What to mod? A 9800SE or 9800PRO?

[Lord Deckard]

Going to take the plunge and pick up a new card tomorrow.
HOWEVER! I don't know if it's worth spending the extra and picking up a PRO rather than an SE.
SE is going to cost me £90, PRO is £140. Both cards are made by Sapphire.
My wife already has a softmodded SE, how hard is to mod a PRO? Is it a softmod or a bios flash and realisticly, how much of a performance jump am I really going to see?
Thanks in advance to any one who can help a very confused Radeon newbie :)

Lord Deckard

[15th Warlock]

Gor for the Pro, thing is, some SE connot be softmoded, as they come with broken pipelines.
If you get the Pro, you *may* be able to mod it to an XT if it has the R360 core, but even if that's not the case, the difference in performance between the SE and the Pro is abismal, just be sure to stay away from the "128bit" version of the Pro and you should do fine.

[Lord Deckard]

I assume the "128 bit" refers to the memory bus? Does having 256mb of ram on the card make much, if any, difference for performance with games that are available now? Looked at loads of video card head to head comparison charts and the 256mb cards always seem to come out just behind the 128mb versions. Will this change anytime soon or should I save my cash and get a 128mb card?

Lord Deckard

[wazzledoozle]

If you can, get the 256MB version, the extra memory helps in newer games where it has to load a lot of data onto the video card

[sersalpha]

The Sapphire 9800 Pros that I've had have come with R360 cores - I'd go for the pro

[15th Warlock]

I assume the "128 bit" refers to the memory bus? Does having 256mb of ram on the card make much, if any, difference for performance with games that are available now? Looked at loads of video card head to head comparison charts and the 256mb cards always seem to come out just behind the 128mb versions. Will this change anytime soon or should I save my cash and get a 128mb card?

Lord Deckard

Yes, I was referring to the memory bus, and you should get the 256MB version of the Pro, as nowadays most of them are 9800XT sold as Pros, and all you have to do is flash their bios to get a 9800XT for about $80-100 less ;)