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softmod for radeon9800SE

J

justagamer

Junior Member
hi. i have read all about the softmod for the powercolor radeon9800SE and have tried it but it does not seem to work. I patch the file(have tried 9700 capabilities as well as 9800 capapbilities) and it patches successfully. I restart the machine and check the details with rivatuner and it now says (8x1) instead of (4x1), which is great. but now as soon as i try run any 3d application, whether it be 3dmark or any game, it freezes immediately, have to reboot the machine. I think once out of the several times i tried this it said something about the "directdraw" function not working, but i have run dxdiag and the tests and "no problems were found".
have any of you had the same experience or have any advice on how to get this thing going?Thanks.
 
😉 I'm not really up on the 9800se modding but from previous experience (primarily 9500 -> 9700) you really need a LOT of luck in order to get a card with 4 dormant pipes which can be successfully enabled. This is only likely to be a very short term thing simply to get 9800se's out to the market ... it doesn't make any sense for a company to be using an 8 piped PCB (esp with all 8 pipes in working order) and that's essentially what you will need. It would seem the sw can be fooled in to thinking you have 8 pipes but the card simply has 4 or 1-4 bad pipes when you try to awaken the dormant pipes. Best of luck!
 
The original 9500np was a rush job to get a cheaper card to market, and thus they simply neutered a perfectly good 9700np in bios, and set them free. That is why the original 9500np are very popular. The 9800SE comes after the 9800np/9800P have been in production for a couple of months. I am pretty sure ATI has quite a bit of chips with defects available for the 9800SE, and unless demand for this card exceeds ATI's margin of error, most will be out of luck with soft mods. Some will of course get lucky and get a chip that ATI finds marginal, but in reality works fine. These cards are simply a rehash of chips that would otherwise have no outlet. On the other hand they provide a pretty good product with the latest enhancements to those consumers looking a couple of steps down from top models.

You probably got a chip that has defects on some of the pipes that are disabled, and yes they might be noticed on a 2D setting, but when stressed on a 3D setting they fail. Thus your lockups.
 
Yeah, I'd really say most of the 9800 se's are probably going to actually have defective pipes, unlike a lot of 9500's. If I had to guess, I'd say that less than 25% of these will softmod, so getting one just for the softmod isn't really worth it...
 
😉 If demand is significant enough we should find plenty of 9800se cards come out built on their own PCB with only 4 pipes from production. As said it is also an outlet for 9800 cards which fail on some of the 8 pipes or even the 256 RAM bus (for the 128bit 9800se) thus meaning you may find it possible to either unlock 4 working pipes OR the 256bit RAM but if you get a 256bit 9800se the chances are if there are 8 pipes present but 4 are disabled then they're disabled because 1-4 failed ... or else ATI/manu would simply use a dedicated 4 piped PCB. Still so long as you're happy getting nothing but stock perf from the card you buy it can be a nice bonus to see if it can be modded ... I just wouldn't take the gamble.
 
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