First post, by TheMobRules
A few years ago I got a Radeon 9800 Pro that appeared to be in good physical condition when it comes to the components, although it was completely covered in that disgusting tar so common on smoker's items. Also, the original heatsink was stuck and completely clogged with that crap, so I removed it, gave the card a good cleaning and tested it with a temp heatsink, luckily everything was working fine.
Fast forward some time and I got one of those Zalman VF700 coolers from the mid-2000's and when I was going to install it something caught my eye: all the chips and components, including the GPU itself, have date codes from mid-2008. I find that strange, what would be the reason to keep manufacturing a high-end card from 2003 five years later? Is that a common practice? I don't think this just a case of leftover GPU stock, since the GPU is from 2008 as well! Also, on the back there's a Dell P/N so that gives other clues about its origins... don't know much about Dell computers from that era, maybe someone familiar can identify what model it came from.
At least it's an R360 instead of R350, which means I could probably increase the core clock to 9800XT speeds without much trouble right? What tool would be best for doing this?
