R9500Pro+ New Rig any advice?

[BenSkywalker]

My R9500Pro just arrived, the last component I needed for my system overhaul(averything save case, PS and modem are new). I have a MSI K7N2 nForce 2 based mobo, 512MB PC2700 Kingston and an Athlon XP 2100+(AIUHB stepping week three, from checking OC data bases this particular stepping and week seems to hit 2.2GHZ air cooled on averare, regularly breaking 2GHZ air cooled on default voltage ).

I'll be running Win2KPro SP3 and have downloaded the latest drivers from ATi and control panel along with the latest nForce2 drivers and collected the other drivers etc that I will need. I'm going on a clean drive install and running NTFS.

My questions- I'm running a retail ATi R9500Pro- which OC BIOS should I use for the board? I've never flashed a vid card BIOS before(never had a reason to) so I'm not entirely clear on the process, does it require a 3.5" drive? I don't have one hooked up to my current rig and wasn't planning on having one connected to my new rig either but it would be a lot simpler to have one from the start then to have to tear things down to restart it.

I have 3DM2K3 ready for burn in along with a few of the ATi DX9 demos, any suggestions on one for the entire system? Looking it over it seems that 3DMark2K1 might be better for a complete system burn in(I want to stress the CPU for a bit). I don't want to use a CPU only bench as one of my concerns is the possibility that the PS won't hold under full load(it is an Enlight unit, and has more constant volts then my father in law's 500watt generic despite being rated at only 300 watts).

Any suggestions greatly appreciated

 

[Althornin]

in order to flash you need to boot up into a pure dos environment.
You dont need a floppy disk drive, you could use a zip drive (you can boot to it, i do it allt he time for bios flashing, its faster than a floppy) or even burn the stuff to a CD.

 

[BenSkywalker]

in order to flash you need to boot up into a pure dos environment.

DOS.... That's that thing people used to use before NT came out, right?

Should I create a Win9X "SYA" bootable CD then? I think I have Win98 still installed on one of my old HDs that is kicking around.

 

[Tahir2]

You can do it from WinXP (eh howz dat possible?!)...
Just insert a blank formatted floppy into drive a:
Go to My Computer, right click on the Drive A:, click Format, tick create Startup Disk or whatever it is called... and voila... instant bootable floppy.

 

[Tahir2]

You can do it from WinXP (eh howz dat possible?!)...
Just insert a blank formatted floppy into drive a:
Go to My Computer, right click on the Drive A:, click Format, tick create Startup Disk or whatever it is called... and voila... instant bootable floppy.

Just ignore the top post.. brain fart

OK now to answer your questions... firstly dont flash your BIOS but if you are adamant you want to then go to Rage3D forums and get some professionals to help you out

Regarding your PSU.. erm and burning the Radeon 9500Pro in.. my advice is to change your PSU as soon as you can if you are having issues with it. You may be stressing your CPU too much, just using 3DMark 2001 (even though I think you WILL be, you disagree but that is cool) and you bought the Radeon 9500Pro to play games so in one way or another that CPU is gonna want constant juice provided to it.. on top of that even the Radeon 9500Pro requires a heck of a lot of juice on its own.

Finally.. you bought a DAMN fine CPU and you know about its possible overclocking potential... well that PSU might kill it if you overclock it. Ask Teasy what happened to his PSU recently that I helped with. Burnt ATX connector = not good!

 

[BenSkywalker]

So flashing a vid card BIOS is pretty much the same as a mobo? I've done those numerous times, yet to have one go bad(knock on wood). I'm not going to be pushing either the vid card or the CPU until I get a more powerful PS, I'm looking at either a Antec 420Watt or a Thermaltake 480Watt(planning on picking up a XaserIII case, and TT 480W goes well with it and has comparable performance to the Antec PSs of like wattage). I'm not OCing anything until I get the rest of my parts, so far burn in has been flawless(no crashes or hangs although I'm not pushing it as hard as I could be).

Also going to pick up a SLK-800 or 900 with a 80mm fan when I get the better PS.

For flashing the BIOS on the vid card, my understanding is that the R9500Pro chips tend to have a decent amount of head room in terms of OCing, and I really hate the idea of wasted potential.

Thanks for the suggestions Althornin

 

[Tagrineth]

Two things: First, I used the Warped or whatever BIOS and it works perfectly.

Second...

R9500Pro+ New Rig any advice

What, first we performance-rate CPU's, now we performance-rate VPU's? What's next, an Audigy+?

Edit: Emoticon added for Ben if you can read this normally, then you don't need glasses 8)

 

[BenSkywalker]

Tag-

First, I used the Warped or whatever BIOS and it works perfectly.

Do you happen to have a link where I can pick that up?

What, first we performance-rate CPU's, now we performance-rate VPU's? What's next, an Audigy+?

Hmm, can't tell if that was humorous or not, I used the + for 'and' or 'in', just trying to get the point across that it was a new build in general and ther wouldn't be any issues with old drivers, etc. If you were being humorous, use emoticons woman