Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ultimate & BIOS?

[Cutsman]

I was wondering about the large collection of BIOS's here and what there is I should know about them and my Sapphire 9600XT Ultimate. Here's what information about my card I've gathered so far:

Product Description:
Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT 128M DDR AGP VGA/TVO/DVI-I Ultimate (w/ Half-Life 2 coupon)
Additional Product Description:
BGA; 500/300MHz; Heatpipe; Support Overdrive
SKU#: 11029-05-40
EAN Code: 489 51062 0617 5
Board Part Number: 1024-HC19-4C-ZM

http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9600-xt-ult.asp

This info was from Sapphires full retail line spreadsheet.

Now, what I was wondering was about these other 9600XT BIOS's. It seems that maybe my 9600XT isn't performing up to par as it should, but my most recent conclusion to that was probably my system isn't up to par with the card so I might be upgrading some key components soon. Also, my system specs are in my signature. It has also appeared that I cannot overclock my card too well without it hard locking or anything.

Also, I was wondering if running my mem clock at 325 default instead of 300 would be safe, my card usually runs at around 39-45 C during idle and load times, now I'm not sure exactly what the danger temps would be for my video card, but maybe someone could enlighten me on this subject.

Whenever I enable Overdrive on my card, it will sometimes lockup or screen turn black and then lockup, etc, etc. I'm not sure why but I would expect my card to be able to handle the 526 overclock that gets applied.

Sorry for the long post, too many questions and not enough answers... I appreciate any help or advice anyone gives me, thank you.

 

[Ramine]

well i have the same cards sorta, the 256 mb version, and i am getting easily, 560/330 with stock cooling, and it runs at 39-42 with no load, and 55 at load, i am getting a Atric thing, and i made some extream ram sinks, (out of a zalman cooler), you shldnt need to overclock it at all, also i did find that my system was holding it back,so i tried it on a althon 2800+ and a Abit NV7 mobo, and it flew, it got like 5670 on 3d mark 03!!!

dont use the auto detect on the atitool, just use my setting and see how u find them, if your system is like mine, p4 2.2, you shld see about 150-155 on ther fps in atitool, which aint bad for the card that has only 4 pipelines!!

Ramine

 

[Cutsman]

Hmm, awesome, thanks for your input, some definite valuable information! As you can see in my sig that I'm running only a 1.8GHz proc and some decent DDR. I'm seriously thinking about getting an Athlon 2500 Mobile and overclocking it up into the mid-to-high 2GHz area along with an Abit NF7-S 2.0 board.

i'm just kinda bummed as to why my card defaults at 500/300 when it should be 500/325 like here, http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTc5LDI=

i'll figure something out, im gonna try these DNA drivers just to see what they're like, i currently use the latest Omegas. then maybe i'll try a bios update... shrug!

 

[Ramine]

hmm, i wouldnt go for the bios upgrade, just use the softmod drivers, that's what you need, however, what i did is use the Proper 4.8's and then turned off overdrive, so that the atitool wasnt getting confused!

Try that,

Ramine

 

[Cutsman]

i really havent tried softmodded drivers, but i did flash my card yesterday and the memory clock is now a stable 325MHz. now, overdrive ususally leaves the mem clock alone and increases the core clock to 526MHz if the card is running cool, but if it's running a little hot then it clocks it to 513MHz. so i ran atitool yesterday after flashing and the max core i achieved was 519MHz stable after finding an artifact at 520MHz, i ran the scan for about 5 minutes.

also, the cooling on my card doesn't seem to be that great but i've seen people get some pretty good overclocks with this card, it's more than likely that it's my system holding it back, here's a pic...

 

[Ramine]

ahh yes, see i dont have the ultimate version, i just have the XT, however it has a good cooling system, and i made some ram sinks, and today i just overclocked it to 600core and 345 mem,( with help from a 120mm fan keeping it chilly in there, i might get a snowman and some fake shown, be like one of those orniments that you shake round!

Ramine

 

[wazzledoozle]

neithodir, you should really get a fansink on that 9600XT, probably an Iceberq 4

 

[Cutsman]

thanks wazzle, i was just about to ask about what kind of video card coolers i should look into for this card along with a new proc and mobo.