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Posted by Swafe - Fri 12 Mar 2004 20:36
GS cards overclock well iirc

think its a deal :)
Posted by Agent - Fri 12 Mar 2004 21:09
how much is P&P with them ?
Posted by Mazio - Fri 12 Mar 2004 21:15
P&P £3.82 Recorded First Class 1-3 day on this item anyway.
Posted by Agent - Fri 12 Mar 2004 21:17
Cool, thanks :)
Posted by Skii - Fri 12 Mar 2004 23:07
Agent
Cool, thanks :)

Worth getting over my 9500 Pro ?
Posted by walibe - Fri 12 Mar 2004 23:19
So this a proper ultra, not ultra in the gainward sense? If so damn! I don't get paid for another week.
Posted by Agent - Fri 12 Mar 2004 23:55
Skii
Worth getting over my 9500 Pro ?

Depends if your a FPS whore like me :)

It will be better than a 9500 pro, yes. If you overclock it to (which would be silly not to as its a GS), you will get quite a large boost.
You can mod these to a 5950 Ultra with a simple BIOS flash to (it does only have 128 meg as opposed to 256), which will give you the largest boost.

But ask yourself : Does your current card not handle your needs ?
Do some benchmarks with your current card. I have the gainward below this one, so ill bench mine to, and you can compare them, see if you think its worth it :)

walibe - it cant be a full blown ultra as it doesnt have 256 meg of RAM, but the speeds look the same on gainwards site.
Posted by Skii - Sat 13 Mar 2004 00:11
Agent
Depends if your a FPS whore like me :)

It will be better than a 9500 pro, yes. If you overclock it to (which would be silly not to as its a GS), you will get quite a large boost.
You can mod these to a 5950 Ultra with a simple BIOS flash to (it does only have 128 meg as opposed to 256), which will give you the largest boost.

But ask yourself : Does your current card not handle your needs ?
Do some benchmarks with your current card. I have the gainward below this one, so ill bench mine to, and you can compare them, see if you think its worth it :)

walibe - it cant be a full blown ultra as it doesnt have 256 meg of RAM, but the speeds look the same on gainwards site.

cheers Agent

I was really after a 9800 Pro, purely down to the fact that they invariably get recommended over the Nvidia cards in most places. My 9500pro does a good job, especially as it has ramsinks and arctic cooler as well, however I wanted the next jump to be the 9800pro.

So if this card is comparable to the 9800pro or the 9800XT, it would seem a good option, especially flashed to a 5950 :D
Posted by Shane5578 - Sat 13 Mar 2004 00:12
if its a true ultra then it can stand a chance against the rad9800pro but not the rad9800xt

only one left

its really a good deal, but want to get the proper top end fx5950 so i can OC its a$$ off
Posted by Agent - Sat 13 Mar 2004 00:52
Skii
cheers Agent

I was really after a 9800 Pro, purely down to the fact that they invariably get recommended over the Nvidia cards in most places. My 9500pro does a good job, especially as it has ramsinks and arctic cooler as well, however I wanted the next jump to be the 9800pro.

So if this card is comparable to the 9800pro or the 9800XT, it would seem a good option, especially flashed to a 5950 :D

The ATI gen of cards do seem to handle AA better (lot less of a performace decrease), there doesnt seem to be a huge amount with the AF, but ATI may just have the edge to imo. This does seem to be dependant on which drivers you use though, so its give and take really. The DX9 performace isnt as good as the ATI cards in general, but previous games not based on DX9 (there isnt that many even out yet) there is hardly anything in it, the FX even comes on top quite a lot :)
The main reason im sticking to nvidia is because of linux support, and i like their drivers. Flashed to a 5950 ultra will certainly give the others a run for their money, its just going to be the lack of 256meg memory that will be the bottleneck. Still at this price, im not moaning :)
btw, HEXUS has reviewed this exact card : http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD01OTY=
Factor in the BIOS flash and you have a few more marks on top of the bench's.

Hope thats of some help :)
Posted by ERU - Sun 14 Mar 2004 14:06
Agent have you tried the bios flash? How did you get on?
Posted by Mazio - Sun 14 Mar 2004 14:46
The site is slightly confusing the yellow circled 1 is I think how many pics not quantity left.
Posted by Agent - Sun 14 Mar 2004 19:55
ERU
Agent have you tried the bios flash? How did you get on?

Need to wait for it to arive first mate :)
Posted by Mazio - Tue 16 Mar 2004 18:41
Just got mine today anybody else? Also Nvidia have force 56.64 drivers. Dont know whats on the cd and which to load yet any suggestions.
Posted by Skii - Tue 16 Mar 2004 18:50
Nope - ordered mine Saturday so not really expecting mine till tomorrow or the day after, moneys been debited though :D
Posted by Agent - Tue 16 Mar 2004 18:54
Mines arived. Gimmie a few hours to sort a few things out, and ill see how the modding go's :)
Posted by ERU - Tue 16 Mar 2004 19:32
ERU grows impatient - you've hade almost 3hrs now godammit :P
Mines arriveing soon too \o/
Posted by Mazio - Tue 16 Mar 2004 20:04
Installed mine with 56.64 drivers but not done any tweaks yet seems ok just about to see whats on the cd.
Posted by Agent - Tue 16 Mar 2004 20:41
It works :D

3d mark 03 - getting 5862 on old drivers, no tweaking, and a hosed windows install and no overclocking (except the flash). It should do 6k without much of a problem.

To flash to a FX5950 Ultra, download this BIOS from Gainward.
Make a bootable floppy, no drivers, minimum boot.
Run flash.bat
type in YES when prompted (dont worry about the part mismatch, its supposed to)

Reboot
You now have a FX5950 Ultra with 128 meg of RAM :)
Posted by ERU - Tue 16 Mar 2004 20:44
Good news Agent :)
Are there any issues with the missing 128mb? Like there was with ATI9800pros flashed to 9800XTs
Posted by Agent - Tue 16 Mar 2004 20:54
Nope.

Nvidia cards do not store the memory data in the BIOS. Its all counted on boot up dynamically.
You could have 8meg on the card, and it would still work fine, as the BIOS doesn't know any better :)
Posted by Skii - Tue 16 Mar 2004 23:02
Agent
It works :D

3d mark 03 - getting 5862 on old drivers, no tweaking, and a hosed windows install and no overclocking (except the flash). It should do 6k without much of a problem.

To flash to a FX5950 Ultra, download this BIOS from Gainward.
Make a bootable floppy, no drivers, minimum boot.
Run flash.bat
type in YES when prompted (dont worry about the part mismatch, its supposed to)

Reboot
You now have a FX5950 Ultra with 128 meg of RAM :)


w00000000000000000000000000000t

<claps hands in a sort of gay but chuffed way>
Posted by silentphoenix - Tue 16 Mar 2004 23:18
Are there any issues with the missing 128mb? Like there was with ATI9800pros flashed to 9800XTs

Hmmm… ive got myselves one of these (komplet £135 saphires) and was wondering what issues there are due to XT flashing…
Posted by Agent - Tue 16 Mar 2004 23:35
AHHHH ****

After just fitting this baby, i slipped when fitting one of my new SATA HD's and killed the board :mad:
Im so ****** off right now… :mad:

Its either that or BIOS corruption on the NF7-S again, ill find out tomrrow :( :mad:
Posted by Mazio - Wed 17 Mar 2004 00:14
Managed to get 5532 3d mark 2003 after installing latest nvidia drivers again also set core clock settings 440 and memory clock setting 900 no probs!
Posted by Skii - Wed 17 Mar 2004 08:08
Agent
AHHHH ****

After just fitting this baby, i slipped when fitting one of my new SATA HD's and killed the board :mad:
Im so ****** off right now… :mad:

Its either that or BIOS corruption on the NF7-S again, ill find out tomrrow :( :mad:

:eek: :(
Posted by Skii - Wed 17 Mar 2004 10:13
Price + delivery has gone back up on these now btw - now £160 + with 1-3 day delivery.
Posted by ERU - Wed 17 Mar 2004 10:13
Agent
AHHHH ****

After just fitting this baby, i slipped when fitting one of my new SATA HD's and killed the board :mad:
Im so ****** off right now… :mad:

Its either that or BIOS corruption on the NF7-S again, ill find out tomrrow :( :mad:
You dont think it some kind of problem with the BIOS flash do you? Still havent got mine to test :(
Posted by Agent - Wed 17 Mar 2004 13:43
ERU
You dont think it some kind of problem with the BIOS flash do you? Still havent got mine to test :(

Nar, ive got 4 different AGP graphics cards here, tried them all and its still dead :(. Also the card still works fine in other systems. I know its the board, its my own stupid fault :( :( :(

The price should have been 160ish, the site was still showing it as that price, but when you clicked on the link, it showed it as 135. Looks like they corrected the problem, as i dont think it had been officaly lowered ! :)
Posted by Skii - Thu 18 Mar 2004 22:40
Got mine

Installed like a dream - typical Nvidia.

Flashed to 5950 Ultra - no problems

Hitting 5290 in 3DMark03 at stock (this is with an Xp2200 @ stock)

Seems pretty good :D
Posted by Agent - Thu 18 Mar 2004 23:28
N1 skii :)

Got my new mobo to :)
Posted by ERU - Fri 19 Mar 2004 00:37
Sounds good :)
Posted by Skii - Fri 19 Mar 2004 00:53
Agent
N1 skii :)

Got my new mobo to :)

glad to hear it m8 ;)