The utimate mr9800 pipe unlocking guide - Page 2

Sucess!!!

Im back again. 2 weeks later and i used conductive silver pen/paint on a 0421AA i.e. week 21 and guess what? 16PIPES!!! that is what ATI tray tool confirmed but my atitool for overclocking said only 8 but i dont know whcih to believe :S

Think i need some opinions or some pro-help on this? anyone managed to overclock more than originally with the 8 pipes instead of 16 or vica-versa?

chances of frying

What are the chances of frying the card? I have a friend who would like to unlock the pipes on his card, but is not willing to fry his video card. Anyone care to encourage/discourage?

EDIT:
two more questions: how is the 9800 mobility based on an x800 core... wasn't the 9800 mobility released first? also, does anyone have more results than what is listed on this thread?

Personal opinion, you won't frie your card unless it has the week specifided above 0446AA. Now i suggest you DO NOT try with a week 46 card, and i wouldnt bother with a 40 week or above, but it is still worth a try if your were as desperate as me to get the best from your GPU.

Well the MR9800 is based on the x800 core because ati had excess x800 in stock. Thus all they did take the x800 GPU core which is located under the heatsink of the GPU and make the most tiny laser cut on the chip. What did this cut do? All it does is change the no. of pixel pipelines (which does the job of producing the pixel you see on your monitor screen) and as a result decreased framerates.

To make it easier for you, imagine a circuit. You have the power supply and you have 2 light bulbs (go back to your school days). Now they r in parralel so if 1 bulb is off, the other will still be on (as long as the power supply is still active ). By connect the wire on the secondary circuit to the second bulb you have 2 bulbs active and they will both run at the same brightness just as it would be if the 1 light bulb only. So in essence, you get twice the light output.

Put this into context with the GPU and you re-connect where the cut was made, and 'hey-pressto' its like getting 2 light source - you'll be getting more graphics (in terms of FPS and pixel).

Now if you do go ahead with this i suggest you read up on the top post of this thread and check what week your card was. I have a week 21 and i went form 8 pixels to 16 pixels. i also got lucky and i doubled by shader pixels (they so exactly as stated - shade the individual pixels you see on your screen :P).

So what improvements did i see? well here are some results:

3Dmark05'

mobility 9700 -> 1798 (poor)

Mobility 9800 (8 pixels...etc) -> 3950 (not too bad)

Mobility 9800 hardmod (16 pixels...etc) -> 5150 (ok)


Counter-strike source graphics videotest (1280 x 1024) + (everything on highest nad maxed out except aa = trilionar and AF=0)

9700 -> 27fps

9800 (8) -> 73/74 fps

9800 (16) -> 95/96 fps


Quake 4 single player on highest settings (1280 x 1024) + (highest graphics levels, all advances to highest) = (sick graphics).

9700 -> absoloutly unplayable!!!

9800 -> pretty darn stuttery

9800 (16) -> Hey! this is pretty damn smooth!! holy Cra* lets use some AA and AF cos i can boost this thing!!!!



So as u can see. this hardmod rocks!!!

If you do go ahead with this i suggest u get all the equipents you need and really get to grips with the process of making this work (i.e. read this thread over 100 times and make a print out too). Ensure you know your laptop and how to open it without damaging it!!! go to dell and get their instalation tip guide. it will show you to open your laptop safely and it is actually really easy to follow. You cant really screw up (unless your a women )

Good luck and if you need anything else, give me a shout!!!

peace out





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Dell Insipron 9100
P4 3.2Ghz HT presscott
2 gig RAM DDR-400 PC3200 DO.DIMM
60 gig HDD
ATI Mobility radeon 9800 hardmod (16 pixel pipelines...etc) at 415/415.
3dmark05' = 5150

I just did the hard mod

Week 37 --> 12 pipes ... woot!

hey bobda.....do u overlock your GPU too? what u get in 3dmark05??? i got 5150

I have no idea what my 3DMark is but do overclock, I am running at 450 clock / 425 memory.

I'd like to add a few comments about this mod....

First... A fine tip soldering iron would create a longer lasting/better connection...

Second... As erek mentioned.. I would definantly look into adding a resistor like the ones used on all of the other bridges... The resistor is most likely there to regulate the voltage of the bridge, and prevent spikes (over volting) caused from a direct bridge. I think this is an overlooked importance to this mod. It would cause no harm to add the resistor. Just check the size of the others first and go from there.

Third... I don't see why the month's date code would matter in any way at all unless they revised the chip. Especialy when the post showing the date codes, clearly shows date codes 0427AA and 0440AA as being in "both", the working, and not working list. I'd have to see a side by side of a early 04 to late 04/05 mr9800 card for comparison.

Fourth... I think that some of you folks may not be doing this mod correctly. If you scratched too much material off the pads and damaged the boards printed cicuits in that area, then your in for irreversable trouble. If you did not take enough material off the pads to make a good connection, then that's an easy fix of just cleaning a little more. Also, if you use the conductive pen method make sure you shake it really good first before useing it, and make sure you let it dry. All in all, this is an impressive mod.. Allowing for a 3DMark05 score to be in the 5,100+ range.

Fifth... Notebooks owners that the mod worked for... The build date month as written on the bottom of the notebook should be posted for referance.. So in the used market you could have a some what better idea, as if your possibly getting a modifiable mr9800 chip inside or not. This would give you atleast a rough idea without the need to take the notebook apart. I think, maybe, a notebook build date of september 04 and down might be the best shot at getting one with a modifiable mr9800.

I wish i could help you guys out more... At the moment, I don't have a gen-1 xps, so all i can do is comment.

Sorry to bump such an old thread....

I'm thinking of doing this mod, just wanted to know if anyone uses a different BIOS after this hard mod, and what the card should display as in device manager upon a reboot?

Just loaded Windows 7 32 bit on to my old 9100 and went ahead and did the hard mod and the heat mod.

The week info on the 9800 was: 0435AA (35th week)

It unlocked 4 pipes, so I now have 12 according to ATI tray tools.

Pre-mod my Windows Index Score was 4.1 for gaming graphics and went up to 4.4
Pre-mod my Windows Index Score for CPU (and RAM I think) was 3.7 and went up to 4.2

I was a little surprised to see the CPU and RAM scores go up after the mod. ATI tray tools does include some default tweaks, so I wonder if that had anything to do with it. I also thoroughly cleaned the computer while I had it apart.

I followed the guide in this thread for the hard mod to unlock the extra pipes. My heat mod consisted of removing the thermal pad on the GPU and replacing it with a 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch copper plate smeared with Arctic Silver on both sides.

Windows 7 is far superior to XP in my opinion on this computer. It takes less than 45 seconds from bios to the desktop. I'm only using 1.5 gigs of RAM.

While this by no means turns it into a new laptop, it was fun.

Hello guys!

 

First of all congratulations on the guide, it really is spot on with the information and steps on how to unlock the MR9800’s hidden pipes (and processing power).

 

I have recently decided to resurrect my old Inspiron XPS (gen1) laptop from the back of the cover to use as a secondary machine at my parent’s house. So I upgraded the memory to 2GB (from 1GB) and changed the HDD to an SSD drive (Transcend 128 GB 2.5" SSD IDE MLC). I too have loaded Windows 7 on the laptop and found that it works a hell of a lot better than Vista (upgraded from the original XP).

 

Up on further reading of other potential upgrades to this old (yet beastly laptop) I came across the HARD MOD to the graphics card and so I decided to give it a try as my MR9800 is a 0433AA (if memory serves me right).

 

Bought a conductive pen and did the hard-mod this past Monday (April 22^nd on 2013).. and HURRAYYYY! It went up to 12 pipes and I did not fry my card, WOHOOOOO!!!

 

My WEI score for graphics increased from 4.1 to 4.4 (which is very nice), but my other scores remained the same (now the CPU is the lower with 4.2) and for those who are interested the HDD scores a whopping 5.9.

 

I did a stress test by leaving the notebook on all night running 3DMark'06 in loop on top resolution with AA and the works... It did not crash once so I'm guessing the MOD is pretty STABLE.

 

Now… I need to get this off my chest... I've had this notebook since 2004 (when it was released), and paid an extra $500 at the time to get the MR9800. This beast (as it was known/referred to back then) set me back a small fortune (on the whole it was over $3500 - I went with the Pentium Extreme Edition version)... and WTF?!?!?!?!? Why the hell did Dell release the MR9800 with only 8 pipes if it was capable of processing with 12 or even 16 pipes?!?!??!?! It was hardly like the 'cheap/value' option at an extra $500! Which IDIOT engineer decided to limit the graphics card to 8 pipes??? I mean honestly!!! I'm extremely disappointed with Dell... I used this notebook as my main work and gaming platform until 2006 and to know now that I could have had 30% more performance on the graphics side is frustrating and infuriating to say the least.

Holy cow this is such an old thread. I received an email when you made this post. It's been 8 years and it feels a lifetime. I remember being so happy with the hardmod. Boy has technology improved leaps and bounds since the days of this chunky (however at the time beast of a) laptop.

My mobile phones gpu is most likely more powerful than the mr9800, lol.