Do NOT flash your BIOS! - LightSpeed @ 05:25 PM EST
I am still seeing countless people either who have screwed up their cards by doing a BIOS flash, or are looking to do so with a new flash ROM.
I do not recommend that you flash the BIOS of your card with one from a different card, with many reasons.
First of all, there are at this time over 50 different designs of the Rage 128 card.
There are differences between the boards, like memory, core speed, possibly even newer chips that require different code to function properly.
If you are looking to increase the performance of your video card, flashing the BIOS will not be the solution.
The possibilities of failure and not being able to re-program your card to its original state are not worth the risk.
I recommend if you want to overclock your card, get the appropriate cooling, use the Rage 128 Tweaker and go for it! Don't get a fan and jack the speed up to "meltdown level", do it in small increments, testing your system stability for a couple of hours before going higher, always use common sense.
Some users want to have NTSC TV-out with a PAL card. This is not possible with the crystal on the PAL Rage 128 cards, as it has a lower frequency than the NTSC model. The reverse may be possible, but with a 1 in 50 chance, I wouldn't risk it.
If you want the performance of the retail card, buy the retail card.
Do not expect your OEM card to run as fast as the retail counterpart.
It is not logical for any manufacturer to sell a product which is not running at its optimal clock speed, give or take 10-15% for overclocking, just like CPU's. You will not likely find a video card rated at 100MHz when it is capable of operating at 150MHz.
It all comes down to chip yield, let's face it, the retail products have better quality control, warranty, components, etc. not only with video cards but with generally all hardware, CPU anyone? ;-)
