9800SE is only crippled by drivers

J

John Smith

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

Thanks,


J.
 
C

Craig Matchan

Hi,

John Smith said:
Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?
Click to expand...

The catalyst drivers are pretty much universal across the Radeon range so I
doubt hacked drivers would gain them this much performance. What is more
likely is that they are refering to hacking the bios of the video card,
tricking the card/drivers into thinking it is something other than a 9800SE.

I've heard of people doing this with low end cards and then reselling them
as higher end models to some poor unsuspecting person.

Craig
 
J

Julian Richards

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?
Click to expand...


Certain makes of SE can have the 8 pipelines activated by software
(the Omega drivers have the option of doing this). Even for those than
CAN be softmodded (Powercolor etc) it is not certain to work although
there are some dealers who have sorted the cards and for a premium
promise that softmodding will work.
--

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
 
D

Dodgy

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?
Click to expand...

Partly true... IFAIK The 9800SE only has 4 pipelines, not 8. I
recently was witness to a magazine benchmarking session... The
Hercules AIW 9800SE was tested as standard, then re-installed with
nothing changed except the .inf file, and it came in only a couple of
3dmarks behind the 9800Pro.

Needless to say I ordered one... It arrived this morning... I'm gonna
have fun later.

D0d6y.
 
J

J. Clarke

John said:
Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800
and 9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?
Click to expand...

The R350 chip has 8 pipelines. On the 9800 SE four of them are disabled.
Using a software patch you can enable them. Sometimes this works,
sometimes it won't--apparently the SE was an effort to "make lemonade" from
chips on which one or more of the pipelines wasn't working, so whether you
can get it to work with all 8 is the luck of the draw. And there's no
option with any existing software as far as I know other than 4 or 8.
 
A

axexango

I've heard of people doing this with low end cards and then reselling them
as higher end models to some poor unsuspecting person.

Craig
Click to expand...

Hi Craig,

How may one check to make sure that particular lie has not happened?
 
D

Dodgy

And, does yours work? Or... checkerboards??

Thomas
(unlocked 9500 ;-) )
Click to expand...

Haven't finished testing yet...

So far the bench marks go...

3dmark2001SE

AIW 8500DV - 8670

Pulled that card out and chucked the AIW 9800SE, leaving the same
drivers, 3.8 I think.

AIW 9800SE - 14553

So I'm pretty happy already... Tonight comes the 3.10 drivers with
unlocked .sys and if that works I'll go crazy and try an overclock.

D0d6y.
 
C

Craig Matchan

Hi,

axexango said:
Hi Craig,

How may one check to make sure that particular lie has not happened?
Click to expand...

I would imagine one would have to do a physical inspection of the card. Most
cards have the model number etched onto the pcb somewhere.

By the way, to all the other respondants, I stand corrected on the sys file
hack. Guess you can't know everything eh? :)

Craig
 
C

Craig Matchan

Hi, it's me again..

axexango said:
How may one check to make sure that particular lie has not happened?
Click to expand...

I forgot to add this, if the model numberhas been disfigured in such as way
as it's imposible to see the model number on the card then I would treat
that card as suspect and probably walk away from it.

Craig
 
D

Dodgy

Okay... Update time peeps

Original system 8500DV Catalyst 3.8
3dmark01se 8670

AIW 9800SE Same Cat drivers
3dmark01se 14553

AIW 9800SE Catalyst 3.10
3dmark01se 14528
3dmark03 3878

With softmod from www.ocfaq.com

3dmark01se 17384
3dmark03 5778

Not an artifact in sight! Am I happy, or am I happy?!

D0d6y.
 
J

Jada

Which brand is this 9800SE?

Thanks


Okay... Update time peeps

Original system 8500DV Catalyst 3.8
3dmark01se 8670

AIW 9800SE Same Cat drivers
3dmark01se 14553

AIW 9800SE Catalyst 3.10
3dmark01se 14528
3dmark03 3878

With softmod from www.ocfaq.com

3dmark01se 17384
3dmark03 5778

Not an artifact in sight! Am I happy, or am I happy?!

D0d6y.
Click to expand...
 
T

Thomas

Dodgy said:
Original system 8500DV Catalyst 3.8
3dmark01se 8670

AIW 9800SE Same Cat drivers
3dmark01se 14553

AIW 9800SE Catalyst 3.10
3dmark01se 14528
3dmark03 3878

With softmod from www.ocfaq.com

3dmark01se 17384
3dmark03 5778

Not an artifact in sight! Am I happy, or am I happy?!
Click to expand...

Congratulations!
Thomas.
 
D

Dodgy

Congratulations!
Thomas.
Click to expand...

Gotta be the bargain of the year!

I must admit the heatsink looks too small for my liking... Especially
after seeing the huge lumps of copper bolted onto the Nvidia Ultra
cards. Can anyone recommend a better fan/heatsink? (For the ram too, I
have overclocking in mind!)

D0d6y.
 
J

John Smith

Interestingly, here in the UK the 9800 is now only about £70 more - I say
'only' as the gap between the 9800 SE and the 9800 used to be alot more.
 

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