X800 GTO² to X850 XT BIOS Mod

[Waszipa]

FINALY!

The Sapphire GTO2 arived in Denmark just a week ago

Me and one of my m8s got these new cards from my DK shop. But bouth card was allready runing 16 pipes... I called the shop and asked about it but they said "Sapphire must have premodet it?!" Does Sapphire do that?

Wizzard do you what this original Sapphire GTO2 whit 16 pipes PREMODET?

Runing 3DMark 05 5200 | out-of-the-box
Runing 3DMark 05 6638 | 400/500MHz @ 545/621MHz coling: 64 degreas at 55 % fan speed

The skumbag:
AMD 64 3500+ 2.2GHz @ 2.45Ghz
MSI K8N NEO Platium nFroce 4 Ultra
2 x 512 DDR 400Mhz Duel channel
Sapphire GTO2 256 MB GDDR3

 

[Waszipa]

Wizzard I of corse meant do you need the BIOS from the crad to examian or something???

 

[Teh Gimp]

Woot I used a different boot CD creation method and I was able to get into flashrom no problems! I had to force flash to get it to work, but now I'm officially an owner of a 16 pipe X850 XT PE ++ on the cheap! Thank you Sapphire! 580 core/620 mem at 71-75C load core and 51-57 ambient.

 

[ChrisMansion]

Any luck with flashing HIS x850 PRO VIVO?

Just dumped into this article right now on the edge of completing my computer-parts-buy at the "local webshop", and came to think of something:

Have anyone had any luck flashing a Hightech Excalibur X850PRO VIVO (AGP) to a X850XT PE? I think of buying either this one, or the X800XL (with more pipelines) from the same manufacturer, but if it will flash, then I suppose the 850Pro will be a better buy?

Anyone had any experience with this card, or should I go for the X800XL?
Thankful for any response

 

[roycebayles]

R430 NaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHH

I've had a D.O.A. and 2 working x800GTO2's now from new eg...g and both came with X800XL recognized bioses and stated that they had R430's I was Heart broken lol but i took the cooler off and IT WAS AN R480 AFTER ALL SO i flashed it with a x850xt bios cos it wasn't a speed racer 520 core barely stable.Anyway after i flashed it my fan was dead and i didn't know it til my card got 85 deg.C so i reached in and felt for air none!then i looked in there and fan was out to lunch!So i hooked it up on my X800PRO and it was official it choked.So if your goona Mod and u wanna keep ur stock cooling try a fan or an alternative that is expendable if possible.My new card is 585 core and 639 mem MAXed not stable but it's much better than the 525/589 of my previous one.Haven't flashed it yet cos im scared to loose my fan.

 

[roycebayles]

OK i see now

I just flashed my gto2 and i used my x800 fan to see if it was going to burn it up!it didn't but i would run for about 4 or 5 seconds then stop,the same with my gto fan.So i got out my ATI sil 5 Rev2 put it on the plug and it kept going!So now im flashed and have a fan on my card I'm happy with that.

 

[Megatron]

Why flash the card with a bios that is not meant for it? You can edit the original bios to 16 pipes and any clock speed, and presumable you would have no trouble with the fans. There must be some fundamental incompatability because ATItool specifically has an option for x850 PWM (pulse width modulation) fan control.

 

[infrared]

I think they do it just so they can say it's now an x850xt personally. I agree, i'd stick with the original bios and do a little modifying, you'd also save yourself the trouble of having to reinstall drivers.

 

[ShadowFlare]

You can even mod your X800 GTO2 bios for the dual-dvi version to properly say it is R480 if you want, by using the guide I posted here: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=8060

BTW, if you do try it, then let me know if it changes the performance or overclocking ability on your card. Of course, it is possible that it will only change that it is properly shown as R480.

For my own card, I've modded it to say "RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition" in Windows. Of course, since my bios was already R480, there was not even the slightest chance of it changing performance by modding the bios to detect as X850 XT PE. I just wanted it to have that name.

 

[cendien]

X80XTPE Bios?

Just got this card in my new system two days ago.

Athlon 64 3200+ Venice @ 2.0ghz
1gb (2x 512) DDR 400 RAM
Sapphire X800GTO2 @16P 510/510
EPoX EP-9NPAJ Motherboard

I performed the flash flawlessly using the ISO made by someone (can't remember his name, someone else posted with it though.) The card shows up in ATITool as a x850 series, but as far as i know it wasnt an x850 bios that it was flashed to.

Ive been trying to overclock the card, and I cant get much better clock speeds than those listed above (510ish on both core and mem). And even that can be pushing it, depending. I've been reading through this thread and I saw a few people mention that flashing to the X850XTPE bios will sometimes allow a higher overclock. (I found this one on the BIOS page here: X850 XT PE (PCI-E) 256 MB. Would that be the correct X850 bios? I do have the PCIE version of the X800GTO2.)

Is this a safe flash to perform on this card? If so, what do you think about how well it will overclock at that point? Also, would it be worth it to upgrade to an AC5 HSF in regard to overclock potential?

Thanks for your help!

 

[infrared]

If you get an ATI Silencer from Arctic cooling, you will be able to achive a much higher overclock, while keeping your graphics card nice'n'cool! As it is, your card isn't running quick enough to support the x850xtpe bios, so you'll need to get a new cooler on it before attempting the flash, unless you modify the clocks of the bios first.

Is the bios in it now the x850xt? If it is, flashing to the x850xt pe will do absolutly nothing for overclocking potential on the core, but might change the timings on your ram, but your unlikely to gain much if any performance.

Congrats on it anyway, nice card!

 

[ShadowFlare]

If you want to have the X850 XT PE memory timings, the settings to change in ATITool for you X800 GTO2 are these:

MEM_TRP - Change to 5
MEM_REFRESH_RATE - 0x1E

Those are the only differences and using those brings my 3dmark05 score up to what it would be with the X850 XT PE bios at the same clock speeds. Of course, this only has a very minimal impact on performance - it only increased my 3dmark05 score by about 15.

 

[cendien]

I dont beleive it is currently X850XT... I'm at school right now and can't check for sure (Will in about 2 hours..). All I know atm is that it showed up in ATITool somewhere as an X850 series card. Dont know what that means in terms of what Bios is in it, but I think all that is in there is the X800GTO2 with 16P enabled. Anyways, I think I will go ahead and purchase the cooler. What exactly in the card would prevent it from going higher on clock speeds (what creates the artifacts)? Is it the heat that prevents it from being any further overclocked? If so, I guess the cooler would in fact raise the potential. Or is it something else that would prevent it? I just dropped around $650 in this system and dont have much cash to spare, so if buying the cooler isnt going to show much increase in performance I dont know if I want to shell out the money for one right now. That aside, is it very difficult to install the cooler? I'm pretty new to the overclocking world (as I'm sure is evident).

Compeltely off topic: I tried overclocking my CPU (A64 3200+ Venice) from 2.0ghz to 2.2ghz through the bios. Just raised the frequency from 200 to 220. The system started fine and DXDIAG showed the system at 2.2ghz, but when I loaded FarCry and clicked on the Campaign button the system froze immediately. Tried several times, and troubleshooted for a minute. The only fix was to pull the CPU back down to default settings. Any idea what I did wrong?

Sorry for going off topic there. Ignore that if you want.

 

[ShadowFlare]

I dont beleive it is currently X850XT... I'm at school right now and can't check for sure (Will in about 2 hours..). All I know atm is that it showed up in ATITool somewhere as an X850 series card. Dont know what that means in terms of what Bios is in it, but I think all that is in there is the X800GTO2 with 16P enabled. Anyways, I think I will go ahead and purchase the cooler. What exactly in the card would prevent it from going higher on clock speeds (what creates the artifacts)? Is it the heat that prevents it from being any further overclocked? If so, I guess the cooler would in fact raise the potential. Or is it something else that would prevent it? I just dropped around $650 in this system and dont have much cash to spare, so if buying the cooler isnt going to show much increase in performance I dont know if I want to shell out the money for one right now. That aside, is it very difficult to install the cooler? I'm pretty new to the overclocking world (as I'm sure is evident).

Compeltely off topic: I tried overclocking my CPU (A64 3200+ Venice) from 2.0ghz to 2.2ghz through the bios. Just raised the frequency from 200 to 220. The system started fine and DXDIAG showed the system at 2.2ghz, but when I loaded FarCry and clicked on the Campaign button the system froze immediately. Tried several times, and troubleshooted for a minute. The only fix was to pull the CPU back down to default settings. Any idea what I did wrong?

Sorry for going off topic there. Ignore that if you want.

The preinstalled cooler for the GTO2 actually is fairly good. If you can't really afford to buy a new cooler right now, then that's just fine, you don't really necessarily need one. What does your card do when going past your max stable gpu overclock? Does it have artifacts or does it just crash? If it just crashes, then it is fairly likely that installing a new cooler will not improve gpu overclocking one bit. I had one that was like this.

 

[cendien]

For the purpose of overclocking the card:

When it comes to games, is it better to have a higher memory clock or a higher core clock? I can get my core higher than what ive got if i lower the mem some and of course it works backwards as well.

 

[amazingmaze]

problem

hi there.

i get an error message when flashing the card: (sapphire GTO2)
__________________________________
Flashrom -p 0 Sapphire.bin

Serial ROM

BIOS Device ID =0x5D4F
ASIC Device ID =0x5D4F
Existing SSID = 0x1600
New SSID = 0x0302

SSID does not match with BIOS file "Sapphire.bin" SSID !
Use "-f" to force flashing

ERROR 0FL01: press "1" to continue
___________________________________

what should i do?

 

[infrared]

use this command line:

flashrom -p -f 0 shapphire.bin

Basically, it's just giving you the warning that the bios is not intended for that graphics card.

Also, as you flash the bios, your card will try to 'preserve' some rom settings, such as ram timings. To get around this, use the following command:

flashrom -p -f -newbios 0 sapphire.bin

If the bios is completely non compatible, or you get a bad flash, and you end up in a worst case scenario (blank scree) Blind flashing is very simple.

restart your computer with the boot disk in the drive, wait until your computer stops loading from the disk. Type "flashrom -p -f -newbios 0 oldbios.bin" <== Assuming you called the original bios 'oldbios.bin'. You may have to ammend the command if it's different.

Cya

 

[KGB44]

Hey guys...

I have bought my Sapphire X800GTO² two days ago.

Tried to overclock it with 12 Pipes: 580/630 ( 1260DDR) runs fine!
No Problems, with Standard Cooling.

I have flashed the GTO² with 16 Pipes, running without any problems @ 580/630.



But now i want to flash a real Sapphire X850XT PE BIOS, becouse it looks nicer and frequency is @ 540/620 or something. ...Can i do that ?

Can i use Winflash instead of DOS ATIFLASH oder Flashrom?

THX guys

 

[infrared]

It's fine to use the x850xt pe bios, your card can handle the speeds, and is basically the x850xt.

WinFlash should be fine, but there is an increased risk of having a bad flash, in which case, you'll need to know how to flash from dos so that you can blind flash the original back if all should go pair-shaped.

Also, see if you can get hold of an ATI Silencer 5 rev.2, you should get at least 600mhz on the core.

 

[Vini]

Couple days ago I got myself a SAPPHIRE RADEON X800 GTO² card.
Flashed no problem and ATITool is showing 16 pipes.
However overclocking is not going so well. Getting frozen with just a little bit of increase in core speed.

So I was just wondering if it could be because my card does NOT have that black 6-pin power connector that you can see on all of the pictures? In the place where that connector supposed to be there is nothing. I can see 6 holes that are filled with tin where that connector is supposed to be but its just not there.
Smaller white 4-pin connector is there but I don't know what to connect to it.

I also got myself an ATI Silencer 4 (Rev. 2). Local suppliers did not have ATI Silencer 5 (Rev. 2) so I had to go with it since it says that it is supposed to be good for ATI X800 (R420) SE, PRO, XT, XT PE... I haven't tried putting it on yet so I can return it if its no good.
Can ATI Silencer 4 (Rev. 2) be really used on GTO² card? Anybody tried it?

Any ideas why overclocking is so bad?

EDIT: I double-checked on http://www.arctic-cooling.com and it seems that ATI Silencer 4 (Rev. 2) and ATI Silencer 5 (Rev. 2) have the same Compatibility charts. So supposedly ATI Silencer 4 (Rev. 2) should fit on my GTO². I'm just trying to check if anyone has any experience with it.

 

[amazingmaze]

thx it worked!!!

 

[KGB44]

Hey


Thx for reply

i dont know why, but my stock cooling is not bad. Only 55 or 60°C on running 3D Mark 2003 / 2005. With oc-test (ati tool) no flashing pixels or something. After 1 hour stress test temprature reaches ~ 62°C

...Is this to hot ?


THX

 

[leonard_222003]

X800 GTO fireblade question

Hy , i recently bought a sapphire X800 GTO fireblade , good overclock ( core 580 memory 600 max but i keep them at 570 core and 590 memory) , very loud cooling solution.I came across the "X800 GTO and GTO² to X850 XT Mod" article and i want to try see if i can too have a 16 pipes X800.My card have a R480 , fusses in ati tool are
CONFIG_DIE_FUSES 0xFFFF7FFF
CONFIG_SUBSTRATE_FUSES 0xFFFFFF9E
and here is a screenshot(attachement) of the fuses with ati tool.Can i mod it ?
(excuse my english is not my native language)

 

[KGB44]

I think the "E" means: no way...

 

[KGB44]

I must correct me...

if you speak german, you can read here:

http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/showthread.php?t=181245


The "E" means: with hardware mod you can reach 16 Pipes...with a little bit luck...