Flashing my 9800 to Pro, how can .....

[Ultima]

Hey guys,

I heard I can flash my 9800 card to a Pro, but I was wondering about something.

What is the added value of this?? Is there something I'm missing??

Please let me know, cause I'm really curious.

Ultima

[Bob The Great]

here is a good little diddy on doing just that.

The added value is your going to get better preformance. Thats it, the 9800 has all the same things as the PRO technicly speaking, but it just lacks the speed of the 9800 PRO. I'm going to try this next winter if I haven't replaced my 9800 PRO by then (I probably will have replaced it a few times over knowing me). Currently I just don't see the need to lower the life of my card which it will be lowered as most 9800's ram isn't made for the speed of the pro.

[Ultima]

So I might as well just overclock the card and not risk ruining my card by a bad flash??

I asked our allknowing anime man Robrich, he says only difference is clock speeds, so I am not gonna bother flashing the card.

[tgxiii]

Becomes a 9800 Pro with headroom for furthur overclocking. Nearly all 9800np's will nto plain overclock up to 9800 Pro, the memory cant make it. You more or less have to use the BIOS flash to get up to Pro

That was from the link Bob the Great gave. If you plan on overclocking, flashing it to 9800 Pro will give you more potential apparently. You can't just overclock to 9800 Pro speeds, but if you flash it to 9800 Pro you can get it to 9800 Pro speeds and have room to overclock further. That is, unless I misinterpreted....

[Ultima]

Well,

then I guess I'm kinda lucky to have this card.

It is a non-pro, and I've already clocked it beyond pro speed, and that was without the ramsinks that are on their way to my place.

Besides, how would one come to the conclusion that the memory won't cut it??
I mean, the difference in speed is 50Mhz, would be pretty crappy ram if it wouldn't go that far.

And if the ram indeed would not make that, how would a bios flash result in the memory making it after all??

Sounds to me one would take a big risk their if you were to flash the bios to those speeds??

Like I said in my PM, the Pro BIOS does have a slightly different memory timing scheme, thus improving overclocking in certain situations. This is exactly the same deal as when I started the nVidia reference BIOS craze on the net back at the old site.

Since your card already exceeds Pro specifications when overclocked, I see no point in changing your BIOS. Additionally, one should suspect that the Pro BIOS may have slightly slower memory timings to achieve higher MHz ratings, thus the performance impact could be marginal at best even if you were to overclock your card further with the Pro BIOS.

Robert Richmond

PS - Back to watching anime...

[tgxiii]

I dunno. I was just telling the reasons people give as to why they flash their cards. I am not fortunate enough to be able to afford a 9800, even the non-pros, so I wouldnt know....

Don't feel left out, I am suffering with a Radeon 9600 Pro. Don't get me wrong, it is a great card for the price, until you try rendering a 1600x1200x32 scene with FSAA and AF.

[tgxiii]

Ultima, what company made your 9800? What are the speed ratings on the memory?

[Ultima]

My card is a genuine Built by ATI card, and the speed ratings are.....I dunno.

I'll look it up today, will post the markings on the memory, maybe you can tell me more about it.

Ultima

Ohh and Rob, I haven't had a chance to run at 1600x1200 yet, as my monitor will not support that.
Getting a 19" next weekend, so I'll post as soon as I have it.

By then I'll also have my XP2500, so maybe I'll be able to run that.

1280x1024x32 FSAA 6x and AF 16x in Hot Pursuit 2 was no problem paired with my XP1800 at default, card wasn't overclocked either.