Please help me get the most out of this Sapphire 9800SE

[Horse2]

So this is my card:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/169/Sapphire.9800SE.128.Infineon33.030826.html

Sapphire 9800 SE
Interface: AGP ?
Memory Size: 128 MB
Memory Type: DDR
Memory Bus: 128bit
Core Clock: 324 MHz
Memory Clock: 270 MHz
Installed Memory: Infineon 3.3

Under the heatsink was a 350 core. I installed an old CPU heatsink and put a 80mm fan on it, softmodded to 8 pipes and it o/c'ed to 400/330 flawlessly. The difference is day and night in most games.

Now there's a few things more I want to do: Add ramsinks. I'd like to overvolt also but the instructions I found were mostly for 256bit cards, with the L shaped memory layout. Mine had 128 bit I shaped layout and the instructions I found don't match my card either, so I dunno what to do. I'd also like to flash the bios so as to permit further memory OC and not need special drivers with unlocked pipes, but I'm really not confident what bios to use. Here again, it seems 256bit is the favoured flavour for mods. Also it would be quite sweet to have the proper clock speeds set right in the bios so I could not need to use a tweaking tool. So I'm still reading up on these things, but if it should so happen that you know what to do, or can refer me to the proper places...



Anyways, for now what I'd like to understand is why the card's settings affect CPU score in 3Dmark03. Let me present the situation:


First off, this is the machine it's running on, these settings didn't change:





Now the video card, here it's in stock form with official ATI drivers:





Here it's softmodded with Omega drivers giving it twice the pipes and o/c to 400/330 using ATItool:





I have to say the score really does not do it justice, BF2 went from a handful frames per second or so to being actually playable and fairly smooth, system's RAM is clearly the most severe bottle neck. In Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield it made the difference between playing in 640X480 with all details at minimum and 800X600 with everything maxed out.

But the one thing that really sticks out in the 3dmark03 scores is the CPU score is drastically lower, disadvantageous with the tuned video card, 250 vs 146? And the CPU test @ 250 really was faster on the screen, it's not just a software glitch. If it's possible to keep the great vid performance and not hit the CPU too much, I'd like to know how.

 

[Gibbo3771]

lol thats to bad mate a plya battlefiled alot BRILLIANT GAME!!!! lol anyways is a new card your going for or a new system and whats your budget???

 

[Horse2]

I think you've misread, I'm not interested in buying a new card or system.

It's likely I'll keep using this card for a while as it seems quite capable of running the things I want. The rest of the machine should change soon as my brother gave me his computer carcass for Xmas, seems the PSU blew and took out the mobo. I'm left with a case, a working 3ghz Northwood with a very nice Zalman CNPS5700D-Cu cooler, two 512m sticks of PC3200, this videocard, a cd burner and dvd burner, misc cables. Still need a a PSU & mobo.

The point of this thread is to get the most out of the Sapphire 9800se card.


Edit:
Benching with the softmod (8 pipes) but stock speeds, the CPU score seems good...

 

[flashstar]

I would seriously consider buying a new video card even though you are opposed to it. You will seriously see a 500% improvement by purchasing a 2900 gt for $130 or even an 8600gt for $100. That $100-$130 will be the best money that you've spent in a long time. I didn't see an improvement when going from a Northwood @ 3 ghz to an Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.4 ghz even though it was technically 1.7x as fast, but I did see a gigantic improvement when going from a 9800 pro to a 7800gtx (which is around the same speed as a 8600gt).

 

[Horse2]

Found out what was causing cpu score to plummet: ATI hotkey polling service, it's gone now.

Also did some minor driver tweaking and got 4352 3DMarks, a nice 5% improvement!

Made this vid in BF2, to show the difference before/after this early tuning:

Edit:

After much digging it seems the Sapphire 9800se 128m is a 9500pro 128m pcb with an r350 core on it. This would be why 9800 voltmods didn't seem to apply, thankfully voltmods for 9500pro pcb's are easy to come by.

My core is currently ~1.5v and mem ~2.85. Interestingly, it would appear most 9800SE's send ~1.6v to the core, and pros ~1.7v. People have modded these up to ~1.9v air and >2v on water. So there's room for improvement on my card.



Edit2:

Seems the metal frame around the Radeon processor is ~0.1mm higher then the core, the stock cooler used a thermal pad to make up for it. Apparently it can be removed by gently fitting a razorblade between the core and metal frame on each corner and then twisting the blade. Suggests my present setup is probably quite less then ideal.



Edit3:

The plot thickens! Opening the card's bios in notepad reveals several references to the r300, as found in 9500pro's! An updated version refers to the r350 instead.

The one in my card ATM:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/168/Sapphire.9800SE.128.Infineon33.040107.html




The newer one:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/168/Sapphire.9800SE.128.Infineon33.040107.html




And a 9500pro bios of same make:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/337/Sapphire.9500PRO.128.Infineon30.030227.html




Consider that this card is from the same company that sold 128bit cards as 9800 "pro".



Edit4:

Ramsinks installed, 3cm high, ~2cm long and ~1.5cm wide. These are installed on chips that have 1cm sides and don't really seem to get hot anyways. I love the madmax look!





Edit5:

After 17 mins atitool aggressive artefact scanning, I got 10 more ram mhz, plus after re-doing the GPU cooling it's now running a lot cooler and 5mhz faster! (checking the pcb behind the gpu, it was pretty warm before, now it's rather cool) So I've entered 405/340 land, this card is ballin'!



Edit6:

After several mins in games, it starts artefacting. 339 it is
A fan would likely help.