Flashed 9800Pro to 9800XT - What a difference!

[sersalpha]

Thanks to those who advised me to flash my Sapphire 9800 Pro Atlantis 128MB to a GeCube 9800XT 128MB - I lost no overclockability, being able to run stable at 471/384. My top 3DMark03 Pro score has increased over 200 points! Best of all, everything is stable and running perfectly.

Here's how I did it:

1) Download ATIFlash
2) Download GeCube 9800XT 128MB BIOS
3) Create a MS-DOS startup disk
4) Place all ATIFlash files and the BIOS file on the startup disk
5) Uninstall all ATI software and drivers
6) Restart (with startup disk inserted)
7) Back up old bios (atiflash -s 0 oldbios.bin)
8) Flash new bios (atiflash -f -p 0 gecube~1.bin)
9) Remove startup disk & reboot
10) Install ATI Catalyst drivers

It's an amazingly fast and easy way of getting a performance boost. I highly reccommend doing it.

[15th Warlock]

being able to run stable at 471!/384.

:eek: OMG! Never heard of any 9800 reaching such a high clock, not even with water cooling! Must be a new record! Nice :cool:

[zealot`grr]

sersalpha - nice clocks ;) are you one of those lucky bastards who got a 9800 PRO /w a R360 chip? :>

ps: 15th Warlock - records are more like 600+mhz

[sersalpha]

Nope, it's an R350

[zealot`grr]

ah, ok ;)

ps: ps: 15th Warlock - records are more like 600+mhz

I didn't mean to make your results look bad, don't get me wrong! your help in this forum is highly appreciated.

[15th Warlock]

Nope, it's an R350

And you got better performance after using the XT bios? Weird, guess that means there are no "enhanced shaders" to be enabled in the R360, and all the XT bios does is use more aggresive memory timings... interesting :rolleyes:

[Slayerstaps]

I'ts true you get better preformance even after flashing a r350 with an XT bios. But the prob is that if you have a r350 you will get ghosting and you don want that. So in the GT's that have benefits of the enhanced shaders the bios tries to make use of the enhanced shaders but because they ain't there it has a side affect. (ghosting) But becuase 3dmark03 thinks it used it and thinks it makes it run a little faster the extra points are still given but the gain in frames ain't there most of the time so it's still useless...

[Sniper]

Hi,sorry to butt in,i didn't think you could mod an R350 core,only the R360 ones ? ? ?

[Sniper]

I just took the old hsf off my Rad 9800pro,put the vantec iceberq 4 and the vantec copper heatsinks on mine.Now i get 435/375 out of it .Any good that ? ? ?

[Slayerstaps]

It's pretty good..And yes you can only succesfully mod an r360 core card.
And please make use of the edit button...

[sersalpha]

It's an R360 after all :D

[bhchong]

anyone can tell how can i know whats my core type? R350 or R360?

[Trimm]

The only certain way is to take of the heatsink. But there are a few factor that "suggests" a r360.

1) Black plastic rods to hold the heatsink

2) Bought very recently. Less than 2 months. Cards bought within this time period are virtually all r360.

These only pertain to BB Ati cards as i don't know what other manufacturer are doing.