I see... so should I buy a 270 dollar 9800 Pro or a 275 dollar Pro Ultimate?
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Mt_GoatHead Cheezy KnobPflugerville (north of Austin)Icrontian
edited November 2003
I thought you had a $200 limit???
You better hope they still have that 9700 Pro tomorrow as that stuff changes by the minute. I have spent weeks checking several times an hour for something I was after.
Depends. The Ultimate edition with their optional fan makes for a hell of a heatsink and allows you to overclock higher (usually) than what you would be able to achieve with the stock heatsink.
mtgoat had this to say I thought you had a $200 limit???
You better hope they still have that 9700 Pro tomorrow as that stuff changes by the minute. I have spent weeks checking several times an hour for something I was after.
Meh, to heck with my limit. If I want to play the best i'm going to have to buy the best. I have officaly decided to go for a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate. Since I plan on overclocking the heck out of my video card i'll go with the liquid cool version.
This guy claims that the cheapest 9800 Pro made by Sapphire is actually produced on 9700 pcb and ran slower in the benches.
Wonder if there's any truth to it? Simguy?
Anyways I wouldn't recommend buying the first Radeon 9800 Pro made by Sapphire for $305.
This guy claims that the cheapest 9800 Pro made by Sapphire is actually produced on 9700 pcb and ran slower in the benches.
Wonder if there's any truth to it? Simguy?
Anyways I wouldn't recommend buying the first Radeon 9800 Pro made by Sapphire for $305.
There sure is truth to that. In an attempt to cut costs and satisfy the demands of a large customer, Sapphire designed a low-cost 9800 Pro card that utilized the much cheaper R9700 PCB. Paired with lower-cost Hynix/Infineon memory that won't overclock well and price it much cheaper than the original version and they have a winner on their hands.
IMHO, I'd take the regular version over this 9700-PCB based one because of the grey market nature of the card and the fact that I like the overclockability of the Samsung memory used on regular Sapphire 9800's.
As for the 1-5% performance decrease of the 9700-PCB based card over the usual 9800-PCB based cards, the only thing it may be attributable to is trace design delay (some traces being longer than what's on the 9800 PCB) or it could have been some type of benchmarking variation (they do happen).
he means that after you flash it to a 9800 pro a higher overclock may be possible. There is the idea going around that the only reason the bios flash from non pro to pro works because there is a voltage increase to the memory chips. with this increased voltaage to the memory chips to obtain 9800 pro speeds, a higher overclock can be achieved over a standard 9800 non pro w/o the extra voltage.
Tech had this to say he means that after you flash it to a 9800 pro a higher overclock may be possible. There is the idea going around that the only reason the bios flash from non pro to pro works because there is a voltage increase to the memory chips. with this increased voltaage to the memory chips to obtain 9800 pro speeds, a higher overclock can be achieved over a standard 9800 non pro w/o the extra voltage.
Tech
Rumor or not, I'll attest that without the BIOS flash, I could not bring my Sapphire Atlantis 9800 Non-Pro up to 9800 Pro speeds, no matter what cooling I had installed on the card and no matter if I cranked the AGP voltage up to maximum.
It took the BIOS flash in order for the memory to finally break the 333 MHz barrier.... now it will do 390 without a problem.
Comments
You better hope they still have that 9700 Pro tomorrow as that stuff changes by the minute. I have spent weeks checking several times an hour for something I was after.
Meh, to heck with my limit. If I want to play the best i'm going to have to buy the best. I have officaly decided to go for a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate. Since I plan on overclocking the heck out of my video card i'll go with the liquid cool version.
interesting article...
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/sapphire-4.html#p5
This guy claims that the cheapest 9800 Pro made by Sapphire is actually produced on 9700 pcb and ran slower in the benches.
Wonder if there's any truth to it? Simguy?
Anyways I wouldn't recommend buying the first Radeon 9800 Pro made by Sapphire for $305.
If you're looking at a 9800 Pro buy this one http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?description=14-136-105
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&type=Refurbish&submit=Go&description=radeon%2C9800&mark=Catalog
I was thinking about buying the second card down... the Pro Ultimate.
There sure is truth to that. In an attempt to cut costs and satisfy the demands of a large customer, Sapphire designed a low-cost 9800 Pro card that utilized the much cheaper R9700 PCB. Paired with lower-cost Hynix/Infineon memory that won't overclock well and price it much cheaper than the original version and they have a winner on their hands.
IMHO, I'd take the regular version over this 9700-PCB based one because of the grey market nature of the card and the fact that I like the overclockability of the Samsung memory used on regular Sapphire 9800's.
As for the 1-5% performance decrease of the 9700-PCB based card over the usual 9800-PCB based cards, the only thing it may be attributable to is trace design delay (some traces being longer than what's on the 9800 PCB) or it could have been some type of benchmarking variation (they do happen).
Anyway, I amn looking into bidding on this card...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2765744381&category=40158
Definately worth a look.
//edit// didn't realize it was a NP.
Tech
Rumor or not, I'll attest that without the BIOS flash, I could not bring my Sapphire Atlantis 9800 Non-Pro up to 9800 Pro speeds, no matter what cooling I had installed on the card and no matter if I cranked the AGP voltage up to maximum.
It took the BIOS flash in order for the memory to finally break the 333 MHz barrier.... now it will do 390 without a problem.