Noise and Overclocking
Just a quick page on noise and overclocking, as usual, before I move on to a conclusion.
Noise
Noise wise, I'm not a fan of the fan used on the card. Small blade size and high rotation speed, without any form of speed variation from software or the hardware, makes for one of the noisier cards that I've seen recently.It's not overly loud as such, it just has a tendency to get on my nerves over a period of time. I test with all cards out in the open on my test bench, sat not to far away from it while writing, so with the card tucked into a case under your desk, it would be perfect.
Nothing shocking, nothing silent. Just another step in the right direction in terms of commercial GPU cooling since it's not an NV30 reference cooler.
Overclocking
Given the ability to softmod, I tested overclocking both with and without. With all 8 pixel pipelines working, the card obviously generates a bit more heat, but not excessively so compared to regular 4 pipe mode it seems. Here are the results. Remember, it's a selected press sample direct from Hercules, your retail mileage may very well vary.| Radeon 9800SE | Radeon 9800SE with modification | |
| Core overclock | 422MHz | 419MHz |
| Mem overclock | 354MHz | 354MHz |
No difference in the memory overclock, severely limited by the modules used and the supply voltage, along with the absence of any kind of passive or active cooling.
Core overclock was affected by the softmod though, with a few MHz less when the softmod was enabled. 9800XT core clock is 412MHz, so bear that in mind when running a softmodded card. You can almost feel ATI sending round the fraud squad to demand the financial difference you ought to owe them.
Core clock was tested using a successful completion of a full 3 run 3DMark03 loop with no visible artifacting, as confirmation of success at the speed. The same test was used for memory overclock. At 427MHz core, 355MHz memory, 20,500 3DMark's was easily done in 3DMark 2001SE on a 2.2GHz Athlon FX-51 box I have in for testing.
