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Fixing softmod artifacts

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Gamemako

New Member
Joined
Sep 26, 2004
Well, I took a gamble, and I'm not sure yet if I think it was really fair, but I'll discuss that later. I went and got a Sapphire 9800SE thinking I could open the other 4 pipes and get 9800NP performance. Of course, it didn't work out that way. Typical.

Mod went fine, but when I tried to play games or run benches, I got those nice little boxes in diagonal patterns on my screen. Naturally, I was less than pleased. After a bit of research, I found a few solutions to test. One suggested disabling my Hierarchial Z with RTool. I went and downloaded the tool. I succeeded, but not the way I thought.

I first tried messing with my AA/AF settings, which of course did nothing. I then tried disabling Hierarchial Z. That had no more effect than to lower my performance. I saw the next option on there -- Z masking -- and wondered if that might also be the cause. I was correct. After entirely disabling Z masking, all the little black boxes were gone. I tested many other settings, but only this one worked. The downside to this fix: it costed me 400 2K3Marks (4900-4500). I'm glad it works, but the hit isn't exactly what I'd hoped for when I purchased the product. Oh well, at least it works, and much better than anything I could get with an overclock.

On an off note, I'm still considering RMAing the card because I'm not sure if it's going to survive. If I look closely I see waves in my display even without softmod. The only other time I've seen that was when I overclocked my GF4 Ti4200 to an unstable clock. I don't know if I want to risk having this card die on me -- I'd rather not get stuck dealing with a Sapphire RMA over Newegg's RMA policies.
 
I've never heard of the need to voltmod a 9800SE, only 9500NP. I really doubt a voltage problem would have caused the problem I had, especially considering I fixed it by disabling Z masking...
 
I think RMAing it would be pretty unethical considering it worked find at its standard settings. nonetheless, a volt mod could fix it up, but one of your pipelines could be slightly damaged causing that function not to work because i belive the entire "z" functions operate on solely one pipeline but and it is different with the 9800np and pro bios than the 9800ses.<you didnt get a fully on harmed 9800. Than again the core could have been designated a 9800se because of its voltage needs, entirely possible.

The volt mod for the 9800se is the same as 9800np and pro
 
Oh, no, I wouldn't be RMAing it because of the artifacts. Those are fixed with a performance hit that I'm willing to accept. I might RMA it because of these wierd lines in the screen that I see on stock settings, no softmod, no overclock. I'm just afraid it's going to burn out on me way too soon whether I softmod or not. I don't know yet; I'm still deciding. If I RMA it, it will definitely not be because of the artifacts -- it would be like re-rolling a 5 on the dice in hopes of a 6. I'm worried about a flaw that could kill the card regardless of what I do with it.
 
I noticed those same exact lines on my 9700pro I bought refurbed from newegg. After putting on a arctic cooling silencer the waves stopped.
 
Hmm... so the card's already running too hot?

I just had a bad experience with a fan burning out and a hot card becoming too hot to function even with a new heatsink. If it's definitely a heat problem, I'll probably RMA it...
 
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