The Radeon 9800 Pro To Radeon 9800XT Mod Guide Rev. 3.0!

[apoppin]

Adrian's Rojak Pot MOD Guide

The first ATI Radeon 9800 Pro was released about a year ago. The R350 core was an evolution of the older R300 core with additional features and a much higher clock speed. At that time, the Radeon 9800 Pro was easily the fastest card in the market while NVIDIA was still struggling with the 'Dustbuster' FX 5800.

The 256MB variant of the Radeon 9800 Pro is virtually identical to the 128MB model. The only difference is the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro uses DDR II memory which has a higher latency compared to the old DDR memory. Therefore, a slight memory clock speed bump was implemented to eliminate any loss of performance due to the increased DDR II latency.


The 256MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is probably the least popular ATI graphics card of the year. It is a lot more expensive than the 128MB variant and the extra 128MB of memory proved rather useless. The performance of both the 128MB and 256MB models were absolutely identical, even when running memory-intensive games like Unreal Tournament 2003.

Only certain situations using high FSAA settings gave the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro a slight edge over its 128MB brother. Even then, the slight improvement in performance didn't make the additional USD 100 worth considering. Or is that REALLY true?

Although the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro may seem like a sheer waste of money, it may actually turn out to be a real steal! Why? Because one can actually turn the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro into a 256MB Radeon 9800XT!

:Q

 

[XBoxLPU]

:Q Nice

I ran my 9700 Pro as a 9800 for a little while...but havent in ages

 

[Lyfer]

The difference between the XT and Pro isn't "huge". Now if you could mod it to a X800, that would be cool.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Lyfer
The difference between the XT and Pro isn't "huge". Now if you could mod it to a X800, that would be cool.

it usually takes awhile to 'discover' these things.

I imagine eventually there will be mods for enabling 4 extra pipes of the x800pro (the x800xt has even if ati says it's impossible now) . . .

for now, it IS a fairly significant performance increase (for free) and with little risk (providing you follow the instructions exactly). The r9800Pro-256 actually IS a r9800xt - the ONLY difference is a better cooler and different BIOS.

This guide has been published before - however this latest version (3.0) is really complete!

 

[apoppin]

UP for the morning shift.

This is potentially very important for those of us that are eschewing the latest cards and are looking for excellent bang-for-buck as the older video cards are discounted.