Graphics Asus 9800Pro/XT AX800Pro/XT - recommendations?

im looking to get one of the following 4 graphics cards:

Asus 9800 Pro
Asus 9800 XT
Asus AX800 Pro
Asus AX800 XT

(may not necessarily be an Asus card, just looking at that brand at the moment)
does anyone recommend any in particular?

can the Pros easily be modded into XTs? (specifically with the Asus cards)

whats the performance difference between the 9800 and AX800?

 

From what i read most pros of both generations can become XT's. I got a X800 Pro on the way and i will defently mod it.

 

what make is it, and how much did you pay? just curious.
let me know if the modding is successful

 

Its a Celestica Radeon X800 Pro (ATi) 256mb. Yea i never heard of them either but hopefully it it XT's and i will be happy. i payed $350 USD

 

The 9800Pro can usually be successfully flashed to an XT. The X800pro non vivo versions have to be hardmodded into XT. The X800pro vivo cards trade marked by the extra yellow floppy connector next to the molex and also by the black rage theatre chip on the back of the card. These Vivo cards can be flased into an XT because essentially all vivo X800pros are just remarked XT's from my understanding or some such thing. Either way your best bet is either the 9800pro or the X800pro vivo. The X800XT are still very hard to come by and it seems many of them are pretty flakey.

 

the AX800 PRO will not mod as far as I know, because it doesn't have VIVO. I had one not long ago

 

Where did you find an x800pro for $350?!

Some x800 pro's won't mod into XT's without a hardmod to enable the extra pipelines. The VIVO models don't even have their own PCB for the Pro so they don't need the hardmod. However that's not to say that the core isn't damaged and those pipelines the BIOS flash would enable aren't broken, it just means there's no physical damage to the card if you mod it, fail, and try to RMA it

It's really all luck though, especially with x800's where the core may have damaged pipelines. However the only differences between the 9800pro and XT are overdrive/temp monitoring, clock speeds and I think some extra shader optimization.

 

See sig for 9800pro -> XT flash

 

thanks for the responses guys, some useful info there.

$350 is a great price for a X800 pro, shame nothing is as good value over here in the UK.

and yeh the Asus AX800 Pro doesnt have VIVO, which is a shame as its a pretty good card. normally i wouldnt be too bothered about VIVO, but the last card i got happened to have it and i've been using it a lot lately to convert VHS to DVD.
its very handy, if i got a graphics card without it i'd probably have to buy a separate capture card as i'd miss the feature before long. plus, if an X800 Pro with VIVO can be softmodded into an XT, even more reason to buy it. it just cant be an Asus card

does anyone recommend any other manufacturers?

what about equivalent nvidia cards?

 

Sapphire vivo cards seem to be pretty popular and are probably one of the cheapest Vivo cards you can find. I believe these cards also come with 1.6ns ram which will also allow for good ram speeds. Might I also suggest you pickup a new cooling solution for your card like a Zalman ZM80D-HP or maybe a moddified Artic cooler. I own the Zalman and its not as hard to install as everyone makes it out to be, and it also comes with some nice ram sinks as well. Just make sure if you use that you put some fans blowing right onto the cooler so you can get some good ocing out of the X800 core. The best thing would be to get a silverprop waterblock with peltier and then really get some good clocks out of that bad boy(some are pushing 600mhz on the core ).

 

just noticed there are 2 versions of the Asus X800Pro - the TD and the TVD, and the TVD has VIVO

http://uk.asus.com/products/vga/ax800pro-tvd/overview.htm

would this be softmoddable to an XT?

 

so long as it has an X800 XT PCB, it should softmod. The picture shows an AX800PRO with an X800 PRO PCB, so won't likely softmod.

 

Well even though it has the VIVO I still don't think thats an XT pcb because for one it lacks the yellow power connector found on the XT PCB. At some point ATI was having all venders switch the Vivo pro's to there own PCB's because of the loses from not selling the more expensive XT versions. It could just be the wrong picture posted on Asus's website, but until someone buys one we will never know I guess.

 

Actually its a composite video signal input, not power.

You're right about the VIVO anyways though, all of the original vivo units had the XT PCB and people were flashing them (and hoping there were no damaged pipelines). It's really down to luck, but the VIVOs are less likely to require a hardmod and are more likely to flash. But even if it doesn't flash, it's still a great card.

 

I got my card today. Unfortunatly its not a VIVO. i will have to try and somehow try and hardmod it. If it wont go XT i might sell it here on the forums.

 

So which one is the best for <£300? (that can be flashed to XT?)

theres a list of the cards here