ATI Brand 9800np Retail vs Sapphire 9800np OEM Questions

After hearing the communnity's phenomal success on the forums regarding the 9800 np's price and o/c potential I am hopping on the bandwagon and buying one.

After careful shopping, I found that I can get an oem sapphire online for $240 or a retail ati from bestbuy for $250. I live in California so I would have to pay sales tax on either one (shopping online would only save me $10). I've searched the forums regarding the memory and know that almost all np's have the slower one.

My question is asides from a fancy,manual, box and longer warranty is if others on this forum have received different memory on the ATI brand 9800 non pros vs the sapphire ones. I would also like to ask others their gpu core o/c results on the ATI brand.

Thanks in advance,

-Efini

ok its kinda hit or miss with these non pros. DONT buy built by ATI
because it only comes with Infineon memory which is known to not clock high....Sapphire on the other hand uses Samsung AND Infineon...the thing is to get the Sapphire with the Samsung.

where in cal are you? Im in San Diego and I know of a local shop here that stocks Sapphire 9800np cards with Samsung for 249 plus tax.

anyways, the sapphire with samsung ram can be flashed as well ....I flashed mine with the 9800pro BIOS and it worked flawlessly. the problem with the Infineon ram is that sometimes it cant handle the PRO speeds so if flashed can cause all sorts of problems. the Samsung does not have this problem. Good luck man, and if you really are serious on getting the card with the better ram let me know maybe i can help ya out if you cant get it in your area.

Thanks for the info, this was definitely the answer I was looking for. I live up in Northern Cali (1 hour south of Frisco) though and most of the places that are literally a 30 minute drive only allow internet orders. (The irony...)

As for the Sapphire with Samsung ram, I looked around for some recent posts to see which online retailers people bought it from. I didn't quite find one that assures samsung. If you can reply with one, I would definitely appreciate it. I visit Westwood, Monterey Park, Pomona once in a while so buying it locally may not be out of the question, I just roo I-110 S. Lastly, I noticed your o/c specs in your sig, is that with stock cooling?

Thanks,

-Efini

didn't really kno or care too much about a video card, just kno i needed one for a new pc i was building... ran into BB and caught a sale w/ rebate on a built by ati video card... 9800np... it has samsung 2.86ns for memory... this was about a month or so ago... lucky i guess... don't think i've ever seen the sapphire cards tho...

DONT buy built by ATI because it only comes with Infineon memory which is known to not clock high....Sapphire on the other hand uses Samsung AND Infineon...the thing is to get the Sapphire with the Samsung.

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NO. Chances are you'll end up with Infineon ram if you go with the retail ATI version, but plenty of people have gotten samsung as well. Just search around on hot deals forums (@ anandtech or fatwallet) where people actually bought the retail ATI cards @ Best Buy and Circuity City, you'll see people getting both.

You *do* want samsung ram, but the only way to gaurantee that is to buy a card off eBay or a FS forum where the seller can actually look @ the card and tell you.