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Guide to Radeon X800/X850 bios modding

hey shadowflare,

i was wondering if you would tell me the hex editor that you were using to open up the bios in your bios editing tutorial because the one i have is really weird and confusing
 
lol, same here. I can't seem to find a good one.
 
hey i've opened up my bios in rabit and it says my device id is 4b4b and next to it says Radeon x800 series (R420/M18) but when I open up atitool it says chip type is R481

also when i open the bios in the hex editor it says 4/B.R481.AGP.DDR and for some reason rabit says something different

why do they say different?
 
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thats a pic of my unedited bios (AS SHOWN ABOVE) in the hex editor


thats a pic of my modded bios (AS SHOWN ABOVE) in the hex editor

tell me if I did this right or wrong??
 
infrared said:
Ah, it might actually work then.

The X800GTO comes with either R423 or R480 cores, but both use the same bios; and the X850XT uses the R480 on the PCIe cards. Therefore i see no reason why you would have a compatability problem.

What is the ram on the card? 1.6ns or 2.0ns? You can tell by looking at the last part of the serial number on the ram chips. You will see GC16 or GC20 at the end of the second line.

I'd say go for it and see what happens. If it doesn't work, you can always flash back the original bios.
Click to expand...

i got a 1.6
 
fuiop2000 said:
hey i've opened up my bios in rabit and it says my device id is 4b4b and next to it says Radeon x800 series (R420/M18) but when I open up atitool it says chip type is R481

also when i open the bios in the hex editor it says 4/B.R481.AGP.DDR and for some reason rabit says something different

why do they say different?
Click to expand...

can anyone answer this question?


thats a pic of my unedited bios (AS SHOWN ABOVE) in the hex editor


thats a pic of my modded bios (AS SHOWN ABOVE) in the hex editor

tell me if I did this right or wrong??
 
Last week (on 1-26-06) I ordered from Newegg a Sapphire card P/N 100130, this is the GTO2 non-VIVO (at the time like an idiot I didnt know what VIVO meant) OEM version of the card. I had been reading about how all the cards people were getting were coming with 16 pipelines unlocked and having them recognized by ATITool as R430, so I fully expected mine to come that way also. But it didnt. When I installed it ATITool detected it as a R480 Bus:1 Dev:0 with only 12 pipelines working. I think I must have gotten Newegg's last one because the next day I looked on their website and they had discontinued from their website that card, they still have other models, the retail versions and refurbished versions. So I downloaded the flashrom program and the 16P bios and flashed it and when windows restarted it recognized it as a X850 series Radeon :) So I proceed to overclock it, it easily went to 540/590 and runs around 65 degrees in games but if I leave that spinning cube on in ATITool it will get extremely hot, I stopped it when it reached 78 degrees, but it still had found NO artifacts at that temp. I did notice after flashing the chip and before overclocking it, it ran considerably hotter, 40 vs 55 degrees at idle. I guess I'll have to spring for a new cooler and some good thermal paste. But I'm happy, it ran far cry at the highest settings with no problem at all for hours and never went over 65degrees. I think with good cooling I could easily get a lot more speed from this card. I ran 3D mark 03 and benchmarked it before and after every step last night.

My computer is a Dell Dimension 4700 (so its obviously not overclocked) with a P4 520 (1MB L2 cache) 2.8 GHz with 800 MHz FSB, 1 GB DDR2 Ram in dual channel mode, and prior to getting this card all I had was the built in Intel GMA900. Here are my results in 3D Mark '03:

Intel GMA900: 1,318
GTO2 pre-flashing with 12P 400/490: 9,117
GTO2 post-flashing with 16P 400/490: 10,177
GTO2 16P 500/550: 11,574
GTO2 16P 540/590: 12,282

So as you can see going from the Intel video to even just the stock GTO2 was a major jump. My benchmarks are almost identical to what they got in the article, the comp they used was a P4 3.0 GHz with the 2MB L2 cache.
 
ok i was flashing the bios and i wrote in:

atiflash -p -0 newbios.bin

and i get this message:flash already programmed

i load up windows and i still have 12 pipelines

why is this?
 
fuiop2000 said:
atiflash -p -0 newbios.bin
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you need the -newbios flag as well
i.e.
atiflash -p -0 -newbios newbios.bin

See post #28 in this thread
 
ok i flashed with that method and i get a message saying:

ATIFLASH -p (adapter num) (filename)

what does that mean?
 
fuiop2000 said:
ok i flashed with that method and i get a message saying:

ATIFLASH -p (adapter num) (filename)

what does that mean?
Click to expand...
Heh, remove the "-" before the "0" ;)
 
aight, i got the bios on my x800 card but some how i got got the x800 GT bios and the XT bios....anyone know how to compleletly erase all the bios at once so that i can just have to xt bios?
 
the flashing process completely erases the original bios first, before writing the new one, so just reflashing it with the one you wanted should work fine.
 
infrared said:
the flashing process completely erases the original bios first, before writing the new one, so just reflashing it with the one you wanted should work fine.
Click to expand...

tried it still shows up as 800gt and unknown device on X800GT
 
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hmm, that's odd. You're sure your flashing the right bios? It might be that the bios just isnt' suited to your card.

Also, when you flash, make sure you include the -newbios flag in the command line to completely overwrite the bios.

It might even be that the bios in out bios collection is the wrong one.

Good luck ;)
 
Here's the bios download page:

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

What core does your x800 have? And what memory?

The memory is the easy one, look on the ram chips, and at the end of the second line, you will see either GC16 or GC20. Finding the core can be trickier, ATITool usually shows the core the bios was designed for, not the true core. The only sure way to find out is the remove the cooler and look at the writing on the core, being careful to recycle as much thermal grease as possible.

What exactly is the card?

X800 xl, xt, gt, gto, pro?

What manufacturer?
 
infrared said:
Here's the bios download page:

http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/

What core does your x800 have? And what memory?

The memory is the easy one, look on the ram chips, and at the end of the second line, you will see either GC16 or GC20. Finding the core can be trickier, ATITool usually shows the core the bios was designed for, not the true core. The only sure way to find out is the remove the cooler and look at the writing on the core, being careful to recycle as much thermal grease as possible.

What exactly is the card?

X800 xl, xt, gt, gto, pro?

What manufacturer?
Click to expand...
already said all this, R423 core, samsung 1.6, ATI Radeon X800GT
 
What core is required for x800pro, with 1.6ns ram,to x800xt bios upgrade
 
what if on the sticker it says X800 Pro but in system devices it says X800GT?
 
it didnt work, messed up windows a bit but it still comes up as X800GT
 
That's very odd =/

I don't understand whats going wrong with your card. Did you get any error messages during the flashing process?

NoSvOrAx,

the R423 core or the R480 core would be required. But if you have the R480, your better off going for the x850xt bios.
 
infrared said:
That's very odd =/

I don't understand whats going wrong with your card. Did you get any error messages during the flashing process?

NoSvOrAx,

the R423 core or the R480 core would be required. But if you have the R480, your better off going for the x850xt bios.
Click to expand...

i dont get an error screen, it shows that my bios have changed but eveyrtime i keep checkin and it always tells me X800GT and im 100% sure its a r423 core 1.6 samsung
 
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