hercules 9800SE All-in-Wonder

theprofessor

Hey all,

Just wanted to make a quick recommendation of the hercules 9800SE all-in-wonder!! Having read the review of it on hexus.net, I thought what the hell!

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02NTU=

Ordered it from Overclockers.co.uk, they still have them in stock.

Anyway if you've read that review you know that ATI produce a batch of wafers for 9800pro's, if there are a set number of failures they will have 4 of their pipelines disabled and are sold as 9800SE/LE's. Which means that full 9800PRO's are slipping through as 9800SE/LE's at and severely reduced prices! You then just need some software to re-enable the extra 4 pipes! (I used the latest Omega drivers)

And it works!!!!! Windows now tells me that it is a "9800 Series" card. Benchmarks are through the roof!!! 6540+ in 3DMark2003!!!!! 44500 in Aquamark3!!!!!

It is also an all-in-wonder, so you get all that good stuff too. Hercules chose to use the 256-bit/32-byte bus too, so it is a true 9800PRO

There is a small chance that you would get one with 4 genuinely defective pipes, but it seems to be a small chance from what I'm reading on the net.

Cost to me for a 9800SE ALL-IN-WONDER €270(overclockers), komplett have the real thing at €488.65!

120066 Sapphire Radeon 9800PRO AIW 128MB DDR
- AGP, ATI All in Wonder 9800PRO, Retail 2
stocked 488.65

They also have these two:

Sapphire Radeon 9800SE Atlantis 128M DDR 211.94
Sapphire Radeon 9800SE AIW 128MB DDR 257.43


Both of which also use the 256-bit/32-byte bus (some manufacturers used the 128-bit/16-byte from the 9600PRO) and should be cool to have the 4 extra pipes turned back on.

Anyway, point is, 9800PRO All-in-wonder for €270

Sir Random

Nice one! Did you post in the ocuk 9800SE thread? They're trying to work out the success rate for 9800SE softmods.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=139061

OfflerCrocGod

Ye but what about long term stability???. Are you certain that your comp wont randomly lock - up and crash or affect the other hardware in subtle ways that could take you AGES to find the cause of. Can you turn off these extra enabled pipelines easily in the driver options??. Do Omegas drivers give you an easy to use GUI to OC and mess about with the card??. If so I may try them out.

CivilServant

None of the sapphires have been successfully modded because no sapphire se's have a 256bit bus.

And further more 9600s aren't built like the old 9500s which were 9700s with disabled pipelines. 9600 never had 8 pipelines to begin with.

To do the mod, look for powercolor or hercules.

Col_Loki

Hey guys just to let ye know there €219 here...... JES Computers .

Im definetly thinkin about getting one of these, what a sweet deal.

theprofessor

As for stability, no one has had one of these things for longer than a month(or so) at the moment, since they are only new. This kind of thing has happened before with other bits of hardware, Intel did it with some of its Celeron's not too long ago (there were similar in that they were P4's!, can't remember the code Celeron B's??? Does anyone know the one I'm talking about??? 'CivilServant' is also right about the 9500PRO's being 9700PRO's)

Since I've put the card in, I haven't had ONE crash, nothing honestly. So I don't really see how the card would affect other hardware in subtle ways(how do

You mean exactly???) If you download the Omega drivers and you go to install you get 3 options.

1. Something along the lines of
"For people who can't/don't want to SoftMod their card"
2."For people who want to softmod a 9500PRO to 9700PRO ONLY"
3."People who want to softmod a 9800SE/LE to 9800PRO"


If you want to go back, you just uninstall the drivers and reinstall with option 1, or use the ATI drivers.



Funny, I don't recall saying that 9600's had 8 pipelines???? I said that they used a 128bit bus.

Also, if you look at this link does it not say that the sapphire 9800SE has a 256bit bus?

http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9800se.asp

Do you have a link for where have you read that no Sapphire SE's have modded successfully?


See if 'CivilServant' can find that link, otherwise, unless you need/want the all-in-wonder freatures, I'd go with a sapphire and save even more cash.

Mr. Fancypants

Anyone using the tuner on these things? I have to set my country to be The Norfolk Islands to be able to switch channels ok. If i have it set to be Ireland all i can choose is The Discovery Channel even though i can see all the other channels in channel surf mode.

Also, after watching TV for more than 2 minutes the sound becomes horribly distorted. Have tried using both my Creative Audigy and my on board sound.

Anyone having similar issues?

CivilServant

Emmm... it was in some overclocking forums. But be my guest and try a sapphire. I'm just saying it will mostly likely not work. And I misread ur first post, back to school for me

theprofessor

I've been using the tuner, but just with an antenna at the mo(I'm too lazy to ring NTL for a new point). No problems switching channel at all(but then again there's not much to choose from!).

On the sound issue, I know this sounds off the head but do you have Norton Anti-Virus running? I came across a similar one to that in work not too long ago. If it is running, let me know.

I don't have either of those issues. Do you have the Hercules all-in-wonder?

theprofessor

Sorry if that sounded a bit smart CivilServant, didn't intend it.

But in the mean time I have been reading a bit on the sapphires and there seems to be quite a few people that have had success with them. But perphaps there is a lower chance of success with a sapphire than with Herc or PowerColour???

Mr. Fancypants

Had AVG anti virus running. But have just tried it with it disabled and its still happening. I can get the sound back to normal by switching back and forth between inputs using the input connector button or by opening and closing the TV application but the sound will still get distorted after a couple of minutes.

theprofessor

hmmm, strange one alright.

The one I had in work was similar. It was a pinnacle PCTV card. The sound either distorted or just stopped after 2minutes. Sit down for this one because it REALLY is off the wall. To fix it, I had to disable the NORTON ANTI-VIRUS protection for windows Messenger! Seriously, when it was disabled the sound stayed on no worries!

Really strange but I don't see how that will apply to you now that you are not running any anti-virus software at all. Perhaps if you are running messenger you could kill that too? There might possibly be a link.

CivilServant

No worries I'd be the first to jump on the bandwagaon if modding the sapphires are true! Do you have a link for that?

Yeah I heard a lot of peeps had success with Hercules and powercolor cards. And some companies (sapphire I thought) advertise their cards as 256bit but when the cards were received turned out to be 128bit. I want to believe, red pill please

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by mbroaders
Also, after watching TV for more than 2 minutes the sound becomes horribly distorted. Have tried using both my Creative Audigy and my on board sound.

Anyone having similar issues?

This sounds like the same thing I had with my AIW9000. It only happens on some channels. Have you tried setting sound to mono - its not an ideal fix but it worked for me.

Mr. Fancypants

Will give those ideas a shot when i get home this evening. Thanks lads.

DecTenToo

Well, I have taken the plunge and ordered a card from overclockers and will report back on benchmark results when it arrives.

Here's hoping ...

RicardoSmith

I was thinking of one of these, but there been a few for sale in the forums from people who obviously can't get the mode to work, so its not all palin sailing. Theres also been people who have had problems in some benchmarks and not in others. Then as usual there always problems in some games with ATI drivers, and then theres the fact that some people seem to have a problem with the tuner in Ireland.

So I don't reckon its a sure thing, its a lot of money to spend €200 on any card, and I'm dithering if I need it or not.

DecTenToo

True, but it's better than the FX5200 I've got at the moment !

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by DecTenToo
True, but it's better than the FX5200 I've got at the moment !

fx 5200 how did you end up with that?

I have a GF4ti4200 and to be honest it plays everything fine.

BadCharlie

Have a GFti4200 my self and i play all my games in top detail with all the works turned on full. Dont get slow down or lag from any of the games i play.

But then again i have 1gig of ram which i think has helped alot in the new games. Also an xp2500 clocked as an xp3200!!

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by BadCharlie
Have a GFti4200 my self and i play all my games in top detail with all the works turned on full. Dont get slow down or lag from any of the games i play.

But then again i have 1gig of ram which i think has helped alot in the new games. Also an xp2500 clocked as an xp3200!!

What board and memory are using for the xp2500. I have one in the post at the moment.

I have a TFT that requires 1280x1024 and I think some things struggle slightly on the GF4/4200 at that res. So thats why I'd consider the 9800se.

DecTenToo

my fx5200 came with the machine. I have a 9600 which works fine in my old machine but refuses to coperate in my new 3Ghz jobbie.

DecTenToo

my fx5200 came with the machine. I have a 9600 which works fine in my old machine but refuses to coperate in my new 3Ghz jobbie.

BadCharlie

I just have 2 sticks of 512mb's of pc2100. Never crashes unless i clock the video card to high. Got my amd 2500xp chip about 2 months ago from komplett. Also got an abit nforce v2. Cost me just over 200euro for the mobo and chip 2 months back.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by BadCharlie
I just have 2 sticks of 512mb's of pc2100. Never crashes unless i clock the video card to high. Got my amd 2500xp chip about 2 months ago from komplett. Also got an abit nforce v2. Cost me just over 200euro for the mobo and chip 2 months back.

€200 thats a good price for two months ago, I think I could only get them for that now. What FSB are you running the PC2100 at?

BadCharlie

I dont know what my FSB is set at on my ram. All i did was go into bios on start up and put my default FSB of 166 up to 200 on my CPU. That gives me 200 x 11 = 2200 thats all i had to do. Have not changed anything else like ram FSB or Vcore i just left all them at default. But i do know when computer is booting up it says my Ram is running at 266 if that helps.

secret_squirrel

sounds like your ram is running asynchronously with the fsb (at 2/3 fsb) . A (slightly) better overclock (but prolly not possible in your case with that spec ram) would be to run the ram @ 2x200 fsb(ie synchronously with the fsb 1:1 ) . (PC3200 rating)

Nitrox

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
sounds like your ram is running asynchronously with the fsb (at 2/3 fsb) . A (slightly) better overclock (but prolly not possible in your case with that spec ram) would be to run the ram @ 2x200 fsb(ie synchronously with the fsb 1:1 ) . (PC3200 rating)

Thats what i do, but i have the NF7-s v1.1 card with a barton 2500 and i found it unstable and i have to put a lot of extra voltage on it so just running at stock now, would love to get a v2.0 mobo instead, but i doubt there is many takers of my 1.1 and a athlon 1800xp...

DecTenToo

Well, I'll be

9800Se arrived at about 5... ran the 3d marks and got the following

FX5200 900
9800Se 3872

Installed the omega drivers and did the softmod

5758

:cool:

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by Nitrox
Thats what i do, but i have the NF7-s v1.1 card with a barton 2500 and i found it unstable and i have to put a lot of extra voltage on it so just running at stock now, would love to get a v2.0 mobo instead, but i doubt there is many takers of my 1.1 and a athlon 1800xp...

I dont know - Im just building an Xp2500 on a NF7 v2.0 for a friend and Im about to throw the fecking thing out the window

btw more on topic - my 9800se arrived and after a bit of fun and games i got it installed. Havent loaded the omega drivers yet..watch this space.