X850 Pro's being sold as X850 XT's?

[pigdos]

I've been seeing (and bought one) a lot of X850 XT's for real cheap on ebay,
but all of these X850 XT's have one common feature: the UPC has been removed
from the box (presumably for some sort of rebate). Is there any way to know
for sure that you have an X850 XT (or PE) rather than an X850 Pro? I'd
imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to buy or obtain X850 XT or X850 XT-PE
OEM heatsinks and labels then affix these heatsinks and labels to an X850
Pro. Changing the BIOS to report an X850 XT wouldn't be too difficult either
I'd imagine.

Catalyst reports chip type as and X850 XT AGP, but the adapter string as a
Radeon X850 series.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm pretty sure something like this has
happened in the past.

 

[Rick S.]

I've been seeing (and bought one) a lot of X850 XT's for real cheap on ebay,
but all of these X850 XT's have one common feature: the UPC has been removed
from the box (presumably for some sort of rebate). Is there any way to know
for sure that you have an X850 XT (or PE) rather than an X850 Pro? I'd
imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to buy or obtain X850 XT or X850 XT-PE
OEM heatsinks and labels then affix these heatsinks and labels to an X850
Pro. Changing the BIOS to report an X850 XT wouldn't be too difficult either
I'd imagine.

Catalyst reports chip type as and X850 XT AGP, but the adapter string as a
Radeon X850 series.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm pretty sure something like this has
happened in the past.

Heh. Pretty sure? eBay is a cesspool of fraud and shysters.
When I see any disclaimers in an auction description, such as
"UPC label removed", it throws up a major red flag and I
simply move on to other sellers.

Or in other words, you get what you pay for, and on eBay,
frequently less than you pay for.

 

[Flow]

Those are perhaps modded x850pro's whom have 12pipelines by default.
The mod enables 16 pipes increasing speed and instability plus extra heat.
The gpu is the same on all versions,although some have hardware or software
limits for the pipes.
After testing some become xt and others pro.
In general you can try the following: use AtiTool.
set the clocks at the factory defaults,and see if it stays stable,you can
use the artifact tester within atitool.
You should be able to overclock this card also without stability issues.
Many reports about the mod state that clocks needed to be lowered a bit to
maintain stability,some could use the xt clock settings.
But temperatures went around 80°Celcius and even higher on these cards with
stock settings.
Also check if the heatsink+fan is the stock one and not fitted
afterwards.Most heatsinks from the manufacturors are not that easy to
purchase,and often are not suited when modding the video card(again because
of much higher temps).

 

[pigdos]

Well, this is some good news, the heatsink looks like the ones used on X850
XT's and X850 XT PE's, it's a two-slot heatsink solution. I'm still curious
about the missing UPC's, are these used for rebates?

--
Doug

Also check if the heatsink+fan is the stock one and not fitted
afterwards.Most heatsinks from the manufacturors are not that easy to
purchase,and often are not suited when modding the video card(again
because
of much higher temps).

 

[pigdos]

You're right I should of posted this question before I bid/purchased the
X850 XT.

 

[Augustus]

I've been seeing (and bought one) a lot of X850 XT's for real cheap on
ebay, but all of these X850 XT's have one common feature: the UPC has been
removed from the box (presumably for some sort of rebate). Is there any
way to know for sure that you have an X850 XT (or PE) rather than an X850
Pro? I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to buy or obtain X850 XT or
X850 XT-PE OEM heatsinks and labels then affix these heatsinks and labels
to an X850 Pro. Changing the BIOS to report an X850 XT wouldn't be too
difficult either I'd imagine.

Although I don't know about these specific ones, it's reasonable on your
part to be suspicious. I took a quick look on Ebay and didn't see an blatant
or obvious issues on this.A while back, Ebay was flooded with great deals of
"9800XT" 256Mb cards. Still is. Problem with these cards is that none of
them were an actual 9800XT, which was the X850XT PE of it's day. Some were
128bit cards with slow core and memory clocks. Others were 256bit cards but
with slow core/memory. They all seem to be made by some third world jobber.
The boxes as far as I can tell Here's a couple of examples below...Your

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ATI-RADEON-9800-...QcategoryZ40158QQtcZphotoQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ATI-RADEON-9800-...QcategoryZ40158QQtcZphotoQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[TheDoctor]

Well, this is some good news, the heatsink looks like the ones used on X850
XT's and X850 XT PE's, it's a two-slot heatsink solution. I'm still curious
about the missing UPC's, are these used for rebates?

Yes, a missing UPC means nothing more that - a rebate was received by
the original purchaser. So long as the box is still shrink wrapped, a
missing UPC is of no concern at all.

 

[pigdos]

Actually, all 9800 256MB cards turned out to be using 9800XT GPUs. The
differences were/are insignificant, but supposedly you could get slightly
better performance out of the 9800XT GPU's on a clock-for-clock basis. I
can't find the link anymore though.

 

[pigdos]

You're right, it turns out I do have an X850XT so the lack of UPC was a
non-factor. ATItool ID's the chipset as X850XT and verifies that 16 pipes
are operational.

 

[Flow]

Glad you got it worked out pigdos
Happy gaming.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

You're right, it turns out I do have an X850XT so the lack of UPC was
a non-factor. ATItool ID's the chipset as X850XT and verifies that 16
pipes are operational.

So it's good old Ebay then, eh?

 

[pigdos]

In this case I guess so!

--
Doug

So it's good old Ebay then, eh?

 

[pigdos]

Well, the performance increase over my 9800 Pro was underwhelming, the
largest framerate increase I get is around 60% (for Far Cry, but some of
this increase could be due to the fact that geometry instancing is on for
the X850XT and was off for the 9800 Pro). All other games got a little over
30% increase in FPS. I'm thinking my Mobile Barton at 2568 is holding me
back or my slow RAM is. The image quality increase in Quake IV was
immediately noticeable. For $290.00 I don't know if it was worth it.

 

[johns]

I'm keeping my 9800 Pro. There seems to be some kind of cheap video
card price war going on between ATI and nVidia ... and both are
producing
reduced function video cards and playing a name-labeling game. For
example, the 6800XT pci-e is an 8 pipe card and won't run Far Cry above
Medium video settings with AA off. And it will not run HDR at all.
Seems
to me that the older video cards of 2 years ago were serious PC gamers,

but the new stuff is crippled in a price war.

johns

 

[Nonymous]

I'm keeping my 9800 Pro. There seems to be some kind of cheap video
card price war going on between ATI and nVidia ... and both are
producing
reduced function video cards and playing a name-labeling game. For
example, the 6800XT pci-e is an 8 pipe card and won't run Far Cry above
Medium video settings with AA off. And it will not run HDR at all.
Seems
to me that the older video cards of 2 years ago were serious PC gamers,

but the new stuff is crippled in a price war.

It's not *all* crippled. You need to visit websites to figure out what
card is what. and to figure out which one is good versus which one has
been crippled such that it's actually slower than the ones with 'older'
names.

To just stick with your 9800 Pro to avoid figuring it the facts is just
hiding your head in the sand.

 

[pigdos]

If I had a 256MB version of the 9800 Pro I would've kept it and just
upgraded my motherboard+CPU. The difference in Quake IV on my 9800 Pro 128MB
and my X850XT 256MB is night and day and Quake IV runs smooth at 1024x768,
2xAA, 16xAF with adaptive AA on. Far Cry runs 60% faster at the same
resolution and AA, but with double the AF (16x instead of 8x [or maybe even
4x]), geometry instancing and adaptive AA on. Does the 9800 Pro support
geometry instancing?

 

[Dirk Gross]

Microcenter has a special on X850XT AGPs for $239 until tomorrow that has
been running for a couple weeks. I just bought one tonight. Also, ATI has
a $50 rebate that's good for any bought in January. So I'm pretty happy
about getting one for $189 plus tax. Some folks may have decided to make a
profit instead.

Dirk

 

[First of One]

Well, 6800XT is indeed the crippled version, for those "mainstream" users
who don't need the expense (and power consumption) of a full 6800GT/Ultra.
There is the 6800GS, which is just as fast as the 6800GT, retains all the
features, but can be found for cheap. On the ATi side there is the X800GTO,
costing even less. You just have more choices now.

BTW, the "name-labeling game" started a long time ago. Recall the FX5900XT,
or the Radeon 9800SE. Going farther back, there was the Geforce4 MX, about
which John Carmack went out of his way to warn buyers in one of his .plan
entries.

On the other hand, according to Valve's hardware survey at
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html , the Geforce4 MX is the
fourth most popular card. Third place is the FX5200. More i845 integrated
video is used for HL2 than X800 series cards! Really puts things in
perspective. Developers talk tout parallax mapping, shadow volumes, HDR...
while many gamers don't care enough to upgrade their video cards.