ATI Recommendation - Part 3

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sam Higgins
  • Start date Start date
S

Sam Higgins

x-no-archive: yes

I started a new chapter since the other one was posted to the Nvidia group.
Couple more questions.

When I get my new 9800 Pro, is there a set of drivers that is best to
install, or is the latest good enough?

Does EAX sound screw up the framerate in most games? Do i want to use this?

I don't overclock, but do the Sapphires being shipped now have any new heat
problems?

Thanks!
 
x-no-archive: yes

I started a new chapter since the other one was posted to the Nvidia group.
Couple more questions.

When I get my new 9800 Pro, is there a set of drivers that is best to
install, or is the latest good enough?
Click to expand...

You may have noted that there is some discussion going on now
regarding Omega drivers. If I were you, I would try the latest version
of those first and see what happens. I've got a 9800 SE with 8
pipelines running so I'm in a similar boat to you and that's what I
have done.
--

Julian Richards
julian-richards "at" ntlworld.com

XP Home
L7S7A2 motherboard
Powercolor 9800 SE 8 pipelines with Omega drivers
1 GB RAM
10 GB + 80 GB HDs
CD+DVD/CDRW drives
 
Hey Sam,
I got my Sapphire 9800Pro (from newegg) at the beginning of the month. I'll
pass along what I've found so far.
I got this card to replace an MSI Ti4400 which I had OC'd to beyond 4600
specs, and the Ti4400 is now in my kids' computer where it was desperately
needed.
First, as far as heat goes, yes there can be a problem. I would recommend
ramsinks at least. You don't plan on OC'ing, so you won't see a problem with
graphics anomalies without them, but my card actually performed a little
better when I under clocked the memory before I installed ramsinks. This
tells me that the memory chips were running pretty hot. You can make your
own ramsinks out of an old P1 heatsink (or something similar), or you can
buy some cheap enough. I also added an Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer and my
9800 Pro really OC's good now, but you probably don't need one since you
aren't going to OC.
Now for drivers. I've played around with most of them. The 2 that seem to
work the best for me as far as playing well in every game and best
performance are the Cat 3.7 and Cat 3.10. Both are available on the ATI web
site. In 3DMark2001SE, my best 9800Pro score is 16850 compared to the Ti4400
at 14000. That's about a 20% increase. But... in games the difference
doesn't really show up until I crank up the eye candy. The Ti4400 ran a lot
of games fine with some FSAA, but the 9800Pro runs with 4xFSAA and 8xAF at
the same speed as the Ti4400 without those things. The Ti4400, like most
nVidia cards, seems to have better OpenGL performance in a given price range
card. I would always run NR2003 in OpenGL, but with the 9800Pro it runs much
faster in D3D. Still, Call of Duty (OpenGL) does run faster with the 9800,
especially with graphics options turned up.

Finally for EAX. Yes, there is a frame rate hit when using it. But first,
there is a frame rate hit when I use my built-in RealTek sound card as
opposed to my old SBLive. In NR2003, for example, my frame rates seemed to
double when I started using my old SBLive. As for EAX, the only game I've
tried a comparison on is Call of Duty. With the SBLive and graphics options
set pretty minimal, I get 180 fps in a timedemo without EAX and 108 fps with
EAX. A 66% increase by turning off EAX. But, when I run with high graphics
options and 4xFSAA and 8xAF at 1600x1200, I get 108 fps without EAX and 92
with it. A 17% increase by turning off EAX. I should have my Audigy 2 sound
card in a couple days. It may not have as big a frame hit with EAX, but
everything I've read on CoD sites and forums says it will still lower the
fps as opposed to not running EAX. Obviously, 92 fps is very playable, but
that 17% means I could turn on one more piece of eye candy.

One final note. My 9800Pro runs games smoother with my AGP aperture setting
at 64 than it does at 128 or 256. I can't figure this one out. My 3DMark
scores are the same with either setting. At 64, my hard drive should be
accessed more, but the opposite seems true.

Intel P4 1.8a (soon to be changed to a 2.4c)
Geil memory PC3500, 2x256 dual channel at 2-6-2-2 (soon to be changed, also)
Abit AI7 motherboard, GAT enabled

The Sapphire 9800 Pro was a good purchase.

Gary
 
You may have noted that there is some discussion going on now
regarding Omega drivers. If I were you, I would try the latest version
of those first and see what happens. I've got a 9800 SE with 8
pipelines running so I'm in a similar boat to you and that's what I
have done.
Click to expand...

Julian,

I found the Omega site and now have it bookmarked. Forgive my ignorance, but
what do you mean by pipelines?
 
Thanks for all the info!

Is this the cooler your talking about?

http://www.atruereview.com/arcticcooler/index.php

Is this your webpage? I bookmarked it for reading later.

www.slottweak.com

Also, the ramsinks, I think I might like to add those even though I am not
overclocking. Summer is around the corner of if this card is a hot runner
then I know I am going to need cooling. How do you attach those? I remember
sometime back when people learned they could overclock 3Dfx cards people
were tearing off the stock head sinks and "gluing" on replacements. Of
course that killed the card. (-; Is there a substance you can use to attach
them without voiding the warranty?
 
I found the Omega site and now have it bookmarked. Forgive my ignorance, but
what do you mean by pipelines?
Click to expand...

The SE version has only 4 pipelines enabled. The Omega driver has the
option to try and activate the other 4. If (and it's not a certainty)
it works, then the card operates very much like a nonpro/pro which
comes with the 8 all fully activated.

The Omega drivers are meant to improve image quality and possibly
speed and are based on the official drivers. It's worth a try as I
found them to be very good. If you don't like them then uninstall them
and use others.

--

Julian Richards
julian-richards "at" ntlworld.com

XP Home
L7S7A2 motherboard
Powercolor 9800 SE 8 pipelines with Omega drivers
1 GB RAM
10 GB + 80 GB HDs
CD+DVD/CDRW drives
 
Sam,
Yes to both of the first 2 questions.

Voiding the warranty is something to consider. I used Arctic Silver Adhesive
(2 part mix) mixing a small amount to do the ramsinks on one side of the
card first. After I mixed the 2 parts, I added the same amount of Arctic
Silver 5 to the mixture so it was actually a 50/50 mixture of adhesive and
AS5. I read somewhere that this makes it so you can break the bond later if
you want to remove the ramsinks. The combination makes a good heat
conductor, but I'm still not sure if I'd ever be able to remove the
ramsinks. Even if I could, I'd assume there would be some adhesive residue
on the chips, or at least the printing on them would be gone. I don't know
what ATI would think about that.
The VGA Silencer is a nice unit. Very quiet even with the fan on high. It
did take me a couple hours and a few choice words to finally line up the
holes for the 2 screws that mount it.
Obviously, you want to mount the ramsinks before the Cooler.
The project was well worth the effort.
My 3DMark scores are better than I anticipated. 3DMark2001SE is 16850 and
3DMark03, which I just downloaded and tried once last night, was 6452. As
far as I could tell, that was the highest score in my cpu range (2500 to
2550) for any video card. Not bad for an OC'd P4 1.8a.
Good luck with yours.

Gary
 
GTX_SlotCar said:
Sam,
Yes to both of the first 2 questions.

Voiding the warranty is something to consider. I used Arctic Silver Adhesive
(2 part mix) mixing a small amount to do the ramsinks on one side of the
card first. After I mixed the 2 parts, I added the same amount of Arctic
Silver 5 to the mixture so it was actually a 50/50 mixture of adhesive and
AS5. I read somewhere that this makes it so you can break the bond later if
you want to remove the ramsinks. The combination makes a good heat
conductor, but I'm still not sure if I'd ever be able to remove the
ramsinks. Even if I could, I'd assume there would be some adhesive residue
on the chips, or at least the printing on them would be gone. I don't know
what ATI would think about that.
The VGA Silencer is a nice unit. Very quiet even with the fan on high. It
did take me a couple hours and a few choice words to finally line up the
holes for the 2 screws that mount it.
Obviously, you want to mount the ramsinks before the Cooler.
The project was well worth the effort.
My 3DMark scores are better than I anticipated. 3DMark2001SE is 16850 and
3DMark03, which I just downloaded and tried once last night, was 6452. As
far as I could tell, that was the highest score in my cpu range (2500 to
2550) for any video card. Not bad for an OC'd P4 1.8a.
Good luck with yours.

Gary
Click to expand...

I'm curious to know what your score was before clocking your card and which
card do you have? I guess I missed your other posts. I can clock my new
Sapphire 9800Pro up to 412/376. This is as far as I can go with stock
cooling. I do have a large Zalman fan connected to a Zalman PCI fan bracket
so my chips get just a little warm even under stress. Have you tested in
real game situations to see how much it impacts your games? Because after
much testing I am only seeing a 1-2 FPS increase in my games. So I'm just
happy running it stock. JLC
 
Excellent questions. I have the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro from Newegg with
'Built By' ATI markings and Hynix 2.8ns, 350 mHz memory chips.The same card
you have, I believe, except yours may have Samsung memory. Both brand chips
are good. You can OC your card without additional cooling, I can't. In fact,
mine ran better under-clocked before I added cooling.

You are right about getting 1 or 2 fps more in games when OC'd, to some
extent. I ran some tests to answer your questions and I'm posting the
results below. You'll probably see a pattern forming. I'll put it in the
format of:
Game or scene: % increase when OC'd (OC / nonOC)

3DMark2001SE 104.5%
Cars: 102%
Dragon: 102%
Lobby: 100% (no increase)
Nature: 115%

3DMark03: 114%

Call of Duty (low res): 104%
Call of Duty (hi-res) 115% (4xfsaa, 8xFA 1600x1200)

Here's what I noticed when watching frame rates. The high rates didn't
change significantly (not at all in most cases) but the floor was raised on
the low rates by a substantial margin (125% was common, 150% was
infrequent).
I don't care if I'm getting 100 or 115 fps. But, in some games there is
sometimes a drag when the action gets heavy, especially if all the graphics
options turned up. That's when the OC helps. There's a big difference
between 30 and 45 fps at those times.

Gary
 
GTX_SlotCar said:
Excellent questions. I have the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro from Newegg with
'Built By' ATI markings and Hynix 2.8ns, 350 mHz memory chips.The same card
you have, I believe, except yours may have Samsung memory. Both brand chips
are good. You can OC your card without additional cooling, I can't. In fact,
mine ran better under-clocked before I added cooling.

You are right about getting 1 or 2 fps more in games when OC'd, to some
extent. I ran some tests to answer your questions and I'm posting the
results below. You'll probably see a pattern forming. I'll put it in the
format of:
Game or scene: % increase when OC'd (OC / nonOC)

3DMark2001SE 104.5%
Cars: 102%
Dragon: 102%
Lobby: 100% (no increase)
Nature: 115%

3DMark03: 114%

Call of Duty (low res): 104%
Call of Duty (hi-res) 115% (4xfsaa, 8xFA 1600x1200)

Here's what I noticed when watching frame rates. The high rates didn't
change significantly (not at all in most cases) but the floor was raised on
the low rates by a substantial margin (125% was common, 150% was
infrequent).
I don't care if I'm getting 100 or 115 fps. But, in some games there is
sometimes a drag when the action gets heavy, especially if all the graphics
options turned up. That's when the OC helps. There's a big difference
between 30 and 45 fps at those times.

Gary
Click to expand...

Thanks Gary for this info. I had come to that conclusion also, about how the
clocking doesn't really effect the high fps, but does help when there is a
heavy load on the card. I hadn't tested my theory out yet, so thanks for
helping me figure it out. Can you re post what your clocking your card to? I
was really upset when I ended up with the 3.25 Samsung memory.So what you're
saying is your chips run hotter then mine? You should look into what I have.
It works great. http://tinyurl.com/yrpep
I didn't get it from this site, I'm only using it to show you what I'm
talking about. The 92mm fan is very quiet also. JLC
 
It's OC'd to 432/398 right now. When I first installed the Cooler and
ramsinks, I would get the card up to 445 on the core without artifacts.
Everyone has their favorite places to watch for tearing and sparkles; mine
was the dragon head and wings in Dragonic in 2001SE. That's the first place
they showed up for me. I can't remember where I set the memory OC, but it
was less than the 398 I use now. Anyway, someone here pointed out
ATITool.exe and I gave it a try. (you've probably seen ATiTool, but for
others reading this post who haven't.....) It's real fussy about artifacts.
It lets you scan for them and often says they're there even when you can't
see them on it's display. Now I use the settings it provides and I don't
notice any difference in performance. Probably I would if I used some
cooling on my ramsinks. As it is, I'm at about the same stage with ramsinks
that you're at without them. OCing further brings up the memory temperature
and negates the benefit. At least you could OC without cooling and get some
results. I couldn't. At 398, the memory got so hot I burned my finger on one
of the chips. I don't mean that as an expression, I really burned my finger.
It didn't blister, but it turned pink.
I've seen that Zalman bracket. It looks like it could be useful in a lot of
applications. It's about time someone came out with something like that.
What I would need is something blowing from the front of my case toward the
back so it would cool all the ramsinks. I'm just not certain that I'm going
to bother with it for a while. I've got a duct that I used quite a while ago
that goes on one of my front case fans and it might line up pretty good with
the ramsinks. Maybe I'll try it some day. As it is, I don't have any of the
case fans turned on anymore. I like it quiet :-)
Maybe a Zalman fan like you have would be quiet enough and I could replace
my current case fan with it. Something to look into.

Gary
 
Back
Top