New 9800Pro arrived yesterday, some questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter GTX_SlotCar
  • Start date Start date
G

GTX_SlotCar

I got my Sapphire 9800Pro from newegg yesterday for $229. Before I received
it, the price had already dropped $5 on their web site :-)

It's a red card with an ATI marked fan. I don't recall any Sapphire label,
but I could have missed it. I was pretty excited to get it installed.

Performance wasn't quite what I expected. 3DMark2001 scores were around
15500. With my OC'd Ti4400, I got 14000 with the same quality settings. I
expected around 16200 or so with the Pro. To be fair, I got 15888 with it
OC'd at 400/370. I'm also aware that there would be a bigger difference in
scores if I used 3DMark2003.

Most of the games I play are older, so there wasn't much difference there,
either. Call of Duty did play very well with only a couple hiccups. 3D image
quality was excellent. I did miss that ATI desktop, too.

The memory chips do get scorching hot. I'll either cut up an old heatsink
for them or buy something. Any ideas of good HS for them? If I OC the card,
I'll need them. I'm also considering the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer.

The card came with Cat 3.8 drivers. I also tried the 3.7 and 4.1. Is there a
driver that's faster (non-omega)?

Win 2000 Pro
Abit AI7
Geil 256MB PC3500 DDR433 at 2-2-2-5 and 190 mHz
P4 1.8a at 2.57gHz
fsb/mem ratio at 3:4


Gary
 
Where the 9800 pro really shines is when you introduce AA and AF. Lesser
cards, like your Ti4400 will simply choke, whereas the 9800 pro will rock
on. Image quality and playability is the name of the game here.

JK
 
I got my Sapphire 9800Pro from newegg yesterday for $229. Before I received
it, the price had already dropped $5 on their web site :-)

It's a red card with an ATI marked fan. I don't recall any Sapphire label,
but I could have missed it. I was pretty excited to get it installed.
Click to expand...

Hmm, sounds like a made by ATI card and not a Sapphire. Does device
manager say 9800pro?
 
Yes. Oddly, it has it as 9800 Pro and again as 9800 Pro secondary. I suppose
it's some driver or hardware thing with these cards that loads it twice?

Gary
 
The memory chips do get scorching hot. I'll either cut up an old heatsink
for them or buy something. Any ideas of good HS for them? If I OC the card,
I'll need them. I'm also considering the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer.
Click to expand...


Hi,
yes they do. They are just *crying* out for heatsinks. I had these
(TweakMonster) heatsinks recommended to me by members of this forum:

www.tweakmonster.com/ramsinks/index.htm

They comes in packs of 4, so you will need two packs to cover all 8
ramchips. I paid £20.00 U.K for two sets (that's $36.72 my yankee friend!).
Funny thing is I didn't even install them yet, but have been busy with other
things (work). They are very well made (heavy) and I intend to use
thermal-epoxy to hold them on.

I am just building a new computer this week based around the Sapphire
*Atlantis* 9800 (as still yet *not*overclocked!) so I will mod my card then.
I am also thinking of getting one of those ARTIC VGA-Silencer things, seems
like a good idea, and as far as I heard you can use this in conjunction with
the *TweakMonster* BGA heatsinks?

As this is the last AGP graphics card I buy, I intend to get a good life out
of it :P

Have fun. . .
 
Performance wasn't quite what I expected. 3DMark2001 scores were around
15500. With my OC'd Ti4400, I got 14000 with the same quality settings. I
expected around 16200 or so with the Pro. To be fair, I got 15888 with it
OC'd at 400/370. I'm also aware that there would be a bigger difference in
scores if I used 3DMark2003.
Click to expand...

This is a DX9 card, so you'd see a much bigger difference using the
newere DX9 benchmarks.
The memory chips do get scorching hot. I'll either cut up an old heatsink
for them or buy something. Any ideas of good HS for them? If I OC the card,
I'll need them. I'm also considering the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer.
Click to expand...

I felt around on my card while it was running and was very surprised
how cool everything was. I wouldn't even call it warm. Are you sure
your aux. power is plugged in?
 
Jim said:
This is a DX9 card, so you'd see a much bigger difference using the
newere DX9 benchmarks.


I felt around on my card while it was running and was very surprised
how cool everything was. I wouldn't even call it warm. Are you sure
your aux. power is plugged in?
Click to expand...

suprised it didnt come with mem heatsinks anyway. Mine does.
--
:-=ceebs=-:

icq 118414125
yahoo supercbuk
www.n0ise.com
 
Yes. Oddly, it has it as 9800 Pro and again as 9800 Pro secondary. I suppose
it's some driver or hardware thing with these cards that loads it twice?

Gary
Click to expand...

It shows up twice because of the dual monitor-support, or so I
Believe. Mine (9800pro) does that, as did my 9700pro (May God rest
it's soul)



You should start drinking prune juice and KY jelly cocktails right now,
that will make things a lot smoother.
-Felatio Love
 
I got my Sapphire 9800Pro from newegg yesterday for $229. Before I received
it, the price had already dropped $5 on their web site :-)

It's a red card with an ATI marked fan. I don't recall any Sapphire label,
but I could have missed it. I was pretty excited to get it installed.

Performance wasn't quite what I expected. 3DMark2001 scores were around
15500. With my OC'd Ti4400, I got 14000 with the same quality settings. I
expected around 16200 or so with the Pro. To be fair, I got 15888 with it
OC'd at 400/370. I'm also aware that there would be a bigger difference in
scores if I used 3DMark2003.

Most of the games I play are older, so there wasn't much difference there,
either. Call of Duty did play very well with only a couple hiccups. 3D image
quality was excellent. I did miss that ATI desktop, too.

The memory chips do get scorching hot. I'll either cut up an old heatsink
for them or buy something. Any ideas of good HS for them? If I OC the card,
I'll need them. I'm also considering the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer.

The card came with Cat 3.8 drivers. I also tried the 3.7 and 4.1. Is there a
driver that's faster (non-omega)?

Win 2000 Pro
Abit AI7
Geil 256MB PC3500 DDR433 at 2-2-2-5 and 190 mHz
P4 1.8a at 2.57gHz
fsb/mem ratio at 3:4


Gary
Click to expand...


I also received my OEM Sapphire 9800 Pro yesterday, although not from
Newegg. It's a red pcb with an ATI-labeled fan, apparently with Hyinx
2.8 ns memory. I'm also a little disappointed with my 3dMark 2001
results; only scored 14,000. My system is an AMD 2600+/266,
overclocked to 2.22 ghz (16x139). MSI Via KT333 based motherboard
(but only supports 133 FSB). With my old Ti-4200 (not overclocked
significantly) this system scored about 10300, so I "only" gained
about 3700-3900 "points." With a 2.22 ghz Athlon, and a 9800 Pro, I
expected 15000 or 16000 3dMarks. I'm using the 4.1 catalyst drivers.
I'm guessing my low FSB just kills the performance. Plus I'm using the
standard Windows XP chipset drivers instead of a newer set of Via
4-in-1s. (Thanks MSI, for sellling a board with a deceptive name and
no 1/5 divider!) AVOID KT3 ULTRA 2-C!

On the plus side, the card seems stable so far. And I can actually
use FSAA and anisotopic, which was too much of a performance drag with
the 4200.

This card definitely puts out some heat. Under load it pushes my case
temp up 2 degrees C higher than my old 4200. Finally, I miss being
able to nudge color intensity with the "digital vibrance" feature that
Nvidia had. Maybe with a good monitor it would not be needed, but my
inexpensive monitor benefited from a small push in that regard.
 
Jim Davis said:
I felt around on my card while it was running and was very surprised
how cool everything was. I wouldn't even call it warm. Are you sure
your aux. power is plugged in?
Click to expand...

Mine are cool when the system is idle or just cruising the web, but when
stressed with heavy graphics, I can actually burn my finger on them. When
the chips get hot, I can actually underclock the memory (to 330 or so) and
get a better 3DMark. Overall, though, the card OC's like crazy with no
artifacts. It just gets hot and the performance eventually drops. Ramsinks
and a cooler should really help.
Aux. power is connected. Oh, my 12v is 12.05 with the 9800Pro as opposed to
11.99v with the Ti4400 OC'd. The Fortron 350 PSU really holds the 5 & 12
volt rails nice. My (more expensive) Antec PP352X was 11.88v with the Ti.

BTW, newegg.com actually gave me a $5 credit on my card because the price
dropped before my board arrived. I don't think they actually have a price
protection policy, so maybe it's because I've bought so much stuff from them
lately.

Gary
 
|
||Win 2000 Pro
||Abit AI7
||Geil 256MB PC3500 DDR433 at 2-2-2-5 and 190 mHz
||P4 1.8a at 2.57gHz
||fsb/mem ratio at 3:4
||
||
||Gary

Do yourself a major favor by getting more ram. 256 is woefully low.
Gamers should have 1 gig now.

Pluvious
 
Yes. Oddly, it has it as 9800 Pro and again as 9800 Pro secondary. I suppose
it's some driver or hardware thing with these cards that loads it twice?

Gary
Click to expand...

Yea, that's normal. As the other person said it is due to dual monitor
support.
 
Finally, I miss being
able to nudge color intensity with the "digital vibrance" feature that
Nvidia had. Maybe with a good monitor it would not be needed, but my
inexpensive monitor benefited from a small push in that regard.
Click to expand...

ATI control panel has a tab for color adjustment. I huess not the same
as Nvidia's digital vibrance but you should be able to achieve a
similar effect with a little experimentation.
 
McCrack said:
Yea, that's normal. As the other person said it is due to dual monitor
support.
Click to expand...

My AIW 9800Pro has the same thing in control panel.... but that card does
not support dual monitors.
 
Uncooked said:
My AIW 9800Pro has the same thing in control panel.... but that card
does not support dual monitors.
Click to expand...


Which means it does not support duel monitors .. or you had a fail on
the install of drivers.

regards

@ndrew
 
I figured it was supposed to be there. My Radeon 8500 and Ti4400 also
support dual monitors, but they didn't do this. That's why I asked.

Gary
 
||On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 18:50:13 GMT, Pluvious <[email protected]>
||wrote:
||
||>Do yourself a major favor by getting more ram. 256 is woefully low.
||>Gamers should have 1 gig now.
||>
||>Pluvious
||
||Why?
||
||
||
||Enjoy,
||
||TLW

Fay Cry demo is a perfect example of the benefit of having more then
512MB ram, which was the standard most gamers use. Most all of the
complaints about the Far Cry demo about framerate where from people
who had 512. People who have 1GB are praising the game for running so
smooth with all the goodies on. With ram being so cheap.. there is no
reason NOT to have a lot. 256 is really really low considering XP
needs about all of that to run...

Pluvious
 
I don't run XP, still with W2K, and I've never heard of the Far Dry demo,
but in games like Call of Duty (and the racing sims I have), my hard drive
isn't accessed except when loading new maps. Maybe it's because of the tight
memory timings I have, but I just don't see any problems. I believe that if
my hard drive isn't being accessed during the games, I'm not running out of
memory.
That being said, I plan to get new memory when I upgrade my cpu. OCz PC4200
twin 256 sticks (512 total) is about $166 now. 1GB is about twice that
amount. I wouldn't call $332 cheap :-)

Gary
 
Back
Top