X800 GTO² to X850 XT BIOS Mod

[Falco_Bird]

if i flashed it anyway would there be any performance gain? and also, just for clarification, if your card is lazer cut on the top of the core, you cant just bridge it with a pencil or something...right?

i'm going to replace the dumb stock tinfoil heatsink with my aerocool vm101 with a 80mm fan attached, and see if i cant get some higher overclocks on the card. 70c load is not acceptable IMO

 

[VTwedge]

sure there will be if its moddable. if its not u might end up screwing your card. mine was and my 3dmark score went from 4500 to 6160 after it was flashed to 16p and o/c to 520/520. with the arctic cooling silencer 5 rev2 im getting temps of 35 on the core and 40 for the chips when idle and around 54 on the core and 47-50 for the chips when running full loads. gl! and yeah if its cut u cant bridge it with a pencil

 

[Falco_Bird]

i took my card out to replace the cooler, and i noticed there is a tiny jumper switch on the back of the card with "ON KE" printed on it. the jumpers are labled 1 and 2 and they are both down...

my memory says:
samsung 452
k4j55323qf- gc20

i'm too lazy to tell what speed it is at but i can guess its 2.0ns

this thing has one of the worst designed stock coolers i have ever witnessed. damn whoever made it. probably the only reason it doesnt burst in flame is because of its only saving grace- the fact it is made of copper. it looks like a child sweatshop worker made this. it has a grand total of maybe 17 fins. wow. lame heatsink + thermal tape = lame

after taking off my heatsink, i can verify that my core is deffinitely laser cut. there is even a nice burn mark surrounding the cut :shadedshu
how many laser cuts do they do at the factory to disable it? if it is just that one cut on the top it should be relatively simple to bridge it again. but if there are multiple cuts then i can see where it would be perminant

 

[ShadowFlare]

For those of you who ordered a full retail X800 GTO2 from Newegg.com on December 8th or later, there is a $20 rebate for it here: http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/rebate/SH/SAPPHIRE13MIRsDec08Dec3105Jw92.pdf
It expires on the 31st. Too bad I didn't get mine later; I could have had a full $40 off. ($15 off, free shipping, $20 rebate)

Right now it's not really worth getting the OEM version from Newegg.com, since for $5-$10 more you can get the full retail version (depending on whether you opt for the free shipping or not). In addition to that, there is a $20 rebate which you can't get if you order the OEM version, so you could actually save $15 compared with the OEM version.

 

[ShinyG]

You what's good about this GTO: everyone stopped talking about that "best-buy" 6600 GT. The X800 GTO is definitely this winter's hit!

Some retailers from Romania found out that the Connect3D X800 GTO is modable and increased it's retail price with something like 20$. (I was lucky and got mine before that! )

 

[Falco_Bird]

what the
i just replaced the heatsink on my card, and i reboot into windows, start up ati tool as normal, and guess what? FULL ARTIFACTS!?!?
you can tell i was pretty upset, but i started up hl2 anyway.
i just got finished playing an entire chapter of water hazard, (with full fps mind you) and it was perfectly fine
but then i go back to artifact scan in ATI tool and i still get full artifacts
full artifacts for me means a completely yellow box with yellow lines strewn all accross it.

do you think it could be because i unpluged the fan from the card?

when i go to 3d view in ati-tool it works perfectly fine also.

and i'm not a idiot, so i am sure i didnt like, cut a trace or anything on the pcb by accadent...
i have no idea whats going on.

i will include pics

 

[Lux770]

X800GTO² to X850 successful but...

Hi,
I modded my X800GTO² into X850 and it works fine.
Next, I wanted to add a little performance so I replaced the stock cooler with an Arctic Cooling Silencer 5 rev. 2. Temps immediately dropped to 30°C and the silence was impressive.
I let Ati Tool detect max core and memory values with fan speed at 100% and they are 546 / 560, which I am quite happy with.
The problem is although Ati Tool does not detect any artefact, and despite temperatures staying below 50-55°C, in games and 3DMark05, I get blinking textures and strange polygons out of nowhere.
Even with slightly lower values (520/540), I get this problem. It does not seem to be temperature related, and I never performed an overclocking before, so would anyone be able to help me?
Thanks

 

[XeoNoX]

Falco Bird, i would tune down the core and mem a little if you are getting that, its not good for the card, you will eventaully end up damaging the card. I would lower the core and mem by 10 to be safe. That would equal to like a 5 fps loss on most new games, rather than a $200 video card loss.

 

[XeoNoX]

Lux770, the "strange polygons " you are getting are artifacts, it means somethings getting too hot for the video card to handle, or you overclocked too much, or you might have already damaged your card. If you set back to default core and mem speed and still get the "strange polygons" in defferent games using the offical ATI drivers then the chances are you already damaged your card. If that is the case try using a different video card and see if the same thing happens or not to make sure its your video card. (try using the latest offical ATI drivers 1st before u do anything (availaable from www.ati.com

 

[Lux770]

XeoNox, thanks.
I already have the lastest drivers and at default clock and memory speeds I don't get any artifacts (so that's what they look like!)
I don't understand however why I am getting these with very reasonable temperatures. Am I missing something?

 

[Falco_Bird]

Falco Bird, i would tune down the core and mem a little if you are getting that, its not good for the card, you will eventaully end up damaging the card. I would lower the core and mem by 10 to be safe. That would equal to like a 5 fps loss on most new games, rather than a $200 video card loss.

i already did that, in fact i UNDERclocked the card, and it was still happening. i underclocked it so far i was getting artifacts . but when i artifact scanned it around 300 core and 300 memory, it still went FULL artifacts.

the thing i dont understand is why it only gives massive artifacts when i am artifact scanning, but not when i am just in 3d view or in games?

 

[VTwedge]

cause games dont load the card as much as ati tool does...im playng call of duty 2 with full effects and AA at 1024X768 and im getting 45C while in atitool when artifact scanning im getting up to 54C

 

[Falco_Bird]

ok...but then how do you explain artifacting on the underclock?

 

[Falco_Bird]

ok that is deffinitely strange...

i rebooted with the old fan pluged in (because the heatsink i replaced it with is passive), and now it is working 100% fine lol
maybe the card was just angry i unpluged the fan, but regardless it is perfectly fine now... anyway thanks for the help

 

[VTwedge]

u replaced the fan with a heatsink with no active cooling??your gonna burn everything down!

 

[Falco_Bird]

u replaced the fan with a heatsink with no active cooling??your gonna burn everything down!

no no, it is a passive heatsink but i have attached a 80mm fan via string () to the heatsink part of it. what i meant was that the 80mm fan is not physicly pluged into the card, but rather is directly pluged into the power supply.
not only that, but i have another 80mm fan that is blowing on the opposite side of the card so i think i have things down in the cooling department

 

[XeoNoX]

remember you have to hit "set clock" on ati tools after u are done adjusting the mem and core because if you dont it will NOT apply the settings.

Are you hitting set clock after changing and "under clocking"?

You wouldnt by anychance be overclocking anything else in your computer, like the CPU or something else, would you?

 

[JimmyHa]

Two 80mm fans? That sounds like noisy overkill to me. I am using one super-quiet panaflo 80mm blowing over the stocker and no probs at 600/600.

 

[marceli7]

Hello!
First to say my Sapphire GTO2 maxed at XT PE clocks and don’t want to go any higher. Well no so sweet oc like some others but good enough for me.
Now... The memory timings THING!

So called "Enhanced X800GTO2 Memory Timings":
TRCDRD: 7
TRCDWR: 3
TRP: 5
TRAS: 13
TRRD: 4
TWR: 6
TR2W: CL+2
TW2R: 4
TR2R: USE TWR RULE
TR2R: 2
WR_LATENCY: 1.5
CAS_LATENCY: 7
CMD_LATENCY: 0
STR_LATENCY: WR LATENCY
REFRESH_RATE: 0x75
TRFC: 23
give me a sweet performance bump and do not punish my RAM clocks too much. Only small step down from 604 to 599. But... How to tell ATIToo to load my new mem settings every boot? Maybe I am missing something but using 0.25b9 I have to load manually from saved profile each system restart. They do not properly apply using "automagic"

Oh! BTW I found one really strange thing about ATITool and memory settings. It activates those memory settings (as a defaults) on my card:
TRCDRD: 7
TRCDWR: 4
TRP: 6
TRAS: 14
TRRD: 5
TWR: 7
TR2W: CL+3
TW2R: 3
TR2R: Use TWR Rule
TR2R: 2
WR_LATENCY: 1.5
CAS_LATENCY: 7
CMD_LATENCY: 0
STR_LATENCY: WR Latency
REFRESH_RATE: 0x3E
TRFC: 27

but reading those settings from my card bios (by Rabit) I see rather different values:
TRCDRD: 8
TRCDWR: 6
TRP: 8
TRAS: 14
TRRD: 6
TWR: 4
TR2W: CL+1clock
TW2R: 5
TR2R: USE TW2R RULE
TR2R: 3
What’s up doc? It looks obvious that ATITool knows more about my card then me but maybe someone could drop a line about it? I am sure that W1zzard could use his magic but I suppose he is too busy now working with new X1000 series.

BTW: ATITool + SysTool = DreamTools

 

[Sasqui]

Hi,
I modded my X800GTO² into X850 and it works fine.
Next, I wanted to add a little performance so I replaced the stock cooler with an Arctic Cooling Silencer 5 rev. 2. Temps immediately dropped to 30°C and the silence was impressive.
I let Ati Tool detect max core and memory values with fan speed at 100% and they are 546 / 560, which I am quite happy with.
The problem is although Ati Tool does not detect any artefact, and despite temperatures staying below 50-55°C, in games and 3DMark05, I get blinking textures and strange polygons out of nowhere.
Even with slightly lower values (520/540), I get this problem. It does not seem to be temperature related, and I never performed an overclocking before, so would anyone be able to help me?
Thanks

I've seen the same thing - most notibly, occasionally large quick light/dark triangles. ATI tool reports no artifacts, but I run 3Dmark05 and there they are (every once in a while). I drop the speed down and bingo they're gone. So, it has to do with clocks... and I assume it's in the core, not the memory as it seems to have something to do with processing errors, not neccessarely corrupt data from memory (I could be wrong about that...)

 

[Sasqui]

Straight from the Connect3D Main PAGE!!!

Surprising that Connect3D would quote this on the MAIN PAGE of their website! And, according to W1zzards stats, they're quite wrong about "100%".

http://www.connect3d.com/

"... X800 GTO review on www.sweclockers.com

“ If you modify the board, then it is a very good board. By modify the board you activate 4 more pixel pipelines. So far it seems like Connect3D X800GTO board is the only board out there were it is 100% possible. In case you don’t modify the board, then maybe you should consider the more expensive 6600GS instead. If you modify your board, then it is a bargain. “ [More] ..."

 

[Moruem]

I've received a connect3D x800gto from NCiX.com, it's core r423, but it's lasercut... And fusedata isn't all F's... Errr...
I'll write to connect3D RMA dept to see what's up, if I can RMA because it's not moddable, as stated in their "pub"..
Pretty disappointed here..

 

[VTwedge]

lol they wont rma it cause its not moddable man. they never said that it is 100% moddable in the first place ita a chance u take..i bought one of the first ones when they first came out unlocked to 16 and running 520/520 core can do 555 and mem 575 but im not stressing it guess ati decided to lasercut finally eh?

 

[Moruem]

Yeah I know, but they put it front page like a pubucity.. I take chances..
It isn't a great o/c neither.. around 555mhz on the ram, and got like 445mhz on the core..
Oh well...

Your's seems to clock like my ax800xt, before I voltmoded.. I hoped this one unlocked to compare with the agp one..
Now.. do I return it or I vmod it..

 

[Sasqui]

Horizontal "Tearing" - Connect3D GTO

OK is this off-topic? 16p 540/540 Connect3D GTO... stellar 3DMark05 scores (6400+) I get an annoying slight "tearing" effect in some 3D scenes, almost like the screen is broken into two or three horizontal sections and they are sometimes slightly out of sync during large scene motion. I saw this with my old Sapphire 9500np card.
Anyone experience this or know of anyway around it. I'm on Catalyst 5.11. Send me to another forum if I'm way off on a tangent! Cheers.