9700 --> 9800 ?

[Concillian]

Okay I was searching around looking for some information yesterday, don't remember exactly what, but I came across this article:

http://www.digit-life.com/arti...2/radeon/r9800pro.html

That mentions the following:

It is possible to force RADEON 9800 in the drivers for RADEON 9700 using Soft9800. This is a patch for RivaTuner which is currently available at NV World; it allows the drivers to detect both RADEON 9700 PRO and RADEON 9800 PRO, and if there are any optimizations only for the latter, it can make them available for RADEON 9700 PRO as well.

We tried to find out what RADEON 9800 PRO offers and what we can get with RADEON 9700 PRO turned into 9800. The results are very interesting. I must say that the rumor stating that

RADEON 9800 PRO = RADEON 9700 PRO + increased clock speed + optimization in the drivers

hasn't proved to be true; the situation is quite complicated in the games.

Also, we tested RADEON 9800 PRO at the frequencies reduced to the level of RADEON 9700 PRO

Then they go on to show benchmarks with this driver tweak that makes their Radeon 9700 PRO run at IDENTICAL performance levels of a 9800 PRO at the same clock speeds. Before the tweak the 9700 Pro falls about 5% short of the 9800 PRO.

I can't find any other information about this anywhere. The site they linked to is in Russian (or something that looks very similar). Obviously this article is very old, but has anyone heard much anything else a 9700 --> 9800 driver tweak? If I try to search for it I mostly get 9500 --> 9700 softmod hits.

 

[FuFighterStan]

As far as i know, this "tweak" came when the Catalyst drivers had yet to enable the optimizations that were present in the 9800 but not yet for the 9700, and a subsequent driver eventually enabled them.

 

[apoppin]

Sounds like BS.

The 9700 is a r350. (edit: Oops - r300)

The 9800 is an r350/360 with core tweaks and optimizations . . .

. . . concllusion : the 9700 will never be a 9800
(close, but this isn't "hand grenades") 😛

:roll:

edited for accuracy
(thanx) 😱

 

[TStep]

I think this may be what you were looking for.

From W1zzard

Q: What is this Radeon 9500 -> 9800 thing?
A: During development of Radeon 9800 drivers ATI found a way to increase performance for 9500/9700 drivers too. However they decided not to include these improvements for the 9500/9700 series at this time. They will be included in Catalyst 3.3 if they prove to be stable.
To verify the improvements I used 3DMark2001 standard pixel shader test with 6x Anti-Aliasing. This gave me a ~10% increase. Post your results here
You can NOT turn the R300 chip (used on 9500/9700 cards) into R350 (used on the 9800) by software.
These optimizations are now included in all drivers since Catalyst 3.4.
🙂

 

[Concillian]

Thought it may be something like that they added this to a newer driver or something, this article was pretty old, as evidenced by their use of like CAT3.2 drivers or something.

I know a R300 will never be a R350 (slight correction there) but it was showing some instances where equal clocks matched, other instances (mostly shader games) they did not match. Nothing wrong with trying to wring the most performance out of my $100 though is there?

 

[TStep]

I vaguely remember that the 9700/9800 driver may have been an option on the older OmegaDrivers in the 9500>9700 softmod craze. But that was long ago.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: apoppin
Sounds like BS.

The 9700 is a r350.

The 9800 is an r360 with core tweaks and optimizations . . .

. . . concllusion : the 9700 will never be a 9800
(close, but this isn't "handgrenades") 😛

:roll:

Not quite....

Radeon 9700/Pro = R300
Radeon 9800/Pro = R350 (except for the newer ones that are using XT cores)
Radeon 9800XT = R360

🙂

 

[SickBeast]

The 9800 has the F-buffer in hardware, which the 9700 does not. Why it's called the "F" buffer I have no idea, but I can only assume that it's a similar nomenclature to the Pentium "F". Derive what you will from that.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Concillian
Thought it may be something like that they added this to a newer driver or something, this article was pretty old, as evidenced by their use of like CAT3.2 drivers or something.

I know a R300 will never be a R350 (slight correction there) but it was showing some instances where equal clocks matched, other instances (mostly shader games) they did not match. Nothing wrong with trying to wring the most performance out of my $100 though is there?

Well, ati has been working to improve performance - across the board - for their r300 products and later. Since the Cat drivers are unified, what improves the x800xtpe's performance should also improve the 9700/r300.


IF you are really trying to wring the last bit of performance out of your 9700, O/C it till it crys (or almost artifacts). 😉
(maybe try the Omega Drivers)
:roll:


and ALL of the newer 9800p's are r360 . . .

 

[MegaWorks]

how can it be possible?

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: apoppin
IF you are really trying to wring the last bit of performance out of your 9700, O/C it till it crys (or almost artifacts). 😉

Well, I've gone about as far as I can on air... 370 / 340
It's not crying yet. I have a 10 turn 20k pot and a soldering iron to volt it until it cries though.

For the $93 I spent for the card I'm not complaining one bit.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: apoppin
IF you are really trying to wring the last bit of performance out of your 9700, O/C it till it crys (or almost artifacts). 😉

Well, I've gone about as far as I can on air... 370 / 320

It's not crying yet. I have a 10 turn 20k pot and a soldering iron to volt it until it cries though.

For the $93 I spent for the card I'm not complaining one bit.

not bad. . . .

. . . . just be careful with that hot iron and eXtra voltage . . . . or you will be the one cryin' 😉

there comes a point when it is (finally) time to upgrade . . . but it doesn't like anytime soon with the r300-r360.

🙂 .

 

[Concillian]

I won't be crying, if I fry it, I'll just RMA... lol ... kidding

I know the consequences. It just means I'll have to upgrade sooner than later, or step back down to my 5900xt.

It kinda feels odd, like it won't be a huge loss if I overdo it on the voltage. I think the last card I paid under $100 for was a VESA bus Tseng ET4000. I won't go nuts on the voltage, though my soldering skills are mostly with larger things, that's the part I feel more prone to mess up. Never hardmodded before though, so It'll be fun.

 

[dbdynsty25]

What kind of stable overclocking are people doing these days on the 9700 Pro. I've got one that's begging to be upgraded but I don't have the cash right now. Any ideas how fast I can get it to go just on stock cooling? I've just been running standard since I got it.

 

[Concillian]

Mine's not a Pro, I'm at 370 core / 340 memory with a VGA silencer. With stock cooling I'd get artifacts in the Pixel Shader 2.0 test of 3Dmark03 at around 355 (some single bright white pixels) and ended up running at 350 core.

Stock speeds for the Pro are 325 / 310. Core overclock should be similar to what I'm getting with the np, but you may be able to get more out of the memory, since the np memory speed is 270 stock.

For overclocking the core it was pretty easy to find the limit. I'd just run this:
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

in the background while I upped frequencies a little at a time in RadLinker. You can see artifacts right away, and if you take slow steps you generally won't get a lockup or anything. Then I'd run 3dMark03 and the Pixel Shader 2.0 test would often show artifacts at slightly lower frequencies than rthdribl. So rthdribl will get you in the ballpark and 3dMark03 fine tunes what frequencies you can run.

The memory is a bit more difficult, as the artifacts are a little more random. About 5-10MHz drop from where rthdribl shows texture corruptions. 345 was okay in most things but would occasionally give artifacts, I bumped down to 340 and I've had no problems since.

RTHDRIBL is a godsend. It's SO quick to find your frequencies with that program. No more running 3DMark03 and staring at the same benchmarks for hours on end just to find your stable frequency. Just change in RadLinker (or coolbits with an nVidia card), and you can if you get artifacts in seconds.

 

[kakarotxiv]

i have my 9700 pro clocked at near 9800p speeds 370/330. gives a very healthy boost