9800SE is only crippled by drivers

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

Thanks,


J.

Hi,

"John Smith" wrote in message
...
Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800
and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

The catalyst drivers are pretty much universal across the Radeon range so I
doubt hacked drivers would gain them this much performance. What is more
likely is that they are refering to hacking the bios of the video card,
tricking the card/drivers into thinking it is something other than a 9800SE.

I've heard of people doing this with low end cards and then reselling them
as higher end models to some poor unsuspecting person.

Craig

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:43:42 -0000, "John Smith"
wrote:

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?


Certain makes of SE can have the 8 pipelines activated by software
(the Omega drivers have the option of doing this). Even for those than
CAN be softmodded (Powercolor etc) it is not certain to work although
there are some dealers who have sorted the cards and for a premium
promise that softmodding will work.
--

Julian Richards
julian-richards "at" ntlworld.com

XP Home
L7S7A2 motherboard
Powercolor 9800 SE 8 pipelines with Omega drivers
1 GB RAM
10 GB + 80 GB HDs
CD+DVD/CDRW drives

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:43:42 -0000, "John Smith"
waffled on about something:

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800 and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

Partly true... IFAIK The 9800SE only has 4 pipelines, not 8. I
recently was witness to a magazine benchmarking session... The
Hercules AIW 9800SE was tested as standard, then re-installed with
nothing changed except the .inf file, and it came in only a couple of
3dmarks behind the 9800Pro.

Needless to say I ordered one... It arrived this morning... I'm gonna
have fun later.

D0d6y.
--
MUSHROOMS ARE THE OPIATE OF THE MOOSES

Thanks, so it varies dependent upon what make of card you have?

J.


"Dodgy" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:43:42 -0000, "John Smith"
waffled on about something:

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800
and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

Partly true... IFAIK The 9800SE only has 4 pipelines, not 8. I
recently was witness to a magazine benchmarking session... The
Hercules AIW 9800SE was tested as standard, then re-installed with
nothing changed except the .inf file, and it came in only a couple of
3dmarks behind the 9800Pro.

Needless to say I ordered one... It arrived this morning... I'm gonna
have fun later.

D0d6y.
--
MUSHROOMS ARE THE OPIATE OF THE MOOSES

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:00:05 -0000, "John Smith"
waffled on about something:

Thanks, so it varies dependent upon what make of card you have?

J.


"Dodgy" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:43:42 -0000, "John Smith"
waffled on about something:

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800
and
9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

Partly true... IFAIK The 9800SE only has 4 pipelines, not 8. I
recently was witness to a magazine benchmarking session... The
Hercules AIW 9800SE was tested as standard, then re-installed with
nothing changed except the .inf file, and it came in only a couple of
3dmarks behind the 9800Pro.

Needless to say I ordered one... It arrived this morning... I'm gonna
have fun later.

Actually, I'm going to correct myself.

The inf file actually unlocks the 4 missing pipelines.

Full info at http://www.ocfaq.com

D0d6y.
--
MUSHROOMS ARE THE OPIATE OF THE MOOSES

John Smith wrote:

Hi,

A friend was today telling me that the only difference between the 9800
and 9800SE is that the drivers supplied for the SE are crippled to reduce
performance. He said that people were buying the 9800SE, using hacked
drivers downloaded from online and then, for a fraction of the cost, had
themselves a fully functioning 9800 - is this true or complete nonsense?

The R350 chip has 8 pipelines. On the 9800 SE four of them are disabled.
Using a software patch you can enable them. Sometimes this works,
sometimes it won't--apparently the SE was an effort to "make lemonade" from
chips on which one or more of the pipelines wasn't working, so whether you
can get it to work with all 8 is the luck of the draw. And there's no
option with any existing software as far as I know other than 4 or 8.

Thanks,


J.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Dodgy wrote:
Actually, I'm going to correct myself.

The inf file actually unlocks the 4 missing pipelines.

Full info at http://www.ocfaq.com

And, does yours work? Or... checkerboards??

Thomas
(unlocked 9500 ;-) )

I've heard of people doing this with low end cards and then reselling them
as higher end models to some poor unsuspecting person.

Craig

Hi Craig,

How may one check to make sure that particular lie has not happened?

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:01:56 +0100, "Thomas"
waffled on about something:

Dodgy wrote:
Actually, I'm going to correct myself.

The inf file actually unlocks the 4 missing pipelines.

Full info at http://www.ocfaq.com

And, does yours work? Or... checkerboards??

Thomas
(unlocked 9500 ;-) )

Haven't finished testing yet...

So far the bench marks go...

3dmark2001SE

AIW 8500DV - 8670

Pulled that card out and chucked the AIW 9800SE, leaving the same
drivers, 3.8 I think.

AIW 9800SE - 14553

So I'm pretty happy already... Tonight comes the 3.10 drivers with
unlocked .sys and if that works I'll go crazy and try an overclock.

D0d6y.
--
MUSHROOMS ARE THE OPIATE OF THE MOOSES