Anyone remember modding their 9800 Pro to 9800XT?

[bigboxes]

Yes, I'm talking about ten years ago. Just pulled out this old dead card that I saved for some reason and the memories came back. It had this R360 core and 256mb of ram and you could flash the bios with one for the XT model and bam you had a upgraded card. I bought the Pro version, replaced the crap cooler with some copper Zalman, flashed the bios and profit! I think I was on some Barton core at the time, maybe 2600+. Don't mind me. Just going down memory lane. :biggrin:

 

[bystander36]

I just had a normal 9800 Pro, and did not upgrade it. I did a bios flash to my 6950 to make it a 6970, which sounds like the same thing you did with the 9800 Pro.

 

[ctk1981]

Never did the flash. Did have a few 9800pros though...including one that caught fire under a peltier block. :awe:

 

[SPBHM]

as far as I can remember the 9800XTs had 256mb of ram, and the 9800PROs all had 128mb, and the rest of the difference was just clock anyway, so the bios mod was not really all that important.

 

[bigboxes]

as far as I can remember the 9800XTs had 256mb of ram, and the 9800PROs all had 128mb, and the rest of the difference was just clock anyway, so the bios mod was not really all that important.

Well, mine had the 256mb of ram so it was easy. Enabled overdrive, the on-board temp diode and the increase clocks. Wouldn't o/c much more than the XT clocks even with the Zalman. Still had the faster card with quieter cooling for less $$ than the XT.

 

[lavaheadache]

I had a few that I flashed over the years. Free performance is always fun. My dad was blown away the day I turned his AGP X800 pro with vivo into an X800 XT.

 

[mindbomb]

i had a 9800xt, but you could just overclock a 9800pro and it was the same iirc. I don't know what the benefit of modding would have been.

 

[bigboxes]

I had a few that I flashed over the years. Free performance is always fun. My dad was blown away the day I turned his AGP X800 pro with vivo into an X800 XT.

I still have a working X800GTO w/Zalman cooler. Don't have a running AGP mobo since my wife's Abit died. She's rocking a 7850k now. I think I have one last Socket A mobo that works. Maybe I'll put something together just to do it. Make it for some retro gaming.

 

[Deders]

Which card was it that you could unlock to give double the pipelines. I thought it was in the ATI 9X00 series.

 

[Bateluer]

Which card was it that you could unlock to give double the pipelines. I thought it was in the ATI 9X00 series.

The Radeon 9500 Pro was able to modded into a 9700 pro, couldn't it?

Either way, I skipped the 9800xx cards. Went from a Radeon 9600 Pro to a Geforce 6800GT.

 

[TStep]

Never a 9800, but I modded the vanilla 9500 to a 9700 (then overclocked it) to 9700 pro levels. 9500 pro had a different 128 bit pcb, 9500 non-pros were on 256 bit 9700 pcb.

First graphics card I ever modded/oc'ed was a Matrox Mystique.

 

[Concillian]

No, but I remember modding a 9500 into a 9700 Pro.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[Yuriman]

I had both a 9500Pro -> 9700, and an X800GTO² -> X850XT. Good times.

 

[mojothehut]

I had a 9700 Pro *happy sigh*
The fan died on the heatsink. I took the fan off a stock cooler for
an AMD XP 2200+, sure the screws bent the fins on the GPU heatsink.
But it worked, and worked great!

Some of my most fond pc-memories are playing Doom 3 for the first time on that 9700 Pro. Right up there with the original Unreal on a Voodoo 3.

Voodoo 3
Geforce 2 GTS Pro
Geforce 4 ti 4200
ATi 9700 pro.. *wipes tears away* such an uber collection. I still have them all!

 

[thilanliyan]

I think I did mod a X800GTO to X850 from what I remember.

 

[exar333]

The Radeon 9500 Pro was able to modded into a 9700 pro, couldn't it?

Either way, I skipped the 9800xx cards. Went from a Radeon 9600 Pro to a Geforce 6800GT.

Yes, some of these could be. I believe ATI modified the design later to make this more difficult/impossible.

It was an AMAZING mod, and done very easily.

 

[SPBHM]

as far as I can remember the 9500PRO was a 9700 cutdown form 256bit to 128bit memory, no mod was possible, since it had physically half the memory bandwidth, and the full R300 enabled (apart from memory, which was limited by the PCB and memory chips anyway)

the mod was possible for the 9500 non Pro, which was a 9700 with half the pipelines disabled, and that's what the mod did, enabled the pipelines (from 4 to 8)... but it was not a simple bios mod as far as I can remember, to fully convert the card you had to make a physical mod (people used conductive ink) and the bios, but the alternative was a simple softmod... I used "omega drivers", some modded drivers which gave me the option to unlock the pipelines...

also, some 9500NP had 128bits memory only (like mine) so the mod turned it into a 9500 PRO, not 9700.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I wish I had been PC gaming before 2005 when I first really started. I feel I missed out on quite a bit of fun.

 

[Headfoot]

Some of my most fond pc-memories are playing Doom 3 for the first time on that 9700 Pro.

Amen to that brother, great times. I was a poor kid back then. Didn't end up upgrading until I got a 8800 GTS... my oh my was that an upgrade!

 

[ethebubbeth]

For whatever reason I never modded my 9800 Pro.

I did the rendering pipe unlock on my 9500 vanilla into a 9700 vanilla, then overclocked it.
I did the shader unlock of my 6950 into a 6970, then overclocked it.