What If I Have A 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro?

Well, don't worry! Sin22 wrote a guide on how to find a R360 core on a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro and flash it into a Radeon 9800XT!

Let's check it out!

Finding an R360 core

There are no guaranteed methods for finding a R360-cored 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro card. Most of the newer 256MB 9800 Pro cards are coming with 9800XT PCBs and R360 cores. Of course, you will need to pay somewhere around S$640 (USD 350) for them.

Here are a few things that will help you identify a R360 core in a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro card :-

Cards with the following memory chips tend to have R360 cores. So far, these have all been found in Sapphire cards :
• 2.8ns Samsung 8E-GC2A batch 404
• 2.8ns Hynix HY5DU283222A F-28 batch 410A or 411A

These cards generally have R360 cores. Likewise, the newer ones may also have them but as always, there are no guarantees.

Other than that, what it really boils down to is luck. Many people are saying that stocks of R350 cores are running out. So, Sapphire and other manufacturers are replacing them with R360 cores and just flashing them with a custom 9800 Pro BIOS since the market demand is still high for these cards.

Please note that the ONLY way to look for and confirm the presence of a R360 core is to remove the cooler and eyeball the core label. NO SOFTWARE can detect the core type, because they merely retrieve the information from the BIOS. So, they will always detect your Radeon 9800 Pro's GPU as a R350 core even if your card actually has a R360 core.