Radeon X800 Non-Pro/X800 XL/X850 Voltmods

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Urlyin

If the x800 pro is AGP then there is more of a difference than just the Rage Theater chip ... look at the pics here and the PCi-E on the first page of this thread .... you'll see the difference in the locations of the chips and measurement points ...

My X800 PRO VIVO is PCI-E - my first post must have been confusing...sorry.
The title of the mod guide states only the X800 non-Pro / x800xl / x850XT - therefore the question from me whether these mods also apply to the X800pro pci-e. Just appeared that it specifically excluded x800pro to me yet I am hoping that it is not the case and rather an error...or my misinterpretation

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by mikeguava

My X800 PRO VIVO is PCI-E - my first post must have been confusing...sorry.
The title of the mod guide states only the X800 non-Pro / x800xl / x850XT - therefore the question from me whether these mods also apply to the X800pro pci-e. Just appeared that it specifically excluded x800pro to me yet I am hoping that it is not the case and rather an error...or my misinterpretation

Mike ... I believe W1zzard started that article before they made the X800pro in a PCI-E card. I would assume that it is more like the AGP version. But the only way to find out is to take it out and compare them... there are so many variants now and it seems all of the OEMs are deviating from reference builds everywhere on the PCIe cards. Either way I'm sure we can feature it out....

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Urlyin

Mike ... I believe W1zzard started that article before they made the X800pro in a PCI-E card. I would assume that it is more like the AGP version. But the only way to find out is to take it out and compare them... there are so many variants now and it seems all of the OEMs are deviating from reference builds everywhere on the PCIe cards. Either way I'm sure we can feature it out....

Here's are some pics of my X800Pro PCI-E - the Vgpu seems to be in the same spot, the igpu is different, this one I have to find. The VDD and VDDQ also seem to be in the same spot.
Maybe the R1596 has moved a tiny bit up and to the right in my case - what do you think? Or is the R1596 only an empty place? ( I cirlceld it blue)

thanks

Mike

[mikeguava]

Possible Solution for X850XT pencil problems on VGPU:

At first I tried to pencil only from point to point in a straight line. Over and over - but couldn't get the resistance to drop. Once I penciled the connection like in the attached pic - the resistance dropped immeditately.

Mike

BTW I used a HB2 pencil - also worked

[Mussels]

can you explain more detail what you did to make it work? and is yours one of the kinds with a missing resistor?

edit: the damn pic displayed now so i'll give that a shot another time, if my XL has a similar layout...

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Mussels

can you explain more detail what you did to make it work? and is yours one of the kinds with a missing resistor?

edit: the damn pic displayed now so i'll give that a shot another time, if my XL has a similar layout...

Just saw you edit - my x850XT also has the missing resistor in vgpu pencil spot - I just drew along the white line basically.
Hope this will do the trick for you too.

Cheers

Mike

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Mussels

can you explain more detail what you did to make it work? and is yours one of the kinds with a missing resistor?

edit: the damn pic displayed now so i'll give that a shot another time, if my XL has a similar layout...

Did it work for you now? One more tip - make sure that the pencil is freshly sharpened, that will also greatly help putting down the graphite. A dull pencil will make it a lot harder. Just out of curiousity I did a lot of test today with different pencils etc. I often managed to take off a decent graphite layer with a dull pencil. 2B works a lot better

[Super XP]

Originally Posted by Tijgert

Ok, mod update time

As I said earlier, I wanted to make the voltmod switchable so that the videocard wouldn't have to endure the maximum voltage 100% of the time while it's needed maybe 5% of the time.

The original design called for a 4 rail switch to switch all 4 resistors simultaneously
I also wanted to make the mod switch off, regardless of the mod-switch position, if I would set the fans to low (7v).

So I took away the complicated 4 rail switch and I added a relais to the design, in series with a more simple 'master' switch, the fan switch and a little blue led to tell if it's working or not (and because blue leds are cool )

The mod was also designed to be added on top of the existing mod.
I refused to tamper with the installed mod to avoid breaking the solder and in case my mod-switching-setup not function as intended, I wanted to be able to just take it out and toss it into the corner without having to fix the old mod first.

As you can see in the first picture, I used two smaller relais instead of a single big one because I didn't want to stretch 8 wires all across the case and a bigger single relais wouldn't find enough grip on the video card.
I mounted them on the edges to avoid any interference from the field the coil generates so close the contacts. (it may be small, but can still interefere)



You may notice that it's now fully shrink tubed



Here you see the complete circuit.
The yellow lines indicate the fan switch wires that I didn't solder back yet (I lengthened them while I was working on it anyway).
The other side of the fan switch switches 12v to the led and on to the second switch, the mod switch.
From there it goes to the relais and back to close the circuit.



This is what the installed modded-mod looks like.
You may see a few changes on the final model compared to the previous pictures.
The two relais are now parallel as opposed to series because the voltage drop in series was too much to make them switch AND have a bright blue led in series as well.
Also the idiot at the hardware store was wrong about which pin was the common on the relais, so I had to resolder some of them.



The front view with the fan switch on theright and the mod switch on the left.
The mod is now switched off.



That's about it for now.
No benches yet, my Venice should come in very soon now and once that baby is installed I'll hook up the water cooling and a benchin' we will go!

Man, that is some serious stuff. Good for U

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by mikeguava

Here's are some pics of my X800Pro PCI-E - the Vgpu seems to be in the same spot, the igpu is different, this one I have to find. The VDD and VDDQ also seem to be in the same spot.
Maybe the R1596 has moved a tiny bit up and to the right in my case - what do you think? Or is the R1596 only an empty place? ( I cirlceld it blue)

thanks

Mike

Mike... the R1596 is the IGPU vmod ... looks like VGPU is the same as the X850 with the missing resistor... same two solder pads off pins 17 & 18 ... the VDD & VDDQ look like the AGP board ... so you say you got the resistence to drop using the solder pads?

[Mussels]

apparently yes, by drawing on the white lines around it or something. i just got an ATI5 rev. 2 cooler, so i'll pop off the old ATI4 and see if i can make it work here too.

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Urlyin

Mike... the R1596 is the IGPU vmod ... looks like VGPU is the same as the X850 with the missing resistor... same two solder pads off pins 17 & 18 ... the VDD & VDDQ look like the AGP board ... so you say you got the resistence to drop using the solder pads?

Yes I got the resistence to drop on the solder pads. So I assume we are on the right track here.
I think I only dropped it around 14 ohm and checked the voltage on the X800PRO - upped the voltage 0.4. The videocard doesn't have any cooling on it right now, so I only did a quick check on the voltage.

Question - could I use for all vmods 10k potentiometer instead of the 20k? I am planning on running the card at around +1.75V GPU. 2.45v Memory (cooling is around -10 idle / +10 heavyload)

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by mikeguava

Yes I got the resistence to drop on the solder pads. So I assume we are on the right track here.
I think I only dropped it around 14 ohm and checked the voltage on the X800PRO - upped the voltage 0.4. The videocard doesn't have any cooling on it right now, so I only did a quick check on the voltage.

Question - could I use for all vmods 10k potentiometer instead of the 20k? I am planning on running the card at around +1.75V GPU. 2.45v Memory (cooling is around -10 idle / +10 heavyload)

Yea... I think that's the issue Mike ... that's about all you can get out of it is 10-18k ohms... which isn't much but then again may be enough to allow a x800 pro to run at XT PE speeds ... it would be interesting to see if you can drop it around 30k ohms which would be a decent .08v jump .... you could use the 10k for the VGPU vmod but I don't think you'll get 2.45v out of the VDD & VDDQ with a 10k ...

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Mussels

apparently yes, by drawing on the white lines around it or something. i just got an ATI5 rev. 2 cooler, so i'll pop off the old ATI4 and see if i can make it work here too.

Yes basically over the white lines instead of going "thru the pit" between the two soldering points. I orignally had .433 on both the X850XT and the X800 PRO measuring resistance between the two soldering points.

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by Mussels

apparently yes, by drawing on the white lines around it or something. i just got an ATI5 rev. 2 cooler, so i'll pop off the old ATI4 and see if i can make it work here too.

Like to see it if it works for Mussels ... I'm still thinking about what difference it makes if you etch out to the other pad as opposed to straight across ... .

[mikeguava]

well my X800Pro runs with stock cooling and stock voltages 621/589. On my pelt it does 680/605 - hoping to bring it to around 750 on the core with a tad bit better cooling and lots of voltage....Originally I wanted ViperJohn do the mods on this gem - but we decided to rather go all out on a X850XT .

Too bad 10k won't work - I'll have to order the 20k online - no vmods until next week I guess -argh

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Urlyin

Like to see it if it works for Mussels ... I'm still thinking about what difference it makes if you etch out to the other pad as opposed to straight across ... .

Don't aks me - maybe I didn't press hard enough - or probably the line of graphite due to the drop gets interrupted - just because some people say they can't do the pencil at all on the gpu vmod while others can on the same model card - maybe this is the reason...or wrong use of pencil

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by mikeguava

Don't aks me - maybe I didn't press hard enough - or probably the line of graphite due to the drop gets interrupted - just because some people say they can't do the pencil at all on the vmod while others can on the same model card - maybe this is the reason...or wrong use of pencil

Yes, it is crazy that some report that they can and others can not ... Do you have 16 pipes open on the Pro? that is a sweet oc stock ... You won't be sorry sending your card to Viper John... I agree on the X850 going to John if the Pro only has 12 pipes ...

[mikeguava]

Originally Posted by Urlyin

Yes, it is crazy that some report that they can and others can not ... Do you have 16 pipes open on the Pro? that is a sweet oc stock ... You won't be sorry sending your card to Viper John... I agree on the X850 going to John if the Pro only has 12 pipes ...

My Pro only has 12 pipes - ViperJohn verified whether it could be potentially unlocked but it is a no go...
Yes sweet it is - already broke 6850 on 3Mark05 and was planning on breaking 7000 this weekend - best of all the card was only $204 (newegg refurb)

[Mussels]

didnt work here, after about 50 attempts i dropped 4 ohms, but i couldnt repeat that result doing exactly the same thing (i drew lines everywhere, i coated the damn thing in graphite even)

basically, no go for me.

Oh ATI 5 rev 2 = teh shit, the backplate is much smaller and only the length of the video card now, much roomier for those with close mobo chipsets / big CPU coolers.

[Urlyin]

Originally Posted by Mussels

didnt work here, after about 50 attempts i dropped 4 ohms, but i couldnt repeat that result doing exactly the same thing (i drew lines everywhere, i coated the damn thing in graphite even)

basically, no go for me.

Oh ATI 5 rev 2 = teh shit, the backplate is much smaller and only the length of the video card now, much roomier for those with close mobo chipsets / big CPU coolers.

Sorry to hear Mussels ...

[Mussels]

it dropped that one time that i couldnt repeat it, so i know its possible.

(oh and just to make sure the above made sense, the ATI silencer 5 rev 2 is good, better than the 4. i've got 28C idle on my card compared to 35C+ on the ATI 4 :-S MUCH better contact

[Kramdra]

Can someone post a high res closeup of the chip, and the traces for the VID pins. I want to know how the VID is set for this chip..

I think for most people it would be better just to change the VID once somone has worked out how?

For example to get 1.8V it woud appear you would just need to pull VID3 to ground, which is quite easy... 1.6v could be done just by pulling vid2 to ground.

Unless you wanted to undervolt, the res could require cutting traces which could be easyer.. but much more permentant.



Ive tryed the pencil mod, didnt spend long on it but its VERY difficult to do, a the solder pads are not flat. It may be easyer to jut pencil mod on the pins of the chip.

The pads/pins are also too small to solder to without a 0.5mm iron tip and a decent large magnifing glass.

I found the solder mod hard on my 9700 for which the chip was about twice the size, with twice the gap between the pins.

I really dont like soldermods because of the extra wires needed on the card, and the POT's which I can never find a good place to put them. Overtime they seem to fall off and no amount of hotglue keeps them on.

Also I killed my 9700np (which achived 470/325) when doing the mem vmod, one of pins lifted and the trace came with it when a wire got pulled off

[Urlyin]

Kramda ... diagram from the datasheet, you can see a close up on the first page of this thread...

Originally Posted by Urlyin

Kramda ... diagram from the datasheet, you can see a close up on the first page of this thread...

yeah i meant a picof the acctual pcb.. I've seen that in the datasheet

Kramda ... diagram from the datasheet, you can see a close up on the first page of this thread...

yeah i meant a pic of the actual pcb.. I've seen that in the datasheet ..

My cards water cooled and so hard for me to look at the pcb without having to remove it which takes ages..