Trying to flash 9800 pro to xt

Hi, I have a 128mb Sapphire Radeon 9800 pro video card I bought in August 2004. It's no longer listed on newegg, but the customer review page is still there:

http://secure.newegg.com/app/Custr [...] 14-102-268

I want to flash it to xt, but the problem is I don't know whether I have the r350 or r360 core. I can't figure out how to get the heatsink off, theres two knob things that hold the heatsink to the card and I can't get them off. I tried messing with them and my fan stopped working . (I was able to get a replacement). Is there a way I can check it without messing with the card. I also don't know how to figure out whether my card has 8 or 16 memory chips, Samsung or Hynix memory, and 2.5ns or 2.8ns. How do you figure out all those? Thanks for the help.

Well, according to ATItool 0.24, i have the r350 core. Just my luck OH well, thanks for the help angry_ducky.

no atitool is wrong you have to open the heatsink and physically look at the number trust me i have a 9800PRO and ati read it as an r350 then i opened it and it was 360.

Ok, I've taken a look at my radeon card and it does seem to have 8 memory chips (four on top and four on bottom at the same spot). On the memory chips it says

Hynix

HY50U283222A

F-28 436A

Does anyone know whether I can determine whether I can flash to XT WITHOUT taking off my heatsink? I'd rather not mess with my card physically if I don't have to, and if I do, do I have to buy new thermal grease? Buying thermal grease just to look at a card's core seems a bit of a pain.

I've been looking at these two guides for information:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/101/1

http://forums.rojakpot.com/showthread.php?t=8340

According to the first guide, it says: If your board has 16 chips, it uses the R350 and cannot be transformed. But if it has 8 chips, it uses the new R360 core and can be changed to a Radeon 9800 XT with this tutorial.

Is this absolutely true? And what does PCB mean? Thanks for the help.

edit: If I do flash, do I have to change the voltage the card is getting? I have no idea how to do that. Also, a non-stock cooling solution in not necessary right? Since the 560 was made to run at XT speeds, technically is it not really overclocking?

PCB = Printed Circuit Board

I remember having to hunt around to find the right one...

It worked, but gave nasty coloured blotches everywhere on the POST screen, so I never even bothered trying to boot into windows.

At a guess I would say the XT BIOS tightens RAM timings and does very little else, but I don't know that for sure of course .

I flashed my old 9800pro to an xt a good year ago. It wasn't worth it, it's nice to do the flash just to say you did it. I sold mine on ebay a couple months later for close to the xt used price.

Anyhow, don't worry about the flash, you won't see the difference. Benchmarks yeah. JMO