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Radeon 9800 Pro to XT hack |
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Written by ZackG
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Saturday, 09 April 2005 |
When ATI released the the Radeon 9800 XT, they started making the
Radeon 9800 Pro with the same core, which is the R360. This is what
makes a 9800 Pro essentially an underclocked 9800 XT.
1. First you need to determine whether or not your
9800 Pro has the older, R350 core or the newer, R360 core. Of the two,
only the R360 core can be made into a 9800 XT. To figure out which of
the two you have, count the memory chips on your board. If you have 16,
it has the R350 core and CANNOT be transformed, however if it has only
8 memory chips, it is using the R360 core and CAN be converted to the
XT.
2. You will need a program called Flashrom, which is available here in the downloads section of i-hacked.
You also need to download a Radeon 9800 XT BIOS for the same brand of
card, the same memory capacity(128 MB or 256 MB), and preferrably of
the same memory brand(Hynix, Samsung, etc) and speed(2.5 ns, 2.8 ns).
For example, if you currently have a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro with 256
MB of 2.8 ns Samsung memory, download the BIOS of a Sapphire Radeon
9800 XT with 256 MB of 2.8 ns Samsung memory.
You can find a full list of BIOS to download at any of these three links:
http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/?search=9800+xt&Submit=Search#flas
http://my.tbaytel.net/panthor/bioses.htm
http://www.mvktech.net/download.php
3. Copy Flashrom and the BIOS(with the .bin
extension) to a bootable floppy disk and reboot your computer with the
floppy in the drive. Enter the following command to backup your video
card's current BIOS to the floppy:
Flashrom -s 0 backup.bin
Now apply the new BIOS with the following command:
Flashrom -f -p 0 name_of_the_file.bin
Enter the name of the BIOS file you downloaded in place of the "name_of_the_file.bin"
If the screen becomes fuzzy during the upgrade, don't worry. Be patient
and wait until the image returns to the DOS prompt with theconfirmation
of the upgrade. Restart your computer and you're done!
4. If after the upgrade, your card is recognized as a
Radeon 9800 XT, but the image is fuzzy when playing 3D games, you need
to edit the BIOS to reduce the memory clock to 350 MHz. The reason for
this is that 2.8 ns memory cannot run at clocks higher than 350 MHz. To
edit the BIOS, download the radedit program and
open the .bin file of the Radeon 9800 XT BIOS you downloaded. Just
change the memory clock from 365 to the maximum speed of the memory,
which would be 350 MHz for 2.8 ns memory, and save. Do a new upgrade as
explained in step 3, and all is well.
5. If anything goes wrong during the upgrade, you can
revert to the old BIOS by booting from a floppy and using the following
command:
Flashrom -f -p 0 backup.bin |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 13 February 2006 )
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Computer Components 
