I think it would be a shame to lose that single-slot stock heatsink. It's not a bad cooler.

I don't know what the chances are of cooling fixing the R3x0 memory death problem. I would probably just underclock it via BIOS.

I have a 9800 Pro 256MB that is a nice little heater as well. Especially the early DDR2 memory on it. What kind of memory does that XT use?

That was my thought as well, and I don't think a new cooler would help the VRAM at all.

Any suggestions and precautions I should take regarding the BIOS changes? Not really sure how to go about it.

To edit the BIOS you need the RaBit BIOS editor and DOS atiflash. The editor is fairly straightforward. Flashing is pretty easy too. Just go to pure DOS and run "atiflash -p 0 rom.bin".

Make a BIOS backup too so you can easily return to the untouched stock BIOS.

If flashing goes badly, you can almost certainly fix it by booting a PCI video card as primary and then re-flashing the stock BIOS to the AGP card.

Thanks, I took your advice, but I'm a little stuck.

I got as far as creating a modified BIOS with RaBit, and then created a Windows 98 Boot Disk to run ATIFLASH.

When I run atiflash -p -f 0 R360.rom I receive an error.

It says "Error: Adapter Not Found".

Not sure what I did wrong.

You have the options out of order.

atiflash -f -p 0 R360.rom

-f is force flash. Shouldn't be needed.
-p x identifies which adapter (by number from a list) you wish to flash. Number 0 is going to be the one you want unless you have multiple video adapters in your system.

https://www.getpimp.org/community/blog/139-un … ting-howto.html

Sorry for the typo.

I meant, atiflash -f -p 0 R360.rom

Also tried atiflash -i and still get "Adapter not found". I tried it on 2 different systems.

As for your earlier question, my 9800XT has Hynix RAM.

Thanks for the help so far. I'm going to read through the link you sent, and try again.

Still no luck unfortunately. Really not sure why it won't detect my card. I've even tried atiwinflash, and even that gives me the "Adapter not found" response.

Could it perhaps be something to do with the machines having onboard graphics cards? Unfortunately, I don't have an AGP 8x motherboard without onboard VGA.

Is the onboard video enabled?

Possibly, but I couldn't find a way to fully disable it. I have the BIOS set to boot from AGP first, and I'm booting with the Radeon 9800 XT Card.

Should I be booting from a separate PCI graphics card maybe? I wouldn't think that would be necessary, as the 9800 XT card is functioning.

Edit: Even tried booting from a separate PCI card. Still no luck.

Edit2: Well, I'm giving up for tonight. I'm going to give flashrom a try tomorrow to see if it makes a difference at all.

Yeah try flashrom. Or try to find an older atiflash. I've flashed Radeon 9700 cards but I don't remember which flash program works.

I have an Asus 9800XT. I bought this card almost-new back around 2007 and had a similar experience with it. These cards definitely run very hot. To remedy the cooling situation, I currently use an EverCool EC-VC-RF. If you remove the silly plastic fan cover, it remains a single-slot cooler. It also works quite well. I was testing out a PC with it last night and had it running 3DMark 2001 SE for almost three hours straight without any problems. Your Vantec Iceberq 6 is an even better cooler than the one I'm using, but it takes up an adjacent PCI slot.

Once, I forgot to connect the fan on the card and it overheated, producing the same artifacts you described. When I plugged the fan back in, the artifacts went away. So, I think your problem is probably going to be fixed by getting a better HSF and ramsinks.

Before you alter the card's BIOS, I would recommend using a different strategy. For the RAM, don't use the ramsinks as they are included with the cooler. Remove the adhesive/glue/tape from the ramsinks and clean them thoroughly. Use Arctic Alumina Thermal Epoxy to attach them. They still get extremely hot, but even a light breeze seems to be enough to cool the card properly and within tolerances. Decent airflow within the case should be enough. If not, point a fan at the card. Get creative like I did, or you can also buy something like this.

Those things do run hot. Basically a twice overclocked 9700 Pro. Came out around the same time as the 5800 Ultra. People actually thought those cooling solutions were okay. 😀

firage wrote:

People actually thought those cooling solutions were okay. 😀

This is probably why so many ended up defective, I saw fewer for sale than I had anticipated (GF6800 seemed way more common and their cooling solutions are exponentially more impressive).

Btw, for a long time I found the cooling solution for R9600 very simplistic (only the smaller passive heatsink) and always wondered if this card really dissipated so little heat or whether the manufacturers were just being cheap.

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, for a long time I found the cooling solution for R9600 very simplistic (only the smaller passive heatsink) and always wondered if this card really dissipated so little heat or whether the manufacturers were just being cheap.

The 9600 cards run very cool. You don't even need an active fan on them. I've got two 9600XT cards that I installed Zalman ZM50-HP passive heatpipe coolers on. They never overheat and always run just fine. I don't even need to direct any extra airflow at them.

I really wish I could find a few more of those ZM50-HP coolers. Based on how they attached to my 9600XT cards, I've always suspected that they could have also been mounted to a Voodoo 3 to improve it's cooling while still being a passive single-slot solution. Perhaps someday I'll cannibalize one of the 9600XT cards and try it out.

@swaaye Thanks for all the help. I managed to get it right using Atiflash v3.3. My 9800XT is happily chugging along with the standard 411.75MHz GPU core and an underclocked 337.5MHz VRAM clock. You could still fry an egg on that card though. ATI Catalyst Control Center shows the temps at 60-70C on idle and 72C at load, and the fan spins at 87.5% on idle and 100% at load.

Which leads me to my next question. Should I leave the current cooler as it is, or should I get a Vantec Iceberq 6 cooler for it?

The reason the temps don't change much from idle to load is R3x0 doesn't really have any power management features.

I wouldn't bother with cooling changes but it's up to you. Lots of other people are going to tell you to go to it though I'm sure. I like keeping my old hardware in stock form unless the cooling is exceptionally loud.

KT7AGuy wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, for a long time I found the cooling solution for R9600 very simplistic (only the smaller passive heatsink) and always wondered if this card really dissipated so little heat or whether the manufacturers were just being cheap.

The 9600 cards run very cool. You don't even need an active fan on them. I've got two 9600XT cards that I installed Zalman ZM50-HP passive heatpipe coolers on. They never overheat and always run just fine. I don't even need to direct any extra airflow at them.

I really wish I could find a few more of those ZM50-HP coolers. Based on how they attached to my 9600XT cards, I've always suspected that they could have also been mounted to a Voodoo 3 to improve it's cooling while still being a passive single-slot solution. Perhaps someday I'll cannibalize one of the 9600XT cards and try it out.

My personal favorite was the Zalman VF700-Cu (the al/cu were also good in my book), which happens to be the VGA cooler I mounted on my Sapphire 9600XT as I found the stock HSF to be extremely cheap-looking and at the time I had no other card to put it on...kinda overkill though, especially now that you chimed in about the stock coolers being more than enough (for the non-XTs at least though), but I don't think I have a decent (and smaller) VGA heatsink to replace the VF700 on my 9600XT with. Probably just gonna remove the VF700 from the XT and use some leftover heatsink that came with a dead card or something and somehow mash the 2 together 😁

I should've gotten some more of those VF700s when they were cheap, but those always seemed to be very popular and a lot easier to install than those heatpiped passive ones (that one was a real pain to install compared to the VF700 🤣).

I've shown this picture several times here already. Here's my 9800Pro with a huge Chinese cooler. It's very cheap and quite effective. Don't let the color fool you, it's painted aluminium. I like the standard 90mm fan mounting, very simple and repairabe solution. And I know it's a four-slot design, but these days you get most things integrated anyway.

RacoonRider wrote:

I've shown this picture several times here already. Here's my 9800Pro with a huge Chinese cooler. It's very cheap and quite effe […]
Show full quote

I've shown this picture several times here already. Here's my 9800Pro with a huge Chinese cooler. It's very cheap and quite effective. Don't let the color fool you, it's painted aluminium. I like the standard 90mm fan mounting, very simple and repairabe solution. And I know it's a four-slot design, but these days you get most things integrated anyway.

True that.

It's damned huge indeed 🤣! But you're right, boards that would actually benefit by having such HSFs installed typically have most other things integrated and I typically only bother with things like sound cards and NICs if I for some reason have troubles with the integrated stuff.

What's that VGA HSF named and how much does it cost? I might consider getting me a 'couple' if my budget allows it 😜

There is one other trick to get those Zalmans cheaply, but it has some disadvantages. I often buy in bulk to save on shipping costs and because buying in bulk roughly equate to fewer purchases, so I have less hassle than when I buy every component individually. Often people that sell a lot will be the ones that are adept at computing and often will have modded or tweaked their hardware, I've on several occasions bought dead graphics cards that had such coolers installed for next to nothing, only grip is that some of these coolers are originally sold with multiple retention mechanisms, which the buyer of the dead graphics card will obviously not receive. But this way I got several of those Zalman coolers for like €5 and I got me some nice looking PCBs for free 😁