Hey hey all, Got a question; I got me a Sapphire Radeon 9800 non-pro, thinking that this was the ideal card to flash to a 9800 pro. However, I now learned that my card cannot be flashed because it has the Infenion 3.0 ns mem. modules instead of the Samsungs, which supposedly do allow flashing as these modules have more headroom. Anyways, I placed copper heatsinks on all 8 memory modules and upped the speed to 350/310 but in 3DMark03 this created some artefacts ( minimal, only in nature test) I'd like to get it it to 380/340 speeds, like the Pro but it'll take more than just upping the speed and placing heatsinks; I wanna flash the BIOS or up the voltage. So, I'm wondering, can I flash this card to a pro or not? If this creates probs, where can I get a non-pro bios to undo the flash? If flashing is indeed impossible, how can I up the voltage? Thanx for any help/hints!
Maybe you should go rage3d.com forums and look for the huge thread called "How to flash a 9800np" or something like that. You might find what you need. As far as I know, the cards with infineon memory cannot be flashed, but I might be mistaken.
Second vote for Rage3D. As for RAMsinks, they really do not increase the max speed the IC can go. They simply disappate heat and look cool---not totally bad.
Then what's keeping the ICs from performing better. I would think that the increased clock speed would increase the temp of the ICs, so more cooling should eliminate any probs that might arise due to the increased clock speed. More on the matter, is there a way to soft-mod the Radeon's voltage? that too would increase speed which with the copper heatsinks shouldn't be a problem. Anyway, they do look cool yes %)
The physical limitations of the IC itself. Like people, every single IC isn't a perfect chip. Basically, computers are a massive conglomerate of on/off switches. A bunch of these are in chips and their types and organization make up how fast it can operate and at what temp. Unless you have very poor or no airflow through the system, heat should not be inhibiting overclocking. Because movement gives off heat, the IC's do get hot---some to the point that you can be burned, but can still remain stable. Getting heat away from circuitry is never a bad thing, but it's not always a necessity. They are able to work at a certain speed. Overclocking is a matter of luck, but certain hardware helps. I haven't heard of any soft voltage mods, but I have found that increasing the AGP slot voltage has helped a little with overclocking the video card in general. I don't know if that option is available with your motherboard as not all do.
If I'd have known what I know now about my current mainboard; the MSI KT4 Ultra or sumting, I'd never have bought is: bios modding the CPU voltage is far too limited and my 400mHz DDR memory is 'not officialy supported'. Meaning I can use it at 400 mHz in windows but running any program wil crash the PC for sure. Also modding the RAM timing causes it to crash. It just sux big time, my P4 2.4 can't go any higher than 2.5GHz but again at that speed it crashes like hell. This mainboard is one ugly motherf****er when it comes to performance tuning. Damn shame Anyway, I'm well aware of hardware architecture but as is the case for the cpu or the mainboard; more voltage -> more heat generation BUT also more performance increase tolerance, beyond that specified for this particular RAM type -Infenion- ( which is 300 mHz) Ah heck, I'm reading the Rage3D forum, that's cleared up many questions.
Well the problem is not the board in itself, but the chipset it has. The only chipsets that officially support DDR400 are the nforce2 and the VIA KT400A and VIA KT600. You have the first generation of the VIA KT400 and that's why you have problems with it. When that chipset was made, there was no standard for DDR400 so you had to choose your memory wisely in order for it to work.
Well I went ahead and tried to flash the 9800 yesterday. Seems, after reading the Rage3D boards, that there's no harm in flashing it and it does work but the speed gain won't be as high with my card as it is with Samsung models. Anyway, I first tried to create a backup of the np bios using flashrom. However, I received an error that flashrom was unable to find flashrom.rom ?? I downloaded the flashrom proggie as-is and there was no mention of any .rom there. I'm not gonna flash without a np-bios to restore the card in case of probs so any help would be much appreciated!
there should be 4 or 5 files in the zipped package, one of them is flashrom.rom But you're right, don't flash it unless you know how to fix it back.
I'll keep ya posted. Tomorrow It should be ok By now the clock of the Radeon is working at 380mHz flawlesly, so flashing it and upping it even more should'n be a prob.
Well , went ahead and flashed the card, no probz. Rebooted into windows, no probs. However, no new hardware found and clock speeds still at 350/310 ( using Rage3D soft) checking in the ATI control panel info, it does state Radeon 9800 Pro. After gradually boosting the frequencies, I got the card up to 420/333, still completely free of artifacts in 3DMark03 so I think I can boost the gpu frequency even further. 333 mHz is the absolute max for memory, 1 step higher creates a whole lot of artifacts and decreases 3DMark03 scores :-/ 333mHz is not bad at all for Infenion memory!
well it's doing it's rated speed. What would be interesting to know is the timing of the memory. That's what makes able the slower Samsung 3.3ns memory to operate at 337.5 mhz instead of it's rated speed of 300mhz. All the flash does is loosen the timings and crank up the core speed. So it's not technically an oc because the core on the non-pro is the exact same than on the pro. As for the memory, it loosens the timings so it's not as fast as a real 9800 Pro with 2.86ns memory (DDR700). I think this is the reason why my 9600 Pro won't do 350 on the memory despite the fact that it's 2.86ns. It's probably because the timings are tight.
