I would like a 360 9800Pro w/ 128MB

I am about to buy my new 9800P and am trying to figure out which board to get to maximize my chances of getting a card that is XT modable. I know which card to get if I were going the 256 rout but I would rather not spend that much money. Any tips?

you have a good chance going with the sapphire

I think the MSI Pros all have R360 cores

My sapphire has it.

look for a card that has the heatsink that's in the shape of an L. I've found these are generally R360's.

What are the odds on the ATI made 9800 Pro 256s?

9800

I got mine in from Newegg last week. I got the Saphire 128 ram, 256 bit, it seems to be the 360. (am not sure how to take the heatsink off, but with ATI Tool, it o/c easily to xt speeds.) These are under $200 I think, good luck!
E

I think all of the newer Sapphire 9800Pros have r360. You may find a 9800Pro that has been on the shelf a while, but NewEgg should get you a newer r360 unit

DuckOnBike said:

What are the odds on the ATI made 9800 Pro 256s?

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Got one last week, it has the 360 core and temp monitoring. Basically, an XT in disguise

=ACID RAIN= said:

Got one last week, it has the 360 core and temp monitoring. Basically, an XT in disguise

Click to expand...

So you softmodded it without adding extra cooling, etc?

I hate the word softmod...that applies to drivers, not flashing the BIOS IMO, unless meanings have changed over the past few months...

I flashed the BIOS, the card was watercooled anyways. The stock "L" cooler will not deal with XT speeds, no way. I'm cutting and applying ramsinks this week, although the card doesn't really seem to need them, but it's probably healthier over the long term.

I bought my BBA board from best buy for $199 and it's a 360 core. Currently it's XT modded and OC-ed to 435/400 on a VGA silencer with no ram sinks =).

My R350 core 9800 Pro is "XT moddable". So are all 9800 video cards which can handle 9800 XT speeds stably (which is most of them).

By flashing the BIOS of your 128 Megabyte 9800 Pro, to that of a 9800 XT, you are accomplishing nothing except to change the stock speeds of the card, and in some cases increase benchmark performance slightly.

Only the 256 Megabyte DDR II 9800 Pro cards with R360 cores are *truly* 9800 XT cards, as the PCB is the same, and the temperature monitering can be unlocked with a BIOS flash.

128 Megabyte 9800 Pro cards with R360 cores are on the 9800 Pro PCB, and the Temperature monitering is not unlockable, nor will flashing the BIOS make the card a *real* 9800 XT.

So, if you want to get a 9800 XT for a lower price, you need to buy a 256 Megabyte DDR II 9800 Pro card that was manufactured fairly recently, with an R360 core.

From what I read, I think they went back to DDR, rather than DDRII, for the XT. I thought DDRII was on some older versions, but since it sucked (read: negligible gain, etc) they went with the Hynix DDR. Correct me if I'm wrong.

=ACID RAIN= said:

From what I read, I think they went back to DDR, rather than DDRII, for the XT. I thought DDRII was on some older versions, but since it sucked (read: negligible gain, etc) they went with the Hynix DDR. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

I'd like to know this too.


So, the general wisdom is that you don't really have a chance of OCing a 9800Pro without new cooling?

So since I'm presently too broke to go for new cooling, but I do have a R360, would it still be worth modding the BIOS to XT and then underclocking back to PRO speeds? Would that work? Are there real (as opposed to warranty) risks involved to the card?

i have a sapphire 9800 pro but it doesnt have the l shaped cooler on it is there a chance that it could still be an XT?

my sapphire 9800 pro 128 came with the 360... but can someone please tell me how to get temp monitoring to show up or work? i have it bios flashed to xt, in advanced properties i dont see any temp monitoring

Check out the post from felinusz.
You'll only have temp monitoring with a XT board, as only these boards are equipped with a LM63 thermal diode..
As your card has 128MB mem, its "only" a 9800 pro without temp sensor

hint for Zerileous:
save some money for a 256MB version..
you won't stay happy with 128MB in the near future, IMHO..

to xb1az3x:
do you already own the card? then just remove the heatsink and chek it out.
If you plan to buy a card, maybe you could post some pictures..

Hmm, well, changing the bios to XT does accomplish more than "nothing" on the 128 cards. if 500 extra points on 2003 is nothing, and better performance with FSAA is nothing than I guess your right. However, the bios update allowed me to increase my ram frequency from about 350 average to 400 average, for an increase of 100 total (700 - 800) This in turn increases FSAA performance, as well as other ram intensive operations.

I also heard that it unlocks an optimized 2.0 shader on the 360 cores, but what do I know.

So in turn, 128 megs is fine for compressed textures (which have just about zero difference in quality from uncompressed, ie you can't tell the difference) and any gaming resolutions below 1600 - 1200 (does anyone really game at that res anyway?) will have no difference in performances between the two cards.

As for being disapointed in the future, how long are we talking about? Eventually all 9800 cards whether 256 meg or 128 will be out in favor of the X800's... So no, I wouldn't pay more for the 256 meg version. If you can get it at the same price go for it, but I doubt you can.

As for better performance in HL2 and Doom 3.... if you really think that the extra ram will give you more options your kidding yourself. the 9800 pro/xt won't be able to keep up with any settings that will require that much ram anyway... Only the X800 and similarly high performance cards will be able to take advantage of this.

I know I'm new here, but take this advice, if you can get a 9800 pro cheap, regardless of ram amount, do it. especially if you can get a 360 core (more oc-able), Sapphire / MSI / BBA all generally use the 360 core on any card you'll find on the market. I can't say anything about the other companies because I don't have any first hand experience with them. However, I build computers as a side hobby, and have about 130 systems under my belt, if that's any form of credential.

I'm talking about 15-24 months .. I'm a student and I cannot afford 250$ every year. And I'm very sure, that my cards performace will be much better with the double amount of ram after a year has passed.
You can't say a game would need 512MB ram, but having 256MB or 128MB wouldn't make a difference.. where's the logic?
Maybe the GPU is too slow anyway, but without 256MB it will never have the chance to show whats its able to do. We can compare results, when doom3 is finally available.
But but if you want to buy a new card every year (many people here, do so - and I still don't know how some guys can afford 500$+ every year ),
then you can save your money and get the generation after the x800 (R500?).
256MB wouldn't pay off in this case.
And of course flash your card to XT as RobxMcCarthy said, there are several advantages.

Well you are correct if you are using uncompressed textures. Basically the only thing that clogs/sits on the ram is the huge texture maps that come with modern games. Even in these cases, when you compress them to about 1/3 the size (jpeg / whatever type of compression) which takes longer at load times if its done dynamically (maybe 2% longer) then logically (and actually) it will run the same on both 128 meg/ 256 meg versions of the card. Because think of it this way. if it's about 1/3 the size (over estimating, it's probably much less, especially on larger textures) with relatively the same visual quality, (unless you nit pick really badly..) then if you have 180 megs of uncompressed textures loaded into video-ram compressed that's 60 megs, now at this point we both have ~70 megs of v-ram left. And that's if you're using HUGE ammounts of uncompressed textures. (180 megs was again over estimating).

So you see, what they're talking about when they say running doom 3 at UBERHIGHQUALITY is that they must have 1600*1600 uncompressed textures in large amounts. Or huge lightmaps etc. Decreasing the texture quality from Super high res / uncompressed to Super high res compressed, will completely aleviate the 256 meg/ram problem.

In conclusion, you may have faster load times, and maybe 1-2% better performance, but unless you're playing doom 3 with 6xfsaa ontop of everything else (no chance on the 9800 anyway...) then It really won't make a lick of difference in the gaming experience.

This is just my opinion though, and I have known to be wrong =).

All I know is that with "very high" textures in far cry.. and very high in every other single setting... except water which is set to ultra high I get ~60 fps up to about 140 fps. But never below 45 fps. I wouldn't expect any more than that from a 9800 pro, whether it had 256 megs of ram or not.

I don't know about overclocking though, might be better with that card.