Have already bought a 9600 XT, but was surprised to see the possible
software mod that might bring the performance of the 9800SE to very
close to that of a 9800XT.
I recently discussed this in another thread. My 9800SE AIW with a bit of
overclocking is running at over 9800 Pro speeds. The only card in those
tomshardware tests which beats it is the 9800 XT which is £350 compared to
the £150 I paid for this card with All-in-Wonder facilites
Here is the original article:
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It's something bad you can't see. The 9800SE is similar in performance to a
low end 9600.
Not always true. There are two versions of the 9800SE: one with a 128bit
memory bus and the other with 256bit. You can see here:
http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/faq.php
that the cards with an L shaped arrangment of memory chips are 256bit and
those with an I shaped arrangement (i.e. all in a horizontal line) are
128bit. All the All-In-Wonder 9800SE's have a 256bit bus as they need to
have an L shaped memory chip arrangement to make room for the TV-tuner.
As mentioned in that tomshardware.com article, they are testing one with
a 128bit bus. The Sapphire 9800SE is a 128bit version.
Here is a review of the 256bit version of the 9800SE:
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02NTU=
You can see it performs very well compared to a 9600 Pro. Sometimes the
9800SE's 256bit bus gives it the edge and sometimes the 9600Pro's higher
fill-rate wins out. Further to that, if the card can be softmodded to
unlock the other 4 pipelines then you effectively have a 9800 Pro.
I purchased a Hercules 9800SE AIW 3 weeks ago. I successfully applied
the softmod patch to unlock the other 4 pipelines, making my card
effectively a 9800 Pro AIW, for £150 rather than the ~£270 a real 9800 Pro
AIW would cost. I got mine from
www.lowestonweb.com, although I notice
they are out of stock now.
Be warned though. Only on some of these cards do the other 4 pipelines
work perfectly. A friend tried the softmod and he had an unwatchable
chessboard effect during games. He now uses the standard driver and is
thus running with that standard 4 pipelines.
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