Softmod Radeon 9800pro to XT - anyone got advice?

[8bit]

Hey all

Not sure if this should have gone in the overclocking and hardware forum so if an admin thinks it should pls move it...

I just fitted an Arctic Cooling cooler to my otherwise stock OEM Radeon 9800 pro. While cleaning the thermal gunk off the GPU i noticed the text on the chip said "R360". Now IIRC the R360 is the 9800XT GPU, the pro is the R350. I seem to remember reading somewhere that late model OEM 9800pro cards had the XT chip (the r360) with a pro bios and lower clock speeds but were otherwise identical.

I'm thinking about replacing the card in about 5 or 6 months so i'm not too worried if it does go pop, it's had a good innings. I wondered if anyone has tried this, i think it involves getting a BIOS for the XT card and flashing it over the opro bios image on there, then clocking it up.

What I'd like to know is firstly is this possible? Secondly how do i identify the make of card? It's a red PCB and had the ATi reference HSF onboard. The RAM is made by Hynix and there are four smallish, square chips on each side of the board. It has 128Mb, no ViVo, single DVI and single D-SUB connectors and the little round connector. It came from Aria.co.uk about a year ago...

MTIA
8bit

[johnnr892]

I personally wouldn't bother flashing because you see a greater performance gain over just overcloking it to xt speeds. PLus you have more chance of messing it up rather than just using ati tool. Plus it will go way past xt speeds with an arctic cooler on it anyways.

[mrdata2003]

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

here are the different bios for ATI cards and a flash utility and guide.

you must check which the ram to see if its 2.8ns or 3.3ns.

its very easy to do but you must be aware that the flash can go wrong so its best to have a PCI g/card handy so you can reflash the original bios back

always back up the original bios

This is the bios i used to flash my R360 Hynix 2.8ns 9800pro to XT
ATI9800 to XT Hynix 2.8ns

read the enclosed Readme file and it will tell you exactly how to do it

again always back up the original bios

[8bit]

I personally wouldn't bother flashing because you see a greater performance gain over just overcloking it to xt speeds. PLus you have more chance of messing it up rather than just using ati tool. Plus it will go way past xt speeds with an arctic cooler on it anyways.

hmm... i did try ATi tool a while back and bizarrely, i couldn't get it to run without any artefacting even at the quoted speeds for the Pro (ATItool says at default the card is 378MHz for the core and 337.50 for the RAM, ATi claim 380 and 340 respectively). I'll push it a bit with the AC cooler on and see.

Any idea why i'd get better performance clocking to XT speeds instead of flashing the BIOS as well?

[8bit]

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

here are the different bios for ATI cards and a flash utility and guide.

you must check which the ram to see if its 2.8ns or 3.3ns.

its very easy to do but you must be aware that the flash can go wrong so its best to have a PCI g/card handy so you can reflash the original bios back

Noted, thanks for the link. How do i check the RAM times, are they printed on the chip?

always back up the original bios

This is the bios i used to flash my R360 Hynix 2.8ns 9800pro to XT
ATI9800 to XT Hynix 2.8ns

read the enclosed Readme file and it will tell you exactly how to do it

again always back up the original bios

I only see BIOS' for XT's with 256Mb, am i right in thinking it would be a bad idea to put one of these on my 128Mb Pro?

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

[mrdata2003]

the bios i posted is a modded bios for a 128mb 9800pro and is working great for me.

personally i think the bios flash is better

it will say on the chip.

the last 2 digits, either 28 or 33

[mrdata2003]

this is the readme::

############################################################
########## The 9800 PRo > 9800 XT Flashing Floppy ##########
############################################################

INTRODUCTION:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
You are probably reading this "readme" file because you want
to flash an ATi Radeon 9800SE/9800NP/9800PRO card's BIOS? If
you are, then there are a few things you should know first:

This ONLY works if your card is based on the newer r360 core
and NOT on the older ("real" 9800NP/9800PRO) r350 core. The
reason for this is simple, the older r350 core does NOT have
the required extended DX 9 instruciton set to take advantage
of the 9800XT's BIOS.

There are a few options you have as a 9800 non XT user, they
are all pretty similar but still the correct choice of flash
is rather important. (see below for more details on this)


What comes with this package:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
FIRM.com - Floppy IMAGE file writer utility
9800TOXT.IMA - Floppy Image of the boot/flash disk (1.44mb)
Readme.txt - This readme file


What you need:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
A CMD/DOS window - From within XP is fine at this stage
A Blank floppy
A Little intelligence


Floppy Image Installation:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
From within windows, fire up a DOS box (start > run > "cmd")
(but dont write the quotes). Now youll need FIRM.com and the
9800TOXT.IMA image in the same directory. Place your floppy
in the drive and type the following from the directory where
FIRM and 9800TOXT.IMA are:

FIRM 9800TOXT.IMA A: -w

Now this will take a few minutes, but slowly after FIRM does
its thing youll have a boot floppy based on the 9800TOXT.IMA
image, YAY!


Running the Floppy for the first time:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Now that you have a boot floppy all set up and ready to run,
reboot your machine, with the machine set to boot off floppy
The machine will boot, and present the following options:

* Restore R9800PRO BIOS [automatic]
* Backup AGP Cards Current BIOS [automatic]
* Flash 9800PRO R360 /w hynix mem [automatic]
* Flash 9800PRO R360 /w samsung mem [automatic]
* Flash 9800PRO R360 /w hynix mem 9800PRO Speeds[automatic]
* Flash 9800PRO R360 /w samsung mem 9800PRO Speeds[automatic]
* Enter DOS mode for manual Flashing

You'll first want to run the menu's second option, BACKUP. I
can't stress enough how important this is to the functioning
of the floppy and more importantly to your video card should
anything go wrong on the 9800PRO > XT flash! Use arrow keys
to highlight "backup" then hit enter. Your PC will now copy
the video cards current BIOS image to the floppy, giving you
your all important backup, and allowing option 1 on the disk
to function! You may now reboot.

After you've rebooted and presented with the menu again, you
have around 15 second to press a key, otherwise your machine
will automatically reflash your video card with its original
bios file (not a problem, but pointless!), so when presented
with the menu, press a key to remove the timer. Now you take
a look at the rest of the options presented to you, choose a
function that will work with your card, ask yourself:

Does my card have hynix or Samsung RAM?
Does my card Reach XT speeds?

For example: If your card has an r360 core and hynix ram, but
cant quite clock to 9800XT speeds, then F3 (flash process 3!)
is the one for you. It will make your card an 9800XT, but its
clockspeeds will remain at 9800PRO levels as standard.

As with the option you ran to backup your cards original BIOS
all the flashing options are FULLY automated, just choose the
option right for you, and away it goes.

NOTE: You are offered a get out clause! If you select a wrong
flashing option, dont worry, the machine will ask you if this
is the right option and required a keystroke to continue, its
at this point you should reboot your machine, but DON'T press
any keys! DONT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TURN THE PC POWER OFF
DURING A FLASHING PROCESS!

NOTE2: This "get out clause" ISNT present on the RESTORE part
of the disk, this is to allow users whos cards no longer work
to flash their cards original bios without being able to see.

The only other feature of the disk is a standard DOS mode, CD
support included. You can still flash manual with this option
but its NOT reccomended for new/inexperienced users!


#############################################################
####### 9800TOXT Flashing Floppy Written by paradigm #######
####### --------------------------------------------------- #######
#############################################################

[8bit]

nice one thx heaps mrdata I'll give this a shot this evening.

Incidentally, I already managed to clock the card up by about 2x the difference between a stock pro and a stock XT (GPU and RAM) so I'm hopeful about the XT flash. If the flash works I'll try running it at XT speeds plus a bit as that should be safe enough I guess. It'll do until the new ATi AGP cards come out and I'm in a position to afford to buy one

big cheers
8bit

[Olly1234]

There is actually a rather nice guide here :-)
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle....rtno=92&pgno=0

I had my old 9800 pro card flashed and running at 465MHz core/380MHz memory I think using ATi Tool, ran really well for about a year until one day a while back it packed up and would never work again ..Hence now have a 6600GT

[8bit]

hi all,

ok i tried the thing you posted mrdata2003, backed up my pro bios, flashed on the XT with hynix bios running at XT speeds. The machine became unstable running 3D games very quickly leading to a few VPU Recovers and a couple of reboots.

I've gone back to the pro bios for now and have used atitool to try overclocking the frequencies to standard XT speeds with the pro bios. I get ok results with that, maybe a 10% better fps in atitool and get the odd artefact, maybe one every 4 or 5 minutes or so.

i can clock the GPU right up to about 485MHz on its own without artefacts and the memory to around 380MHz again with no artefacts so wondering why i can't get the card stable at standard XT 412MHz/365MHz with the XT BIOS on it... Should i be using the Omega drivers with this mod perhaps?

[Olly1234]

Did you uninstall and re-install the Cats after you'd flashed the bios?

[8bit]

Did you uninstall and re-install the Cats after you'd flashed the bios?

yep, driver clean pro cleanup, took the works out...

got it stable now using the XT bios with the XT speeds, altho ATITool tells me the card is set a little higher than XT speeds (maybe +15%) so i use ATITool at system startup to bring the clocks back to standard XT freqs. and all seems hunky dory now.

Not a huge difference in game fps but a little less prone to bogging down when lots of explosions or shader heavy effects going on. I guess if i want a real kickass upgrade i need to shell out for now hardware...

wonder when ATI's new AGP cards are coming out...

[8bit]

actually it's not very stable - freezes, crash to reboot, occasional blue screen of death on boot and VPU recovers quite a lot. That's using the BIOS linked to by mrdata2003 running at standard XT clock frequencies. The performance boost was really pretty small as well so I have gone back to the 9800 pro bios to avoid cooking the chip until i can get cash together for a new card unless anyone can suggest something else i should be doing?

Cheers for the help tho!

[Olly1234]

What bios did you flash it with? If you hjave a look at the below there is a selection of recomended BIOS files depending on the design of board you have..

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx...var1=92&var2=0

[mrdata2003]

i'll see if i can get the bios writer to help you out, will post back later.

[8bit]

great thanks! any help much appreciated.