thing happens in DC and FarCry. When I touch the HSF on the 9800, it's literally HOT to the touch, real hot. So is the entire PCB of the card and all the vacant air in the surrounding area of the case.

sorry did'nt readed the whole thread, so every new sapphire 9800pro is actually a XT? or will change this in future?

Im from El Cerrito/Albany (east bay)

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Originally posted by cos
sorry did'nt readed the whole thread, so every new sapphire 9800pro is actually a XT? or will change this in future?

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Sapphire 9800 Pro 256mb editions with only 8 ram chips are actually r360 cores that couldnt hit the higher XT clocks, so you can get a XT bios and enable the on-die temp probe and overdrive.

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Originally posted by Semper Fi
Soulburner... I know your HSF is pretty damn chunky, larger then my stock Athlon cooler, but I actually have to clock mine down to 370/380 to run BFV for just an hour or I get constant drops back out to the desktop. I'm thinkin it might just be the game needing a patch, but lowering the clocks does stabilize it a lot. Same thing happens in DC and FarCry. When I touch the HSF on the 9800, it's literally HOT to the touch, real hot. So is the entire PCB of the card and all the vacant air in the surrounding area of the case.

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Hm what about NFSU, Max Payne 2, Warcraft 3, RTCW, played any of those?

I can run them all overclocked and my load temp in overdrive says 60c+.

I'll give FC and BFV a try. I use CAT 4.2 (Omega).

Yes, NFSU does it as well but it takes a bit longer than the more current DX9 games, but seems more taxing (judging on core temps alone) then Desert Combat. I have the other 3 games, but they aren't installed so I can't tell you. I think it might have something to do with some kind of registry corruption so I'm going to do a fresh format next weekend and start fresh. Might solve the problem.

These things do get DAMN hot though. This leads me to believe that is the real reason why these things were re-flashed back to pro bios and repackaged... for some reason they were just getting too hot. But that would mean that they test every card before production which I doubt happens, ruling my whole last paragraph obsolete... hmmm :stick:

hey folks.. just get rivatuner. those temps are way more accurate than whatever the overdrive-tab in the control panel says!. i got a 55°C reading in overdrive and ~35°C in riva, plus the ambient temp shown in riva is also around there.

btw.. does anyone know whether doing the pinmod on a dlt3c 1700 (for fsb 200) does anything to the temps? my temps at same (overall) speed of 2.2ghz went up almost ~7°C fully loaded - that is watercooled cpu, watercooled nb and passive heatsink on the sb (9800pro also watercooled).
with all this, i could see the IDLE-temp of my 9800p->xt rise by 6°C to 38°C (so i guess the watertemp went up accordingly). pretty strange thing.

these dont seem all that great guys, with my 9800non pro i got 450core and 391mem with no mods except flash to pro bios(god i miss that board!!)

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Originally posted by R.Rabbit
these dont seem all that great guys, with my 9800non pro i got 450core and 391mem with no mods except flash to pro bios(god i miss that board!!)

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But you have a 128mb card. Ours are 256 and are a bit faster per clock.

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Originally posted by phobos
I'm curious to see your gigabyte cards results.
Come on RootX...clock the hell out of it :D

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Been a couple of weeks, late, but here it is:
3d 03- 7998
Watercooled, tweakmonsters on the mem.
Volt-modded.
Max benchable core, 505MHz with 1.9V
Max Mem, 420MHz, 2.82V.

Hello...:D

I got a sapphire 9800pro 128mb today went upto 465core 390mem on stock cooler(not maxed:slobber: )

So i just removed stock cooler and guess what :banana: R360:toast:

Gonna install Vga silencer tommorow and go for 480core hopefully more :eek:

Wow dude thats impressive. Hows the weather out there in the UK?

Soulburner,

How were you able to get your TMD fan to stop vibrating? Reason I'm asking is: I have one of those coolers laying around,
and I'm contemplating purchasing this card, and doing pretty much the same thing you did. IF I can get the damn fan to quit vibrating. I stopped using it as a CPU cooler because it was making my case vibrate :P

Mine was vibrating like hell too, was pretty annoying.

Try taking the screws for the fan out, turning the fan and retightening the screws, that stabilized mine.

I have one on my CPU and GPU and they are both turning 5700rpms smooth as butter.

ordered one of these puppies, ill get it on wednesday

would i have to mod the vga silencer to get it on the xt?

I have Sapphire 9800Pro with R360 Chipsat but i have a different cooler on it!!! Like normal one!!! But i looked at chipsat and it was R360!!! Can someone xplain to me!!! how can i open a Temeperature on it? I already Flashed it to the XT!!! ;)