Performance boost for X800 GT cards with R480 GPU

[Jshrk]

Heya thanks for quick reply, just to clarify quickly cause i didnt make it clear; my PowerColor x800GT Evo is set at default clocks of 500/527 which as I believe are higher than the standard PowerColor x800GT at 475/490, I dont know if this means i also have a modified Bios on my card.

I can only seem to OC my card using ATITool to 540/570 before artifacts appear but this cant be due to temp can it? cause the cooling i have is good on and around the card. Was really hoping that by modifying my bios I could get better 3DMark05 Results / higher OC levels.

I have included my Bios below (i saved as *.rom then changed it to *.bin hopes all gd), thanks ShadowFlare if you could check this out for me would be great

 

[jeanmi1975]

Hi shadowflare,
I have a his x800gt with the iceq II/iturbo.
I am questions:
I can flasher with the mod bios my card?
Is necessary it to make the modif laser-cut or the bios reactive the pipes itself?
Dewil has you it made a success of the manipulation because I do not see any more a post
Thank you for the bios

here's my original bios

 

[ShadowFlare]

Heya thanks for quick reply, just to clarify quickly cause i didnt make it clear; my PowerColor x800GT Evo is set at default clocks of 500/527 which as I believe are higher than the standard PowerColor x800GT at 475/490, I dont know if this means i also have a modified Bios on my card.

I can only seem to OC my card using ATITool to 540/570 before artifacts appear but this cant be due to temp can it? cause the cooling i have is good on and around the card. Was really hoping that by modifying my bios I could get better 3DMark05 Results / higher OC levels.

I have included my Bios below (i saved as *.rom then changed it to *.bin hopes all gd), thanks ShadowFlare if you could check this out for me would be great

It seems to be mostly the same as the other Powercolor X800 GT bios, but it does have some differences. I've uploaded an R480 mod of it in the first post.

 

[lukow]

Can I unlock my Sapphire X800GT 256MB AGP card to 12 pipelines? Is it true, that Sapphire AGP version is hardware blocked permanently?

lukow

 

[VulkanBros]

"

 

[Jshrk]

Thanks alot ShadowFlare m8, I have been testing the new bios out you gave me for awhile now. It flashed good and now have it identified as PowerColor x800GTO. Spent awhile running some 3DMark05 tests but found i had to lower my previous OC 540/570 to 530/560 for it to run stable, which didnt look good for improvement over old bios ... until I ran 3DMark05 with the new drivers/settings and got a 400 point increase ! Tested this many times and wasnt a one off, also for PCMark05 i got a 100 point score increase, not as major but thats expected from PCMark05.

Not bothered, just curious though how comes you think i get a slightly lower overclock now? Oh and any point testing out the other bios' you got there on it, i.e. Saphire or the alternative PowerColor ones?

Anyways nice job you did there m8 thanks a heap

*To lukow - if you got the r480 core then u aint gonna get 12 pipes out of it, blocked permantly atm, tho if u got the r420 i believe there is a chance of unlocking them check http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=4971 , read through those posts.

 

[ShadowFlare]

#ShadowFlare : What about this - is there anything to do ??

DATA :
MSI RX800SE-TD256
BUS : AGP
GPU : X800se
MEM: 2.0 ns Samsung
SPEED:425/400 ( tested with ATItool - stable at 530/530 )

The card has NO lasercut

See attachment for my original BIOS

Thanx - Vulkan Bros

Have you looked at the gpu on your card? If it is not R481, then are you trying to unlock pipelines? If you are trying to unlock pipelines, post it elsewhere because I want to keep this thread on topic.

 

[ShadowFlare]

Thanks alot ShadowFlare m8, I have been testing the new bios out you gave me for awhile now. It flashed good and now have it identified as PowerColor x800GTO. Spent awhile running some 3DMark05 tests but found i had to lower my previous OC 540/570 to 530/560 for it to run stable, which didnt look good for improvement over old bios ... until I ran 3DMark05 with the new drivers/settings and got a 400 point increase ! Tested this many times and wasnt a one off, also for PCMark05 i got a 100 point score increase, not as major but thats expected from PCMark05.

Not bothered, just curious though how comes you think i get a slightly lower overclock now? Oh and any point testing out the other bios' you got there on it, i.e. Saphire or the alternative PowerColor ones?

Anyways nice job you did there m8 thanks a heap

Someone else did have that happen as well. I think having it properly identified as R480 makes it use the gpu to its full potential, so it stresses the gpu more, making it heat up a little more. However, so far the performance increase seems to always at least make up for the loss in overclocks.

If you want to test out the other bioses to see how they affect max overclocks, try the modded GTO2 bios and maybe the other Powercolor bios. If you try the X800 GT Evo bios, be aware that it does increase the default clock speeds to 500/527 or something like that. I'm also posting the earlier revision bios, but modded to R480, so you can try it out if you want.

 

[ShadowdogKGB]

Greetings. I bought a Powercolor X800GT back in Sept. I ran across the Tul bios over at Bjorn3d, tried it but was not able to get any overclock at all. Now I find this place and lo and behold it works very well. I flashed the bios with the Powercolor.X800GT_R480_16P.256.Samsung20_050715.zip using atiflash. It now shows up as a X800GTO with a 480 core.

My previous best I could do was around 4700 in 3D'05. I did 4992 last night with the new bios. I was also able to retain my previous overclock of 570/570. Temps were 32-33 idle, and I saw it go as high as 52 during 3D'05 but for the most part stayed in the upper 40's. I'm using a Zalman vga hsf w/ramsinks and a Zalman CPU hsf. All in all a very decent operation. I know everybody is looking for that magical unlock but it's becoming apparent to me that it's just not gonna be possible. I've looked at the posts on bridging the laser cuts and Vmods and such but I'm feeling a bit lazy and I really don't want to pull my card out at the moment but I probably will at some point.

I've got some OCZ Gold VX sticks coming today. Hopefully they'll get me over the 5000 mark on the benchmark. That's been my mission so far.

Thanks for all your head scratching and work on the bios!

DFI LP SLI-DR
Venice 3000 @2.5
1gb Generic memory
4 80gig Sata's in Raid 0
Seasonic S-12 600w
X800gt

 

[ShadowFlare]

Greetings. I bought a Powercolor X800GT back in Sept. I ran across the Tul bios over at Bjorn3d, tried it but was not able to get any overclock at all. Now I find this place and lo and behold it works very well. I flashed the bios with the Powercolor.X800GT_R480_16P.256.Samsung20_050715.zip using atiflash. It now shows up as a X800GTO with a 480 core.

My previous best I could do was around 4700 in 3D'05. I did 4992 last night with the new bios. I was also able to retain my previous overclock of 570/570. Temps were 32-33 idle, and I saw it go as high as 52 during 3D'05 but for the most part stayed in the upper 40's. I'm using a Zalman vga hsf w/ramsinks and a Zalman CPU hsf. All in all a very decent operation. I know everybody is looking for that magical unlock but it's becoming apparent to me that it's just not gonna be possible. I've looked at the posts on bridging the laser cuts and Vmods and such but I'm feeling a bit lazy and I really don't want to pull my card out at the moment but I probably will at some point.

I've got some OCZ Gold VX sticks coming today. Hopefully they'll get me over the 5000 mark on the benchmark. That's been my mission so far.

Thanks for all your head scratching and work on the bios!

DFI LP SLI-DR
Venice 3000 @2.5
1gb Generic memory
4 80gig Sata's in Raid 0
Seasonic S-12 600w
X800gt

I think that's the first case I've heard of someone trying it and it didn't negatively affect their max overclocks. Maybe the older bios is better to use?

BTW, I had already known from testing on my GTO2 that the performance difference changed with different numbers of pipelines, and I had guessed that the same happened with overclocking. You've shown that I was correct in saying that the performance boost for the modded bios is even greater when overclocking.

 

[ShadowdogKGB]

well i got them ocz sticks today. finally broke the 5k mark in 3d'5. here's a screenie:
http://www.knightsguildbattalion.com/kgb/datas/users/12-ocz vx 2.bmp

it may be time to start looking at some volt mods soon.

 

[jeanmi75]

hello,
I have flash my card with the bios his_mod.
My card is well now a his x800gto with R480 but I have always only 8 pipes !
thanks for your help

jeanmi

 

[Jshrk]

Well i tried out all those bios' there ShadowFlare but none seemed to OC as well as orginal bios, the Powercolor.X800GT_R480_16P.256.Samsung20_050715.zip i had to underclock instead of overclock lol. Saphire one seemed to give me almost the same results as the Evo version im running now but slightly less.

BTW i was searching google and saw a post where instead of using a GTO bios they were using a x850XT, curious if this would give me any different results / better due to the drivers of the x850xt probably being quicker, even though my pipes would still be 8 (also looks better as x850xt than x800gto ), what u reckon? anyways i dont like to link to another oc forum but heres the info i found http://www.overclock.net/ati/28036-how-mod-your-x850-x800.html?highlight=X800GT

It requires the r480 core and the 1.6ns mem which i have on my card. I dont understand what non vivo or altered mem timings is about. I didnt want to try this on my card without some kinda advise, and yours has been excellent so far ShadowFlare

@ShadowdogKGB / other - are there volt mods available for the x800gt r480? if there are can someone link me plse ty

 

[ShadowFlare]

Well i tried out all those bios' there ShadowFlare but none seemed to OC as well as orginal bios, the Powercolor.X800GT_R480_16P.256.Samsung20_050715.zip i had to underclock instead of overclock lol. Saphire one seemed to give me almost the same results as the Evo version im running now but slightly less.

BTW i was searching google and saw a post where instead of using a GTO bios they were using a x850XT, curious if this would give me any different results / better due to the drivers of the x850xt probably being quicker, even though my pipes would still be 8 (also looks better as x850xt than x800gto ), what u reckon? anyways i dont like to link to another oc forum but heres the info i found http://www.overclock.net/ati/28036-how-mod-your-x850-x800.html?highlight=X800GT

It requires the r480 core and the 1.6ns mem which i have on my card. I dont understand what non vivo or altered mem timings is about. I didnt want to try this on my card without some kinda advise, and yours has been excellent so far ShadowFlare

If you just want it to show as an X850 XT, I would recommend just modding your bios to the IDs of a X850 XT card by using RaBiT 1.7. Just download a X850 XT bios (maybe a Powercolor one?) and open both bioses in RaBiT, then copy the hardware ID, subsystem ID, and vendor ID to the ones in your existing bios and save it, then flash the modded bios.

Of course, it would probably be just fine to try an X850 XT bios to see if it would get better overclocks, as long as your card can handle the default clock speeds (520/540), especially since there wouldn't possibly be any fan issues on your card

Oh, by the way, if you are using the bios I labeled with Powercolor X800 GT Evo, then you are not using a GTO bios - just your own bios but modded to R480. If you haven't already, look at the explanation in the first post.

 

[Jshrk]

great stuff, thanks m8. I changed my bios to identify as x850xt however recieved same 3dmark scores with those drivers, however when i tried the x850xt bios the oc clocks stayed the same but gave me another 60 points increase which was great. I reckon i done enough testing on it now in bios modding, ty all your help ShadowFlare

Btw if anyone does know any volt mods or anything for the x800gt r480 core plse letme know .

 

[ShadowdogKGB]

I'm in the process of acquiring a multimeter. From what I can tell this X800GT pcb is similar to the X800/850. Another thing i've noticed is now my 3dmark results says i'm using non approved drivers. dunno.

 

[Patrol]

Hello,
I've got Powercolor x800gt (samsung 1.6ns)
i will try this bios:
Powercolor.X800GT_Evo_R480_16P.256.Samsung16_050726
will any other differences be seen except evo clocking and ID:R480 after flashing (maybe different fan speeds)?
btw. actually i can't control fan speed - LM63 temp chip detection: failed (0x0)

 

[erictan77]

shadowflare,
i have try upload bios the performance is good that before 3d bechmark 2005 get 4715 points. but i still can't get 16plines.
i already try saphire x800gto2 256 16p bios and also powercolor still can't get 16pineline.

i using amd939 3000, 512mb ddr400 kingston x2, 160gb sata wd, abit nforce4, saphire x800gto2 12pineline, icute 480watt psu.

 

[noneed4me2]

erictan77 here try this http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17481933, there are some newer GTO2s coming out, i don't know when you bought yours, but i haven't seen anyone post if they can mod or not. Regardless it for sure has to be a GTO2 and even then its still not 100% but goodluck.

 

[1Strive]

Overclocking X800GTO by 37.5% with stock fan/heat sink

I am getting great preformance out of my Sapphire X800GTO (AGP version) by simply overclocking the hell out of it.

However I will try to unlock the extra pipes through a BIOS flash, Modified Driver, or editing of the RAM fuse data. I will keep ya'll posted.

 

[pax13]

Hey! I just burned my card!!! not sure why

I bough This
http://www.powercolor.com/global/main_product_detail.asp?id=79
Powercolor

Altough the cooler is similar to the 16pipe version!

The Chip was a 430 one & samsung 20ns with stock 400/350 speeds
I flashed with the powercolor X800GT R480 16 samsung20
& after rebooting ihad severe corruption & was unable to boot!

well had got to test it for a day & a half
hopefully in 3 or 4 days i'll have a new one! but unless i understand what happened i won't be tryibg it again!
I was reading a review after this hapenned on the powercolor X800GTO with 16 pipes.
http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=3046&s=3
& this card also has a 430 core!

Could it have been the core or the higher speeds of the bios that nuked my card? or just incopability generally???

 

[ShadowFlare]

Hey! I just burned my card!!! not sure why

I bough This
http://www.powercolor.com/global/main_product_detail.asp?id=79
Powercolor

Altough the cooler is similar to the 16pipe version!

The Chip was a 430 one & samsung 20ns with stock 400/350 speeds
I flashed with the powercolor X800GT R480 16 samsung20
& after rebooting ihad severe corruption & was unable to boot!

well had got to test it for a day & a half
hopefully in 3 or 4 days i'll have a new one! but unless i understand what happened i won't be tryibg it again!
I was reading a review after this hapenned on the powercolor X800GTO with 16 pipes.
http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=3046&s=3
& this card also has a 430 core!

Could it have been the core or the higher speeds of the bios that nuked my card? or just incopability generally???

??? So your card is an X800 GTO, not GT? Only their X800 GT is guaranteed to have an R480 chip (Powercolor said they would only use R480 on that card). I haven't heard of a similar statement for the Powercolor X800 GTO.

Anyway, with a X800 GTO the chip is what it says it is. If the computer says it is R430, it is R430. If it says R423, it is R423. If it is R480, it will say R480. Any of those are allowed for the hardware ID on the GTO cards, so it will not ever be misrepresented, unlike the GT.

R430 chips usually can't reach the 472 MHz clock speed needed for a GT (usually not even close), so besides identifying the chip as the wrong type, the bios you flashed on your card is overclocking the GPU to a speed beyond what is generally even possible with that chip.

There are instructions somewhere about how to recover from a bad flash, but I'm not sure where. You can either search for it, or post a new topic asking about how to do it.


BTW, just to let you know, this topic is ONLY for X800 GT cards. More specifically, all the ones from Powercolor and certain ones from HIS and GECUBE.

 

[jeanmi75]

hello,
no solution for my his x800gt ?

thanks

 

[bourne]

Hello there Shadow, this is interesting, I have the PowerColor X800GT 256MB 256Bit with ATI tool stating i have the R423 Core, but very likely i have the 480 core so as soon as I get my Zalman VF700-CU and replace the stock cooling I will definately try ur modded BIOS for Powercolor.

With the current BIOS i get these max settings: Max Core 590 and Max Mem 614. So when I flash my card with ur modded BIOS i will let u know of any difference. As for Benchmarking, I doubt i'm gonna be doing that, but maybe I will who knows. Anyways Great Post, with a lot of Information! Good job.

 

[Silver-Arrow]

Hey Shadow,

I have the Sapphire X800 GTO2 VIVO version. ATITool detects it as an R430 core but I can overclock this card to X850XT PE speeds (540/590). A lot of people say the VIVO version of the GTO2 does in fact have an R480 but is using a different bios. Will I get any performance benefits if I flash it with an R480 bios? Which bios can I use to do this?