9800 pro which board?

[Ch3tan]

Hoping that some of you technation guys will have seen/tested enough 9800 boards to make comment if one is better thna the other.

I'm currently looking at the hercules 3d prophet 9800 pro 128mb. It seems to have a more silent fan and lots of copper heatsinks everywhere. Worth me paying the £40 it costs over the cheapy powercolor version?

 

[Ch3tan]

Bah, google proved more forthcoming than you lot!

Ordered a Hercules 9800 pro for about £280 inc VAT. Should be with me Wednesday \o/

 

[FatBusinessman]

Originally posted by Ch3tan
Bah, google proved more forthcoming than you lot!

To be fair, you only gave us 2 hours and 8 minutes...

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I got the hercules 9800 non pro and flashed it to a pro. I have now have the exact same card as you and it costed me ~£210 inc VAT.

 

[Ch3tan]

Yeah I looked at doing that, but I'd rather have a card with a 3 year warrenty intact, even if it means paying a premium.

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Originally posted by TheJkWhoSaysNi
I got the hercules 9800 non pro and flashed it to a pro. I have now have the exact same card as you and it costed me ~£210 inc VAT.

If you honestly think that then you sir are a fool

 

[Ch3tan]

From reading, the boards are indentical, the only difference being that the pro comes with 2.8ns ram and the non pro with 3.3ns.

 

[wyrd_fish]

don't the pros usually have more pipeline avalible?

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Nope, They both have 8 pipelines. The 9800SE, however, only has 4.

From reading, the boards are indentical, the only difference being that the pro comes with 2.8ns ram and the non pro with 3.3ns.

Yeah, that's right. To flash you have to have samsung memory too.. but all recent hercules cards seem to have samsung memory. (Well i've never seen one with anything else).

If you honestly think that then you sir are a fool

I am not a fool. (Well, i'm right on this occasion at least ) the boards are identical other than the memory. I did a lot of reasearch on this a few weeks back

 

[ManDevil]

Originally posted by Ch3tan
Yeah I looked at doing that, but I'd rather have a card with a 3 year warrenty intact, even if it means paying a premium.

You would, it uses hacked drivers, if it don't work you just reinstall the normal ones.

That's what I'm going for £170 for a Herclules 9800SE AIW - soft modded to a 9800PRO AIW

 

[Big G]

I bought the Powercolor 9800 Pro, ~£220 from Komplett although i bought mine from oc.co.uk

Love it, but i admit it needs more cooling on the ram chips which the Hercules has. You made a good choice.

G

 

[Ch3tan]

Originally posted by ManDevil
You would, it uses hacked drivers, if it don't work you just reinstall the normal ones.

That's what I'm going for £170 for a Herclules 9800SE AIW - soft modded to a 9800PRO AIW

Erm, the SE only has 4 pipelines. So you won't be flashing it to a PRO.

 

[tainted]

I ordered a powercolo(u)r 9800 pro 128mb this week, £240 with overclockers.co.uk.

I dont think its a 'cheapy' version ~_^ from what ive read its up there with the sapphire and hercules models, maybe not as overclockable.

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Yes, dont go for the SE cards, to be honest you'd be better getting a 9600Pro/XT than an 9800SE

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

iirc, the powecolor 9800 (Well the pro anyways) has a higher default clock than the others.

 

[Big G]

it overclocks rather nicely too

must fit my ramsinks

 

[ManDevil]

Originally posted by Ch3tan
Erm, the SE only has 4 pipelines. So you won't be flashing it to a PRO.

It has 8 but 4 are disabled (well the Hercules anyway, and a few other makes), you stand a 50/50 chance of the softmod working as the 4 disabled ones could be buggered.

 

[wyrd_fish]

man, card makers are lazy...

 

[Ch3tan]

12937 3dmarks 01.

3748 3dmarks 03.

Good bad? some tweaking required?

 

[Big G]

Chet,

That looks kinda low for a 3dmark2003 score, what CPU/mobo you running?

I got ~3500 with FSAA on.

Without, I managed 5650 (after an overclock to 9800XT spec) and about 5400 with stock speeds (Asus A7V266 / Athlon 2400+ @ 2700+).

I wouldn't worry too much about 3DMark2003 scores, pile of synthetic poop .

Tried the latest Aquamark?

G

 

[Clowneh!]

Did it go in your shuttle?

 

[throdgrain]

Benchmarks are shite really, Ive totally lost interest in them. How does it play the game you want to play ? Thats the important thing.
My pc now plays Call Of Duty at 1280-1024 with everything on and maintains a solid maxfps 76 fps , and looks fantastic.
Thats what Im concerned with

 

[Xavier]

agreed, synthetic benchmarks suck...

but you do realise what you just said, in itself is a benchmark, right?

Xav

 

[Ch3tan]

I think thats with AA dn Ansitropic on, I changed the slider from balanced to higher quality afaik. Will try again after I finish working stupid hours at work, not had time to load a single game up yet :/

On the bright side my board came bundled with Vietcong rather than Raven shield (which I already own).

Yes Clowneh it went in my shuttle, yes its bloody hot

 

[Ch3tan]

As for FPS ingames, CS and HL now play at 100fps constant no slow down in fighting or with smoke nades (at best quality).

Max payne2 at 1280 *1024 with everything on high but no antialiasing looks a zillion times better than on the geforce 2 i had.

Operation flashpoint - Doesnt work! Use preferences of ofp to autodetect settings, but it loads the game with two basic colours and not visible menu. Help!

Also the 3dmark score above was with the ati control 3d slider in "high quality", after I reset it to "balanced" I get 5631.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1606047

 

[ManDevil]

Yay - The softmod drivers worked on my new Hercules 9800se AIW, I now have a 9800 PRO AIW and it only cost me £160.

My 3DMark03 score went from 3657 (non-modded) to 5546 with the mod