Toad's Noob guide for oc'ing MSI-RX9800 Pro

[zero_tolerance]

By Toadpeon

1. Out of the box there shoud be no need to FLASH THIS CARD SINCE WINXP DETECTS IT AS A 9800XT.

2. This card is not on the XT pcb therfore it does not have the overclocking feature or temperature thermister!

3. This card, whether shipped on a red or green pcb has the R360 chip. You will always get the R360 chip! No guessing, no rma, no gambling! This is because ATI stopped producing the R350 and only sells R360's. Therefore whatever msi9800 you buy has a R360. This means you can oc this to your heart's content!

This card out of the box can be overclocked well past the core/mem of an 9800xt!

Here is my steps in oc'ing this card:

1. Right out of the box tear off the HSF. This is very simple as it is only connected by 2-push pins.

2. Scrape off the existing thermal grease/tape.

3. Get some Arctic Silver and apply it according to the instructions. Reapply HSF.

For ultra cooling on this card purchase a Arctic-Cooling VGA Silencer. Note: that this requires alittle bit of modding to adapt to this card. But if you want to kick 9800xt's butt and get this card maxed out to crazy core speeds then you will have to do this. This is not completly needed as you can OC this card past 9800xt anyway.

4. Download ATITOOL. Follow the instructions and find your max core/mem setting. Note: All cards are different; meaning one msi-rx9800 might outperform the next. Atitool is a wonderful program that allows you to OC your card on windows start up OR whenever the tool detects you entering into a 3D environment - thus prolonging the life of your card! I am using ATItool and successfully oc'ing my card 10% over 9800xt stock core/mem settings. This means I blow it out of the water.

Currently I have mine at about 460/395. No artifacts at all after running ATITOOL all night!

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4. Use ATITOOL to find your max settings. Then grab ATI Radeon BIOS Tuner (RaBiT) . And then flash your bios to your prefound max core/mem values. The benifit of this is that you do not have to have ATItool loaded in the background; i.e. your card is hard set to your max core/mem frequency. Note: Messing with your bios can produce serious ill affects. You will need a pci video card on hand just incase things go wrong...the topic of discussing bios upgrade will be discussed in another thread.




That's it! Enjoy your new 9800xt-pro .

If you guys have anything to add or see any errors please tell me.


Here is a pic of this monster: