sapphire 9700 pro - right choice?

[__TRONIK__]

got it for $178 refurbd on newegg. Red board, assume 2.8ns samsung? Think it had been OEM.

coulda got a refubd FIC 9700pro for $200 or a new powercolor 9700pro for $200

did I make the right choice? A 9800 woulda been nice, but at least $50 more, and I'd have to hope for 2.8ns ram.

I'll be vmodding the sucker on core with pot and maybe penciling in a bit more on mem and such. Watercooling via maze3 on gpu. hoping for at least 400/350 - any chance? I was at about 400 on gpu on my trashed 9500np and 310 on mem, and I still socred 20,000! hoping for more, as always. Gotaa love overlcoking.

 

[Steven4563]

yes shappire is much better than a powercolour if u are modding that thing i think u got a great chance. I get 387mhz core and 340mhz ram on my 9700NP

 

[__TRONIK__]

systems in our sigs are rather similar. wonder where the extra 300+ marks come from - tighter ram timings and extra barton cache seems to be bout the only difference.

 

[kaptkarl40]

yes shappire is much better than a powercolour if u are modding that thing i think u got a great chance. I get 387mhz core and 340mhz ram on my 9700NP

Why does everyone knock Powercolor? I've had a powercolor 9700 pro for about 6 months now. It ROCKS....and OC's very well. A damn good video card, and cheap too!

Just my 2 cents worth.....

Karl

 

[__TRONIK__]

scored a refurb'd 9800np oem sappire for $182. Last week got they sapphire 9700 pro w/sammy that I am now typing on. Looks like I'll have to have a little shoot out and sell the loser. It'll be a tough decision, since I won't be altering the stock cooling or voltmodding anything for the testing/overclocking, and the winner will be getting a full compliment of voltmods, plus ramsinks, and will be either water cooled or water+80watt tec cooled w/ Arctic silver 5
some expectations: (I might never find out the answers though if I don't mod them first - and don't check to see if one uses shim/pad or no shim + paste)


I would expect the 9800 to achieve a much higher overclocked gpu clock and have more efficient mhz to boot

The mem is another story - unless I luck out with sammy mem on the 9800, it is likely infin 3.3 right? Even with sinks and voltmods, the infineon will likely only hit 315-320, while the sammy should be good for 360 or maybe more.

so the question is, which would win out - 100mhz or so advantage in gpu for the 9800 over the 9700, or 100 or so advantage in the mem for 9700 over 9800?



I'm gonna start this as a regular thread bcuz i think it's interesting enough, but I'd love to hear yous guys' thoughts as well!