9800 Pro question
 

I bought a 9800Pro from Ebay. I got slightly worried when the packaging it arrived in had no mention of "PRO" on it. It was OEM so the packaging was just mainly a bubblewrap sleeve.

I just installed the drivers and all it says in "Display Properties" is Ati Radeon 9800. No where in the Display Properties or the ATi Control panel does the word "PRO" ever appear.

So, to those of you that have an ATi 9800 PRO, is this unusual? Should I be talking to the person I bought for....considering if it's just a 9800 it's fraud?

Thank you.

If it came in your standard ATi box and didn't say pro I'd be worried. There are ways though of definitley checking it out. You can Download a program such as Powerstrip and find out what the GPU Core and Memory speeds are. Uhh offhand I can't recall what the pro and standard speeds are but definitly start investigating.

OEM cards are often the non-Pro variety, so I would be checking the speed right away. I have a 9700 Pro and it says 9700 Pro in the display settings.

The box should say Pro.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....rl=false&h=387

There was no box.

Is there a way to tell by memory or product number?

Sounds like a fraud to me, usually in "display properties" it says what kind of model it is and if it's a "Pro" model it'll say "Pro".

run atiinfo itll tell you the model

they dont seem to cover the newer chips yet.
http://www.ati.com/support/identify/index.html

My Radeon 9800 i bought at Best Buy wasnt a Pro, but in the display properties it says 9800 Pro, which is nice. But there really isnt a whole lot to worry about between the 9800 and 9800 Pro, you can overclock the clock speeds of a 9800 non pro to that of a 9800 pro. If you dont want to do that, you still have a great video card, as long as you didnt over pay for it.

Right click on my computer|properties|hardware|device manager and click the + next to display adapters. There should be two things listed.

Radeon 9800 Pro
Radeon 9800 Pro (secondary)

Additionally you can go to System Information and click Component|Display You "should" see 9800 Pro everywhere.

If not, you got hosed if you paid a higher premium. .

Ok, thanks.

Looks like I didn't get hosed, exactly, but it is a case of fraud. I paid $315 for the card, which, it's not bad....but when the auction specifically stated "PRO" in the title and the auction information...time to send an irate email.

That is only true depending on the memory that you have, if its 2.8ns or something then you can but if it is the newer/worse 3.0 or 3.3 the memory wont overclock to PRO speeds, or at least that is what I have heard.

I just ordered my nonpro from allstarshop for 248 can't wait for it to arrive.

go to rage3d.net

download the utility and look at the clock speed of your video card.

the core and memory clock should be about 380/680

if it's dramatically lower...like 310/600...you've been had.

If you can, return it as it sounds like you got cheated.

However, if you can't, all is not lost. Here's what to do:

1) Look at the memory chips on your card and write down what's printed on them.

2) Go to the samsung website and look up what kind of memory chips you have. If the chips you have are capable of running at 340 mHz, you're in good shape.

3) Download the 9800 Pro BIOS and flash it over your current BIOS. If your memory is good enough, your card will now be equivalent to a 9800 Pro.

*WARNING* -- you can render your card useless by doing this! Please make sure you look around on the net and read about what you're doing first. I suggest the forums at www.overclockers.com for more info.

from what i understand they are all the same chip. the ones that benchmark faster, they slap the 'pro' tag on and kick up the price
$100. At least with the 9700 and 9800 series.

Grab a copy of SiSoft SANDRA and check the properties.

Or, you could run "dxdiag" and check to see what it's being reported as.

dxdiag doesnt do it, my 9800 non pro reads as a 9800 PRO in evety thing i use to check windows, the only way i can tell is that it says its running at slower clock speeds.