X800 GTO² to X850 XT BIOS Mod

[mbd1475]

Hi all! This is my first post to the forums. I received my Connect3d GTO last week, and easily unlocked to 16 pipes using the BIOS/directions in the article. Here are my 3dMark05 scores on stock cooling:

16 Pipes (stock speed): 5058
16 Pipes (510/550 @ 62.9 degrees load): 6054

My system setup (just built) is as follows:
AMD 3200+ Venice, Stock
DFI nf4 Ultra Infinity
2x512 GEiL 2.5,4,4,8 , Stock
250GB WD SATAII (3/G) 16MB cache
RaidMax Virgo 811 Case with (2) 120mm and (1) 80mm fans
Aspire 520W PSU

After reading these forums and reviews on Newegg, I am strongly considering purchasing a Zalman VF700 cooler for my card. Can someone please relay to me their experience in removing the stock cooler on the GTO and replacing with a Zalman? Is it hard? What is involved? Thanks!

[mascaras]

Originally Posted by dr.bling

first time poster. i got the connect 3d gto card but dont have a floppy drive and cannot figure out how to make a cdrw bootable, above you say to just put the files in a:/, is that the hard drive ? and load them from that without booting into dos ? if someone wants to take the time to give me step by step instructions to flash my bios it would be greatly appreciated as i am dos iliterate.

here you go >>> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+a+bootable+cd

[mascaras]

Originally Posted by VTwedge

yeap flashed the powercolor x800xt bios, been running my own bios now with 16 pipes at 520/520 after i flashed it again over the powercolor x800xt bios and been benchmarking and playing nfsmw for 3 hours and its rock stable, when i had the x800xt bios at 500/500 it was unstable...weird huh?

i flashed mine with powercolor bios i have no problems of stability , no artefacts till 573/590 .Thats weird .

[BlackPearl]

mbd1475 - putting the Zalman on a C3D GTO couldn't be easier. Remove 3 screws to get the stock cooler off, only 2 screws are needed to mount the Zalman. See the installation flash movie at zalmanusa.com.

[Ethos]

My max stable overclock (C3D X800 GTO) is 600/560 16p.
No other overclocks.

I am also using the VF700-Cu (12V) with a casemodded SN25P.

[mascaras]

my friend past the 7000k(7040) with conect3d with zalman vf700 , he can hit better clocks with zalman vf700 than me with watercooling . >> http://img486.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gto70409gf.jpg -- Clock´s 573/600.

[ShadowFlare]

Originally Posted by mbd1475

Hi all! This is my first post to the forums. I received my Connect3d GTO last week, and easily unlocked to 16 pipes using the BIOS/directions in the article. Here are my 3dMark05 scores on stock cooling:

16 Pipes (stock speed): 5058
16 Pipes (510/550 @ 62.9 degrees load): 6054

My system setup (just built) is as follows:
AMD 3200+ Venice, Stock
DFI nf4 Ultra Infinity
2x512 GEiL 2.5,4,4,8 , Stock
250GB WD SATAII (3/G) 16MB cache
RaidMax Virgo 811 Case with (2) 120mm and (1) 80mm fans
Aspire 520W PSU

After reading these forums and reviews on Newegg, I am strongly considering purchasing a Zalman VF700 cooler for my card. Can someone please relay to me their experience in removing the stock cooler on the GTO and replacing with a Zalman? Is it hard? What is involved? Thanks!

If you buy some ArctiClean (by Arctic Silver), cleanup of the thermal compound on the gpu will be easy. If you get some of that, I'd also recommend cleaning the memory with it before applying the ramsinks (probably only with the #2 bottle, since there is no thermal compound on the memory chips of that card).

After that, the rest isn't really very hard; well, except for that you may possibly have to bend or clip off one of the fins on one of the ramsinks to get it to fit right. If you have some pliers, bending that fin won't be hard. Since you have a different card than me, the chips may be positioned in such a way that you don't need to do that, though.

[Soulsurfer]

Another successful C3d X800 Gto mod here 530/570 16 pipes 3Dmark 6110.

[omega_prime]

i now found the time for some o/c tests. the first artefacts apear at 570/ 560
so for now i wil use 550/540. it gives me around 6400 3dmark05.
i use a zalman heatsink on my c3d ...

[sew333]

Originally Posted by omega_prime

i now found the time for some o/c tests. the first artefacts apear at 570/ 560
so for now i wil use 550/540. it gives me around 6400 3dmark05.
i use a zalman heatsink on my c3d ...

Where do you have this artifacts? In atitool or 3dmarks??

[alroot]

Hi, I´m writing from Spain (sorry if I don´t write properly)
I´m having problems with the Zalman.
At 12v works fine, but at 5v the card is hot (45º in Iddle, 85º!!! when pasing 3DMARK 05 520/540).
Yes, I have installed tha Zalman Twice, cleaning the gpu, so I´thinking in buying an ARTIC Cooling 5 rev2 and using it with the Ati Tray Tools.

[DanishDevil]

I wouldn't. I don't have a problem with ATi Tray Tools, but just use the Zalman at 12V, either that, or if noise is a problem, get a fan controller and just turn it down until it's quiet enough.

The Zalman is a high performance cooler with the option of being quiet. When things get quieter, they get hotter. Pick one or the other, or join them both with fan control.

[blsnelling]

I just installed my Sapphire X800 GTO2. I started by running 3DMark05. Results were 4600. Not impressive considering the rest of my system. I then successfully flashed the bios and ATITool verified that all 16 pipes are open. I then began OCing it to see what it would do. Unfortunately, the max the core will do without artifacts is 420. The memory will do about 606. I have the fan running a 100% and temps are at about 58C under load so I don't think that's it. 3DMark05 results were only 5665. I used the bios file on the 1st page of this thread and atiflash. I also tried a Sapphire X850XT bios and modded it so that the default clock settings were 420 and 590. The results were no different. I used the PCI X connector from the power supply and also tried the adapter that came with the card with no difference. Is this the worst core to be seen or is something else going on?

System specs:
Asus A8N SLI Premium
Athlon64 X2 3800+ (260x10 @ 1.45V)
Thermalright XP-120 w/Sunon 120x38 on rheostat
2 X 1GB OCZ Dual Channel Platinum PC3200
Sapphire X800 GTO2
Eneremax NoiseTaker 470W "AX" v2.0
36GB WD Raptor - Boot Drive
4x MaxLine 10 300GB 16MB Cache - RAID 10 - Storage & Backup
Sound Blaster Audigy2
Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP TV Tuner/ Video Capture Card
Antec Full Tower Case w/lots of fans

[DanishDevil]

You could have just gotten a bad core. Give me some info on your previous gfx card and what kinds of scores it received. Is it possible to grab another card and do some benchmarking?

[blsnelling]

I just reinstalled my 6600GT. 3DMark05 score was 3665. I bought the X800GTO2 from AllStar. I've submitted an online RMA and am awaiting approval.

[anomen]

Originally Posted by VTwedge

yeap flashed the powercolor x800xt bios, been running my own bios now with 16 pipes at 520/520 after i flashed it again over the powercolor x800xt bios and been benchmarking and playing nfsmw for 3 hours and its rock stable, when i had the x800xt bios at 500/500 it was unstable...weird huh?

how'd you make your own BIOS? any links to instructions/software? thanks.

Originally Posted by blsnelling

I just reinstalled my 6600GT. 3DMark05 score was 3665. I bought the X800GTO2 from AllStar. I've submitted an online RMA and am awaiting approval.

you are going to RMA a video card for not overclocking well (above 5%)? interesting...

[omega_prime]

Originally Posted by sew333

Where do you have this artifacts? In atitool or 3dmarks??

with atitool.
the test was with the zalman at 5V ... at the moment it is running on 7V cause the fan has also to cool my NB47J chipset cooler ( i have a asus a8n-e motherboard. i had to bend 4 of the vf700 fins to fit them together. the NB is quite near the PEG slot on the a8n-e).
a fan control would be an option ... i will think about it !
also i have to test wether the 7v improve the clock speed i can use ...

my primary goal is a quiet computer. i just made some major changes to my setup to archive this. i now use a chieftec mesh big tower with 2 yate loon 12 cm fans (on 5v) in the back, a sonic tower cpu cooler with another yate loon at 5v and a papst 92mm (on 5v) fan for cooling my 2 harddiscs. this setup is noticable less noisy than my old one (and my old one was with noise insulation) and at the same time noticeable faster. (old cpu: atlon xp 2500+@3200+ new cpu: athlon64 3200+ (sucessfully run at 3800+ without increasing the voltage) but at the moment the cpu runs only at 3200+ untik i have time for serious testing of stability ...)

only problems so far:
- some wired problems with my sata harddiscs when running linux ... but maybe it was the sata cable ... (changed it and it didn't happen again since then)
- NB chipset cooler is getting to hotwith the passiv NB47J eben with the zalman vf700 realy near to it ... maybe it will work better when my additional papst fans arrive to blow some air in the case at the hight of the chipset and grafic card ...

[blsnelling]

You can edit your own BIOS with RaBiT Bios Editor v1.7.

[Soulsurfer]

Originally Posted by blsnelling

I just installed my Sapphire X800 GTO2. I started by running 3DMark05. Results were 4600. Not impressive considering the rest of my system. I then successfully flashed the bios and ATITool verified that all 16 pipes are open. I then began OCing it to see what it would do. Unfortunately, the max the core will do without artifacts is 420. The memory will do about 606. I have the fan running a 100% and temps are at about 58C under load so I don't think that's it. 3DMark05 results were only 5665. I used the bios file on the 1st page of this thread and atiflash. I also tried a Sapphire X850XT bios and modded it so that the default clock settings were 420 and 590. The results were no different. I used the PCI X connector from the power supply and also tried the adapter that came with the card with no difference. Is this the worst core to be seen or is something else going on?

System specs:
Asus A8N SLI Premium
Athlon64 X2 3800+ (260x10 @ 1.45V)
Thermalright XP-120 w/Sunon 120x38 on rheostat
2 X 1GB OCZ Dual Channel Platinum PC3200
Sapphire X800 GTO2
Eneremax NoiseTaker 470W "AX" v2.0
36GB WD Raptor - Boot Drive
4x MaxLine 10 300GB 16MB Cache - RAID 10 - Storage & Backup
Sound Blaster Audigy2
Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP TV Tuner/ Video Capture Card
Antec Full Tower Case w/lots of fans

Atitool was reporting artifacts on my C3D X800 GTO at core 440. However the card runs stable now at 540/580 in every game I play, I've had no problems or artifacts at all so far. Scored 6110 In 3Dmark05. I just need to get me a Zalman cooler now to reduce the temps which are hitting 70+ at times .

[blsnelling]

I forget what the setting was but it garbled the entire screen and locked up at something way less than 500 on the core. A stock score on 3DMark05 of 4600 on my system seems way less than par.

[DanishDevil]

It's not just your video card then. Your computer gets TERRIBLE scores. I got equivalent aquamark scores with my overclocked 128MB 6800 as I do with my stock X800GTO2. Are you sure your X2 OC is completely stable? I'd drop it down to stock, bench, and OC by 5MHz on the RAM and bench after every 5. The SECOND your score drops, you've gone too far.

Good luck with the RMA. Hope you get a better core!

[blsnelling]

How can that be? I'm running an X2 processor at 260x10 with 2GB of memory on one of the best gaming boards out.

[DanishDevil]

Like I asked, IS YOUR OC STABLE?

Also, with all those hard drives and your X2, you might need a mightier PSU.

JUST the items listed in your signature consume a MINIMUM of 365 Watts at peak utilization. I assume you have some CD Drives and such as well.

Let's say you have what's in your sig, a dvd drive, dvd burner, floppy drive, sound blaster card, a couple of USB devices, a fan controller, 2 120mm fans, 2 92mm fans, all leds, and 2 cold cathodes. That's EXACTLY 470 Watts right there. You're pushing it with your PSU. Your CPU consumes 137 Watts and your HDDs 65, and that X800GTO2 about 100.

I suggest the Enermax Liberty 620W PSU. I sleeved mine and should have some pics up soon. With all the stuff you're using there, you really need some juice for that system. I have a feeling that will help your scores, if not at least provide a failsafe to make sure you don't fry any of your components.

My system only uses about 361Watts at peak, but I still went for the 620W PSU. You know why? It's future proof, I can rest assured that it's rock solid, and I can have confidence that I won't be buying another PSU for a LONG time

Originally Posted by omega_prime

i now found the time for some o/c tests. the first artefacts apear at 570/ 560
so for now i wil use 550/540. it gives me around 6400 3dmark05.
i use a zalman heatsink on my c3d ...

Put your memory to 565, then test your core going up from 550. You might get lucky at 555 or 560. Your memory should be good at 565, let me know, good luck!

[sew333]

Hey
I have 570\1140 my C3D X800GTO

So can i overclock to 600? Or it is impossible?