My 9800 Pro (with R360 core but Pro PCB, which I
believe is a BBA) now has an XT BIOS. (If you're
interested I had more luck in the end with a BIOS
I found for an HIS card modified with a 128MB
limit, than the modified Club3D BIOS that many
people seem to use. Both BIOS's were considerably
older than the one installed on my card
originally. I wonder what the intervening updates
might have included). My card nearly runs at XT
clock speeds (412/365) flawlessly, but not quite.
At the moment I have the case open and a desk fan
directed into it. In this fashion, ATitool tells
me I can have stable settings of about 403/373.
At those settings (needless to say) 3DMark03 runs
fine. With the default settings everything is
fine apart from a few (very few, probably fewer
than 10 or 20) single-pixel snowy sparkles that
show up in Mother
Nature. You might not even notice them if you
weren't looking. [I have run FarCry (not for very
long) at the default speeds and not noticed
anything untoward].

To be honest, I don't think there's much wrong
with the card at these speeds, but the thing is I
know it's not working perfectly. I shouldn't have
thought it was the GPU temperature that is causing
the sparkles, since I've fitted the Arctic VGA
Silencer, which claims to operate the GPU at much
lower temperatures than the standard cooler (and
the desk fan's there too). I thought I might
benefit from increasing the voltage to the GPU.

I did try changing the AGP signalling voltage to
1.6V, but that made no difference (I think) and I
can't really see why it should make any, to the
core. I've googled a little and found the Rojack
Pot articles on volt-modding the Pro and the XT.
I'm pretty certain, I need to follow the
instructions in the Pro article, as I just don't
have the components described in the XT article.
I'll almost certainly do it by pencilling my
resistors in. I think the R360 has a default
voltage slightly higher than the R350. (The
articles mention nearly 1.8V measured on a
standard XT compared with just 1.7V or less on the
standard Pro). I'm wondering whether the Pro PCB
is modified to provide the higher core voltage
when the R360 core is included. I guess I'll find
out when I measure the stock voltage.

So my questions a
Is it likely that increasing the GPU voltage will
rid me of my sparkles at 412MHz?
Is there a sensible way to measure the GPU
temperature?
Any tips on pencilling (beyond the article) from
someone who's done it?

Thanks.

Neil