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First post, by dulu

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- seller said that card has a 128MB of ram
- there are 8 ram chips, each has a "16Mx16 DDR" tag on it, so 16x8=128MB (...right? )
- silicon has tag "R360"

however

- sticker on the back says that card has a 256MB
- GPU-Z says that card has a 256MB
- GPU-Z says that core name is "R350"

My first thought was "ok, this is the worse version of 9800 pro, called "9800 pro 128 bit". But it doesn`t match too. Gpu-z says that clock has a 378MHz, when "fake 9800pro" has only 325. My question is, how much worse could this card be than reference 9800pro, and what programs should I use to find out how much memory it really has? Maybe clock is fake too?

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Reply 1 of 16, by texterted

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I seem to remember the 256mb ones using DDR2 ram.

Cheers

Ted

98se/W2K :- Asus A8v Dlx. A-64 3500+, 512 mb ddr, Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live.
XP Pro:- Asus P5 Q SE Plus, C2D E8400, 4 Gig DDR2, Radeon HD4870, SB Audigy 2ZS.

Reply 2 of 16, by brt02

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Could you give us the full BIOS version/string from GPU-Z? It is cut off in the screenshot

From what I can see, The device ID suggests the card has a 9800 AIW bios on it?

It's most likely a fake card with a recycled die and cheap VRAM.

Intel OR840 | Dual P3 1GHz - 1GB PC800 RDRAM - ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - Creative Audigy 2ZS - Lian Li PC-65 - W98/W2K

Reply 4 of 16, by brt02

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Actually now that I look at it neither do I on that version of GPU-Z 😀

Still think its a fake card. To add to my previous post, the capacitors aren't right either. they are typically solid caps on 9800s.

Intel OR840 | Dual P3 1GHz - 1GB PC800 RDRAM - ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - Creative Audigy 2ZS - Lian Li PC-65 - W98/W2K

Reply 5 of 16, by dulu

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I am most curious about why the ram on pcb is physically 128MB and the programs show 256. It is possible that these chips were physically 32MB, but were marked by the manufacturer as 16 because the part of them was damaged?

Reply 6 of 16, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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My guess is it's legit - if you search for the P/N on the back label you'll find multiple versions of the card with the exact same PCB layout & components but with slightly different coolers (including yours), some from Palit and some from other brands. Remember, Palit are a massive OEM for graphics cards.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060311051101/ht … s/vga_9800.html

Whilst the clock on the 256MB versions was (I think) 380MHz, the better ones were using BGA DDR2 but there were others like this one which continued to use DDR1 as a cost saving.

Reply 7 of 16, by schmatzler

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I have the exact same card down to the model number.
It also reports 256MB of memory and the chips have "HP25D256163CE-4 16Mx16 DDR" imprinted on them.

There are 8 chips, which would result in 128MB, which is odd.
I also can't find out anything about those memory modules online.

A while ago I compared this to my 9600XT on a Tualatin 1.4GHz setup and got almost the same scores.
Since it runs a lot hotter, I never really use it.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 8 of 16, by weedeewee

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8 chips of 16M x 16 = 256 MB

there is no problem there, only a misunderstanding.
1 byte = 8 bits, 2 bytes = 16 bits
memory has 16 bits interface ergo 2 bytes times 16M = 32MB per chip

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Reply 9 of 16, by schmatzler

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Ah, that makes sense. 😀

I ran GPU-Z on Windows 10, where you can see the whole version string:

r9800-win10.gif
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Also dumped the BIOS, if someone wants to take a look at it.

Filename
R350.zip
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31.94 KiB
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49 downloads
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Public domain

Edit: Ran some more benchmarks on a Core 2 Quad Q9550 - this 9800 Pro is actually quite a bit faster than my 9600XT (which also uses DDR1 memory, so it's a fair comparison).
I guess on a Pentium 3 it doesn't really matter which of those cards you use, you need a beefier CPU to see the difference.

3DMark03
Palit 9800 Pro: 4828 3DMarks
Sapphire 9600XT: 4104 3DMarks

3DMark06
Palit 9800 Pro: 723 3DMarks
Sapphire 9600XT: 606 3DMarks

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 10 of 16, by texterted

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I think it's a bit of a con job calling it a "Pro". Very shady tactics!

Cheers

Ted

98se/W2K :- Asus A8v Dlx. A-64 3500+, 512 mb ddr, Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live.
XP Pro:- Asus P5 Q SE Plus, C2D E8400, 4 Gig DDR2, Radeon HD4870, SB Audigy 2ZS.

Reply 11 of 16, by brt02

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I had convinced myself that the card was a fake. R360 reporting as R350 with really low mem clocks?

Count me surprised. Palit is hardly a no-name brand so surprised to see it.

Intel OR840 | Dual P3 1GHz - 1GB PC800 RDRAM - ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - Creative Audigy 2ZS - Lian Li PC-65 - W98/W2K

Reply 12 of 16, by havli

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R350 and R360 are more or less the same, no big deal. And R9800 Pro 256MB/128bit is pretty common card. I have one of these as well. Not Palit though and I am not sure what GPU it has.

HW museum.cz - my collection of PC hardware

Reply 13 of 16, by bZbZbZ

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I have a very similar card (mine is Powercolor, has a floppy power connector instead of molex, and has a slightly different positioning of electrolytic capacitors). I believe it was quite common for board partners to produce cut-down Radeon 9800 based cards with halved memory bus. These are not 'fake', they are just cards that were produced for the OEM/budget/mainstream market.

Some of these cards were branded as Radeon 9800 SE, and some even had half their pipelines disabled. There was also a pretty wide variety of clockspeeds. It looks like your and my cards are full pipe, just half bus. Compared to my card, it looks like your GPU has a higher clock but your memory is clocked a bit slower.

file.php?id=102447&mode=view

In practical terms I think our card can be thought of as a highly overclocked Radeon 9500 Pro. So it should be mostly faster than a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 but clearly slower than a full-bus Radeon 9700/9800.

Reply 14 of 16, by texterted

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I don't see the point. Seeing as the 9600 Pro performs about the same.

Unless they just had a glut of old chips they wanted rid of?

Cheers

Ted

98se/W2K :- Asus A8v Dlx. A-64 3500+, 512 mb ddr, Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live.
XP Pro:- Asus P5 Q SE Plus, C2D E8400, 4 Gig DDR2, Radeon HD4870, SB Audigy 2ZS.

Reply 15 of 16, by bZbZbZ

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texterted wrote on 2021-02-21, 21:46:

I don't see the point. Seeing as the 9600 Pro performs about the same.

Unless they just had a glut of old chips they wanted rid of?

My guess is that ATI had a bunch of R350/R360 chips with defect somewhere in the memory controller. And some might've had a defect in the pixel pipelines (hence the 9800SE cards with only 4 pixel pipes). Since these chips wouldn't be able to power a fully working 9800 Pro/XT they sold them cheap to board partners for use in these cut down products. That way they wouldn't have to toss these partially defective chips in the trash.

Reply 16 of 16, by texterted

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Sounds about right, Palit should have been spanked for calling them 9800 Pro's tho!

Cheers

Ted

98se/W2K :- Asus A8v Dlx. A-64 3500+, 512 mb ddr, Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live.
XP Pro:- Asus P5 Q SE Plus, C2D E8400, 4 Gig DDR2, Radeon HD4870, SB Audigy 2ZS.