What speed/type RAM is on my Rad9800?

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Yipee, its here, admittedly im not very happy as they marketed the product as a Generic Ati card, seperatley from the third party cards like saphires...and what do i get...a Saphire

Still, i hear these cards have good chances with the --> Pro BIOS flash (whic h i dont think ive heard of anyone failing yet), however a lot of it is memory dependant. I need Samsung ram of 2.8/3.0/3.3ns for good results. First signs are good, the Stuffs Sasung...however i dunno its speed rating, the markings ive pulled off the RAM chips are:

Samsung 322
Z40263238E-GC33

However i cant find out what that means anyhwere, if anyone can tell me wether im good to go it would be much appreciated

Cheers

--Jakk:T

[fishybawb]

Congratulations on your new baby
I had a poke around Samsung's fairly unhelpful website, and the best I could come up with is that the suffix part (GC33 - or more specifically, the 33 part) would suggest that it's 3.3ns. Have a look for yourself here.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Cheers, i'll have a lookie about round there. Does look liek ive got soem of the slower ram like, accordign to RADClocker its only running at 580Mhz ATM, which is a bit dissapointing and i dunno how much i'll get out of it without the flash

--Jakk

[fishybawb]

580MHz is right for the non-Pro methinks. The Pro's at 380/680, while the non-Pro is something like 325/580.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Yeah, ive heard people take it up to and beyond 360 without the BIOS flash, however this is rare as the BIOS flash boosts the voltage supplied to the card, enabling for better RAM overclocking

It looks like peopel are havign a fiarly decent tiem flashign this card so i might give it a go

--Jakk

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Sorted, tried plain overclocking it up to 'pro' speed, but over 340Mhz memory ickle white dots started showing, did the flash up to Pro level and all is well now, increased my 3dmark 2001 by a good 700 or so points and saved me one hundred quid to boot...nice

--Jakk

[causticVapor]

K4D263238E-GC33 300MHz 600Mbps/pin

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semi...K4D263238E.htm


My 9700 Pro has -GC2A, I feel lucky

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Sittign nicely at 380/680 and its not even breaking sweat

I might have a futhur fiddle during the week see how much further it will go from here

--Jakk

[cyber_gubat]

big jak can i see some synthetic benchmark of your new baby? tnx

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Posted some in the bencmarking forums, though they were on the older Cat 3.4 drivers (have now upgraded to 3.6, but yet to test)

I was scoring above 5700 in 3dmark 2003 and around 17,000 in 2001 using standard background services etc and at 9800 Pro stock speed, i might overclock it later today for an experiment, se ehow far i can go

--Jakk

[causticVapor]

How can my memory be rated higher than yours and start experiencing problems at 667? This is wierd.

Perhaps the default VDDQ voltage is lower on the 9700 Pro. On mine it's 2.8v.

[Peter M]

Once you got rid of the silly MHz doubling in the marketing dept. when it's actually DDR RAM, the picture becomes clearer.

(DDR) SDRAM rated at 3.3ns cycle time will run at 1/3.3ns = 300 MHz frequency. So the 290 MHz you originally had there were about right.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

I think there is something to do with voltage in there, apparently some cards running with faster RAM are being under voltaged from their actaul specification, hence they cant be overclocked very well.

When non-modded my card wouldnt overclock to 9800 Pro speeds without artifcating, with the Pro BIOS flash the artifacting is non-existent and i can overclock just like its a real 9800 Pro, now this isnt certain, but theres a theory that the BIOS update actually leads to a minor increase in the voltage to the RAM to enable it to hit 9800 Pro speed. Im not complaining like, running 9800 Pro stock speed of 378/340(640) atm, and life is good

--Jakk

[causticVapor]

Peter I know, but I was basing that on ns ratings. His memory is rated higher, and yet he can get farther after a BIOS flash with 3.3ns memory than I can with 2.8ns memory.

I think the BIOS voltage theory is correct.

[Peter M]

Hardly. I don't think that graphics card uses a programmable voltage regulator for its RAM - these things cost money and board space. I rather suspect that the other BIOS uses more relaxed timings on the RAM, in order to get the frequency higher.
Look whether there's a fill rate performance delta at the SAME frequency depending on which BIOS you use.