X800GTO2 can't reach X850XT speeds

[Mustang Man]

Well, I bought this card off of a friend, only because I wanted another X850XT PE, but didnt want to spend too much on another one... After having read these forums and learning of the X800GTO2 I went and looked for one and found one for a very decent price. First thing I did after taking it out of the box was remove the fan and heatsink, made sure it was an R480, and then added a stock cooler from my X850XT PE (that now has an Arctic Cooler) on to the X800GTO2. Then I unlocked it to 16 pipes using the bios also provided by this site, via bootable floppy with atiflash.
So now I had Windows detecting it as x800/x850 on device manager and ATiTool reporting an R480 chip with 16 pipelines.

I had ATiTool detect my highest core and memory settings. For core, it was 627MHz, for memory, it was 617MHz. So after it ran it's tests I figured I could simply set the core to 540MHz and memory to 590MHz to have the platinum I wanted. Well the memory took fine, but once I set core, my PC froze, went black, and then blue screen with something about a problem with ati2dvag (sorry I cant remember exactly what it stated) was shown. So when I rebooted, the core went back to it's 398MHz rating. So I did 10MHz at a time, while checking each time for artifacts for a couple of minutes. When I reach 497 the PC either freezes or gives me a blue screen again with the same message. So I though that maybe it needed a new bios so it couls be detected as an X850XT PE, So from this site I downloaded the bios for a sapphire x850xt pe (PCIe, 256MB) and flashed the card. I gets to the welcome screen on XP, but freezes there and restarts and keeps doing the same. I figured it was because the bios is now telling the card that its default speeds are 540 core and 590 memory (is this correct?). So my guess would be that the card cannot be clocked higher than 490, which is the last clock speed that it survives an artifact scan.

Anyway, I flashed it back to the modded X800GTO2 with 16 pipes and have the core clock set at 480MHz and memory at 590MHz, but I am dissapointed.

Since I replaced the heatsink and fan to that of an actual X850XT PE and have pretty good cooling in my case (Antec P160). I thought for sure it would do atleast as well as a regular X850XT, but it doesn't go higher than that of which I mentioned.

Am I doing something wrong? Or am I SOL? Of course I am happy to have been able to OC it as far as I did, but after reading so much success with this card, I kinda feel let down...

OK I'm gonna cry now.. while I do that if someone knows a way for me to remedy this problem of not being able to clock the core at X850XT PE speeds, i would higly appreciate your help. thank you all!

[Jimmy 2004]

So are you saying it managed to reach 627MHz once when ATITool was testing, but now if you try and set it above 490MHz it freezes? I'm not an expert on these cards but it does sound like it probably can't be clocked higher than 490MHz. It could be a problem with drivers I guess. Try downloading drivercleaner (google it), use it to remove all traces of the ATI drivers and then install the softmod drivers from this site and see if that is any better.

[Mustang Man]

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. I did install new drivers by going in through safe mode, which kinda hinted me that it was a driver issue, but I never used drivercleaner and I will definitely do that today and also install the softmod drivers from here. Thank you very much!

[Jimmy 2004]

Post back on how you do, drivercleaner will only help if it is a software issue but it does sound like it could be hardware.

[Mustang Man]

well, i cleaned up my system with drivercleaner and installed the softmod drivers, but no go It's weird though, because initially, Atitool was able to get my card up to 627MHz, and now it blacked out at 504MHz because "the driver was no longer responding". So I have the core set at 480MHz and I ran the 3D view for a good while and did an artifact test with no problems at that setting. Oh well, I got me an underachiever.

Thanks for your help though!

[Azn Tr14dZ]

Try turning off "VPU recover"

[Mustang Man]

I just tried that through ATi CCC and ran ATitool to find my max core and still no luck, although it did make it to 509MHz this time, but froze the whole PC as to where I had to reboot. Thanks for the siggestion, I truly appreciate your help.

[bigboi86]

Is your cooler on good?

[KennyT772]

sounds like you may have 1 not diabled the ati services or 2 you have a hardware problem

[Mustang Man]

Originally Posted by bigboi86

Is your cooler on good?

yeah, my cooler's working. From everything I've tried, it sounds more like hardware.

[Mustang Man]

Originally Posted by KennyT772

sounds like you may have 1 not diabled the ati services or 2 you have a hardware problem

Which ATi services should I disable?

[special_ed70]

Why don't you just use ATI Tool to OC it, rather than using another bios to just make it show as a X850 PE? I have a Sapphire X800GTO2 LE which uses the R480 chip, I set the clocks to a X850 XT PE 520/540 which runs great and stays at 38c/62c.

[Mustang Man]

Originally Posted by special_ed70

Why don't you just use ATI Tool to OC it, rather than using another bios to just make it show as a X850 PE? I have a Sapphire X800GTO2 LE which uses the R480 chip, I set the clocks to a X850 XT PE 520/540 which runs great and stays at 38c/62c.

I did use ATiTool, if you read my first message I explained it all. I just can't get it past 490MHz core, memory I easily did 590MHz.

Oh, btw, aren't the PE speeds 540/590, 520/540 are the regular X850XT speeds?

[special_ed70]

Yeah your right about the X800XT PE clocks.

It's like a hit or miss with them to get to 540/590. I got mine to 520/540 MHz stable @ 38c/62c. Memory goes up to 605. But the core won't go to 540, system locks up.

[infrared]

Ok, set the card to the highest clock you can reach without it crashing, then leave it with the 3d view open overnight to stress the card. I had similar problems with my x800gto2, but after a heavy burn in, the problem dissapeared. It could take a few nights of this, but the problem shoud go away with use. After a night of burning in, restart your computer, and find the max for the core again, it should steadily go up until the card doesn't crash at all.

Good luck

[Mustang Man]

sounds good, i'll be sure to try that starting tonight. Thanks.