Overclocking questions (9800)

[Ryan]

Hi All,
So I went out this week and picked me up a Sapphire 9800 np. What a huge
jump from my old Geforce3

Anyhow, I noticed that the RAM on my new card is Infineon and not Samsung.
Has anyone had success overclocking these cards?

I am hoping I will be able to flash this thing upto a 9800pro still, cause I
know the card gets a little more voltage when using the pro bios.

I'm also thinking about going out and buying one of those Zalman heat pipe
kits for it with the RAM sinks, would this be worth it for overclocking?

Thanks a lot.

Ryan

 

[John David Carter]

Hi All,
So I went out this week and picked me up a Sapphire 9800 np. What a huge
jump from my old Geforce3

Anyhow, I noticed that the RAM on my new card is Infineon and not Samsung.
Has anyone had success overclocking these cards?

I am hoping I will be able to flash this thing upto a 9800pro still, cause I
know the card gets a little more voltage when using the pro bios.

I'm also thinking about going out and buying one of those Zalman heat pipe
kits for it with the RAM sinks, would this be worth it for overclocking?

My 9800np gets an overclock of 378/329 with Infineon 3ns chips...

If you install the pro bios with the infineon mem you will likely have to
use a tweak - like Rage3d, which I use, to underclock the mem as well as
overclock the core...

 

[John Hall]

I use the Omega drivers with the ability to over or under clock the 9800.
When I first got my 9800 non pro I used the omega drivers to overclock the
card to pro speed just to check that it could be done on a sustainable
basis. Once I determined that it would work, I flashed the bios knowing
that if I ran into problems down the road, I could underclock the card to
avoid frying it. So far though, no problems. The card runs like a champ as
a pro and I'm sure I could overclock it even more. But I'm happy with the
way it is, so no further overclocking for me.

JK

 

[magnulus]

Overclocking? <shudders>

Just use the card as is. It'll still be plenty fast enough. Chances are
the memory or some other component just isn't up to overclocking much.
Anyways, the non-pro 9800 is about as fast as the Radeon 9700 Pro, which is
pretty damn fast. The major bottleneck in most games is going to be the
CPU, anyways.

Heatpipes are OK, but all the reviews I have read said they basicly run a
little warmer than the default heatsink, assuming you don't increase case
cooling at all. They are basicly for people who want quite, fanless
operation. I'd get one myself, except I'm fairly happy with the default
Radeon 9700 Pro setup, and my case is already noisy from hard drives and
case fans.

Treat your ATI right and don't overclock it and it'll last you a while.