[Damian]

Did anyone else see this? I ordered a Sapphire 9800pro about a week ago, and the RAM is Hynix HY5DU283222 AF-28 (at least it's 2.8ns). What happened to Samsung 2.8ns? Is ATI trying to make the newer 9800pros bad so they wouldn't compete with the 9800XT, or did they just run out of Samsung?

The core artifacts at 410 and the RAM at 280... pretty terrible. Many newer 9800pros seem to o/c badly.

[Evnas]

In my experiance (though I havent had first hand with the Samsung memory), Hynix has produced FAR better memory then any of the other companies for video memory, and has been ATi's #1 memory supplier for years.

In short, I dont think its an attempt by ATi to make newer 9800 Pro's bad at all, nor does it anyways.

Strida says he can get his up to 380Mhz with no problems, and that seems about the norm for the Samsung memory as well (according to the overclock sticky)

[Damian]

Well as far as I can tell, Samsung usually does 380-390, while Hynix does 370.

OK, I should've made a separate thread about my conspiracy theory. However, the core IS terrible; 400 is very low, even for stock cooling. Lots of other new 9800s have terrible cores too. The memory might be explainable, but this? Maybe it's because ATI cut down on 9800nps and stopped binning the crappy cores?

[Strida]

Yea, mine goes up to 380. I can get it up to 390 with minimal artifacts, but I don't consider that a successful overclock.

On the other hand, my core DOES suck. I can't get it over 395 with an Arctic Cooler without it artifacting. But, once I get my new copper 1u heatsink, I should be able to AT LEAST get XT speeds. BTW, with XT Speeds I can still go through 2k3 with no or very very few artifacts, but I get crazy artifacts on the twirly ball thing.