Please help with 9700 NP question....

[Merlin803]

I just picked up a OEM Sapphire Atlantis 9700 (non pro)from Newegg that has been reported to have 2.8ns Samsung ram.

One of the posters at Newegg said to flash it with the Gigabyte 9700 Pro bios. Does this sound correct?

Also, any idea what order that I should do this in? I currently have a GF2 card installed and I read that it would probably be a good idea to reinstall Windows when I install the 9700.

Should I get everything up and running and then flash the bios?

 

[Lars]

I flashed mine with this BIOS. It is the bios of an unlocked European Sapphire card changed from PAL to NTSC.

I went from a GF3 to the 9700 without reinstalling Win, just de-install all nvidia drivers and recheck with the detonator destroyer.

You need to reinstall the ATI drivers after flashing the card anyways, so it might be faster to flash the card right in the beginning.

 

[Merlin803]

Sorry, that link takes me to the main page, can you tell me exactly which bios you got? Also, do I need the ATI flash utility from that site? Thanks, and sorry for being such a noob...

 

[Lars]

bios page
Use this one: Saphire 9700 non-Pro Pal to NTSC BIOS

Yes, you need the ATI flash file. The instructions for flashing the card were either included with the bios zip file or the ati flash zip file.

BTW, I had no idea how to do this either like 2 weeks ago when I got my 9700. Everything worked out just fine though.

 

[Merlin803]

Thanks a ton! By the way, if you do the flash and it works, do the speeds automatically get set to the Pro settings (325)? Or do you have to manually overclock? Is heat more of a problem with this method than they are using a real 9700 Pro?

 

[Lars]

The speed does not automatically go up after flashing the card. You need one of the tweak utilities; I use Rage 3D Tweak.

Don't know if my card gets too hot but it is running just fine at 342/315 without any problems.

 

[Merlin803]

Sounds good. Thanks for the help.