sapphire relabeling 9800 xt to 9800 pro!?

[Boyne7]

i was using the cat 4.2s with my 9800pro and it was going crazy, couldnt OC worth SHIAT but i went back to cat3.9s and its MUCH better.

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Boyne7
i was using the cat 4.2s with my 9800pro and it was going crazy, couldnt OC worth SHIAT but i went back to cat3.9s and its MUCH better.

Excellent.

That means its not these cards from newegg then.

Probably ordering one on monday.

[b0bd0le]

Originally posted by sky
hey bob, what cats have you been running? tried changing them? for me 3.9 did best so far, but then again i can't find my 3.6ers as they used to be the cat of choice for my 96tx.

oh hey, could all those pro-xt users post what cats worked best and what gave the most artifacting and temps and all that? thanks.

so far artifacting is really only a prob with mother nature in '03. i can run '01 at 412/365 for as long as i want.. no fuss. aquamark, well i've to keep it around 412 core to pass through without artifacting. '03.. hm 408 max i'd say when the system has run other tests previously. a cold boot after some 30mins of being of might work aswell. after a number of '01 loops i checked the temps again, 49°C going down to 39°C idle in like 4-5 mins (using cat 3.9).

brwmogazos, that's strange. you've seen the prices i posted some pages back? i'd think it's funny that you can't or only at a mucho high prices get these cards in the uk. rest of europe has them available for around 300 euros, while a 'real' xt is like 380-480 (if you chose to go for hercules). you might want to have a look across the channel.. geizhals.at/deutschland has a listing of these cards starting ~286 euros. and it's already on the front page .


and yes, i'd do it again aswell (might have to anyway). though mine seems to turn out a little bummerish with her default cooling, i'll give it another go. oh and i spent some time looking into the xt-vmods last night. damn this one seems almost easy compared to the my old 96tx where you had to solder to the legs of various ics with plenty of stuff around to make it even harder. with the xt it's 'only' resistors that have a bigger area than those freaking ic-legs and all those resistors are easily accessible.

hmm, maybe your case temps are high?

my case is open and on its side
with stock cooling, looped 03 for 5 hours it ran fine

cats 4.2

what did the lesser cats do for you?

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by b0bd0le
hmm, maybe your case temps are high?

my case is open and on its side
with stock cooling, looped 03 for 5 hours it ran fine

cats 4.2

At what clocks?

[sky]

he.. i was a little p!ssed at mine yesterday. so today i thought "death or glory" and so i started the xt-vmod as shown here. as i didn't have a 20k pot, i used 2x 10ks in series. slapped it onto a little extra board, insulated it with hotglue, connected one end to ground on the powerplug, the other to resistor r1597 (with hotglue, what else? ). as i wanted to see if it is/was working, i kept both pots at 10k - adding up to 20k and thus resulting in a very slight raise of vgpu from 1.78v to 1.80v (on startup, as later on it drops about 0.02v and stays there).

as bob pointed out that the heatsink is a pos, i wanted to remove its top plate, but no can do - darn tiny screws (screw em, lol). so i thought f... it and slapped a 120' delta afb in my rig blowing in the general direction of the gpu. i can't put it straight on as there's a dvb-s card 2 slots below the agp, a networkcontroller and my good ole soundbastard audigy below that.. well doesn't matter... at 12v the delta delivers enough power to cool the gpu down to 33°C idle and 39°C full load. combined with that very small raise in voltage i can now run ati-tool 424/385 for 20mins without error. max clocks (found by atitool) went up to 433/399.

where before this little mod artifacts were showing in '03, now it's as clean as can be at same clocks. so i'll up the clocks later on.

another thing worth noting is while before all of this the gpu voltage dropped from 1.778v (idle) to 1.711v fully loaded, it now only drops from 1.78v (idle) to 1.754v - so this basically helped stabilize the voltages.

on a sidenote.. i'm anticipating 2 fortrons 530w psu's to come home to daddy within a month or so. those will help keep all of my 2 systems voltages in line. atm (with this rig) voltages are like this: (min / max / avg)

+12v: 12.10 / 12.71 / 12.35
-12v: -13.51 / -12.68 / -13.08
+5v: 4.81 / 5.00 / 4.92
-5v: -5.54 / -5.14 / - 5.29
+3.3v: 3.18 / 3.31 / 3.25

pretty crappy, eh?

k. here's some 2 pics of the vmod, same as described in the xt-vmod thread and working. no need for vmem (vdd) yet, as it's good for up to ~390 fully loaded atm.


closeup vgpu


all of it's hotglue glory. the brown cable is for measuring vgpu and leads to the header on my board. the board itself rests on 2x 0.5 cm high plastic standoffs that are countered on the other side of the card with another 2 standoffs, so i could easily use household m3 screws without shorting the card.


gogeta, which cats are you running, also if you've flashed to xt, what are the temps in the overdrive tab in cp? max i've seen was 68°C with cat 4.2 fully loaded. if you can, slap some bigas* fan in your rig, and aim it at the heatsink.

boyne, same thing happened here. not only did cat 4.2 oc like shiat for me, but it also gave me artifacts in '03 and aquamark at default 9800 pro clocks (with pro bios). what a pos. can't see how our uber-benchers make do with it . anyway i kept the 4.2 control panel and just reinstalled cat 3.9.. works like a charm. might try a modded 3.2 sometime soon.

[sky]

Originally posted by b0bd0le
hmm, maybe your case temps are high?

my case is open and on its side
with stock cooling, looped 03 for 5 hours it ran fine

cats 4.2

what did the lesser cats do for you?

didn't improve scores for all i know. but then again i don't remember what scores i got with 4.2 - didn't care for all i know as the artifacts p!ssed me off quite good.
and case temps.. hm.. my case is open - biggy chieftec 2000d room temp is at 18.3°C (64.8f) right now... was lower before... dunno low 17°C's or high 16°C's (~60f or so). back then i wasn't using an additional fan, and as said in my last post, 2 slots down from the agp is my dvb-s which puts out a good deal of heat... the delta takes care of that atm

[b0bd0le]

Originally posted by Soulburner
At what clocks?

412/365

[sky]

found something that really annoys me.
as said before my voltages tend to move around a bit. so i had the vpgu upped to 1.800v. that made it appear in windows as 1.78v (1.778v to be exact). so i continued upping it.. 1.85, now 1.90v - funny thing is, while at bootup the multimeter reads 1.778v, no matter what the pots are set to, atm 5.x ohm which should give me somewhere near 1.87v. but it continues to stay at 1.778v until the logon-screen appears (win2k). short time after that it jumps up to what i actually set it to - like 1.88v atm. some time after that it drops back down to 1.778v (just like before - and the vmod is still working!). now if i start a 3d-application, no matter what kind.. the voltage stays pretty much the same. slight drops to 1.76v no less.
so i guess i found out, why my card didn't make it to be a real 9800xt. if only i knew what to change, i would probably try it . and with this bummer voltage, there's no need to try and go higher on the clocks - the gpu just doesn't get enough juice. while upping it helped stabilize it at default xt-clocks and a little further it is nowhere near what i wanted to get out of it. guess it's time to ask catch22play whether he knows what to do...

doh
might be interessting to see if others experience this same voltage-issue. cooling doesn't do jack for me.. and now i know why

[Soulburner]

So the question going through my mind is...whats the best deal.

9800 Pro 128mb $225, flash to XT
9800 Pro 256mb DDR2, $312, flash to XT

It doesn't seem like this card is going to really net me anything more than the cheaper one...

[NapalmV5]

How about this one, 9800SE on 9800 PCB, $154,

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...alog=48&depa=1

But of course going for this one is risky but......

[Gogeta]

My temps were pretty stable and weren't varying around 50C. I was using a Maze4 gpu connected to the same loop as my CPU block, with a BIX for a rad. CPU temps of around 45C load. I'm sure my problem wasn't caused by heat.

I'm just going to RMA this card. Its nice, but I already have a 9700 Pro that can do 400/700, so its not much of an upgrade. Although image quality did increase noticeably in 3DMark (not the IQ bench, just my eye). I plan on upgrading to an 875P platform soon, and will need the extra cash for that.

btw, I was using Omega 2.5.2.2 (Cat 4.2). But also tried using Cats 3.9 and got the same problem.

Good luck guys!

[Boyne7]

so... it would seem that there are more things different in this card from the normal xt than just the bios and cooling.

[sky]

Originally posted by Boyne7
so... it would seem that there are more things different in this card from the normal xt than just the bios and cooling.

nah, don't think so. i just know - now - that mine and gogeta's cards have been downlabeled for a reason . mine has a problem with unstable voltages and his, who knows? if i don't find a solution to curing that, i'll rma it on monday and get another card

[Boyne7]

oh, so urs is just defective so to speak.
that greatly reassures me, couse i dont want to end up with a card that performs worse than my 9800pro

[Semper Fi]

update:

threw some cheap ram sinks on it, can now run 430 on the ram without artifacts, brought my 3dmark01 score up to 23.9k!! just 100 off from 24k!

[hollywood]

Originally posted by Soulburner
So the question going through my mind is...whats the best deal.

9800 Pro 128mb $225, flash to XT
9800 Pro 256mb DDR2, $312, flash to XT

It doesn't seem like this card is going to really net me anything more than the cheaper one...

Mine will be in Monday or Tuesday. I'll be putting my Alpha Pal 6035 / both voltmods and ramsinks on it and flashing with the same BIOS Semper Fi did within 3 hours of removing the plastic wrap.

I'll have total pics / benchies and voltages up in a review.That is my goal for early next week. As mine is the retail boxed one...it may make a difference.

-Holly

[Soulburner]

That's perfect, because monday will be order time for me.

I will await your review.

BTW, did you guys use a different BIOS than Semper Fi? Seems hes the only one with superb results so far.

[Semper Fi]

I think we're all using the same bios, I clicked the link they posted.

Could be the cooling, I have a massive AMD hsf on the core and some chunky sinks on the ram with an 80mm tornado and a 120mm sunon mounted on the side panel.

[Speed_Mechanic]

Originally posted by NapalmV5
How about this one, 9800SE on 9800 PCB, $154,

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...alog=48&depa=1

But of course going for this one is risky but......

So PowerColor USA is back to offering a 9800 SE w/ a 256-bit memory interface. After softmod (Omega Drivers) this would (if not changed otherwise) be the follower of the 9800 Non-Pro or a cheaper priced 9800 Pro (depending on the memory). The low-price of $154 is quite nice

Given the fact that it has a normal 9800 PCB, 256-bit memory interface and all, this would be without much to any risk. The only risk would be A) the memory (ns rating, company) and B) the fact that they didn't disable any other features (which is unlikely). And the slight (depending) risk that the disabled pipelines may be partially physically damaged.

[Semper Fi]

Just hit 24k

[hollywood]

Originally posted by Semper Fi
Just hit 24k

I hate you...

All aircooled right??? Well...the game is on Monday buddy!!!

[Semper Fi]

IT'S ON BIATCH!!!!1

[Kosmic]

LOL @ the smileys. Congrats on that nice score, and getting (so far) one of the best of these 9800pro/xt cards in this thread.

Originally posted by Semper Fi
Just hit 24k

[hollywood]

Does anyone else have one of these yet???

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Hollywood
Does anyone else have one of these yet???

I have the cash and as soon as Mon.-Tues. results show up from another person or two, my order will be placed.

I just have to devise a way to get this Aeroflow mounted on it for some major air cooling, as these things seem like they run pretty darn hot.

Oh and how do I make the TMD fan stop vibrating?? The damn thing is like off center or something so I stopped using it...