Guide to Radeon X800/X850 bios modding

[eidairaman1]

I'm making a old rig (Athlon XP 3200+, DDR 333mhz 2x 512mb CL2, etc. etc. etc.) to load w/ games I grew up with, so my kids can play the way I did before I build them something modern.

I just obtained a X850 Pro that has the VIVO chip/connector next to 4 pin molex, and 16 branded memory chips. I also obtained a X700/X800 XT PE cooling assymbly.

I want to flash my X850 Pro to a X850 XT/XT PE....but none of the past links work. Can I just flash it using this rom file? https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/576/ati-x850xt-256-samsung16-050118 and the atiflash utility?

If not, does anyone still have the vBIOS file archived that could share?!

Thanks

Start with a gpu-z screenshot please

The Fastest AGP card was the HD3870 (never released), so it goes to the HD3850, HD4670, X1950 Pro 512.

 

[mechtech]

I'm making a old rig (Athlon XP 3200+, DDR 333mhz 2x 512mb CL2, etc. etc. etc.) to load w/ games I grew up with, so my kids can play the way I did before I build them something modern.

I just obtained a X850 Pro that has the VIVO chip/connector next to 4 pin molex, and 16 branded memory chips. I also obtained a X700/X800 XT PE cooling assymbly.

I want to flash my X850 Pro to a X850 XT/XT PE....but none of the past links work. Can I just flash it using this rom file? https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/576/ati-x850xt-256-samsung16-050118 and the atiflash utility?

If not, does anyone still have the vBIOS file archived that could share?!

Thanks

I had the same back in the day. And I was going to do the same, but it played all the games from back then great so I didn't bother.
this helped I think

 

[eidairaman1]

I had the same back in the day. And I was going to do the same, but it played all the games from back then great so I didn't bother.
this helped I think
View attachment 274496

For such a relic and the chance of a 850 being unlocked is under 50% I'd leave it alone and just buy a 3850

 

[Imperator]

For such a relic and the chance of a 850 being unlocked is under 50% I'd leave it alone and just buy a 3850

Like i did.
After i bought the HD3850, i hunted a good motherboard for it.
I decided to buy an Asrock 775i65G rev3.03.
This MB supports Core2Quad up to 6700 and the EE 6800.
After i bought it and assembled the rig, i decided the noise from videocard it too much so i bought the best cooler for that card : Raijintek Morpheus 8057.
Before that i had iddle temps like 40 and max temp 86.
After that i have 23-25 in iddle and....45 at max
Now i can say i made the perfect retro rig.

 

[eidairaman1]

Like i did.
After i bought the HD3850, i hunted a good motherboard for it.
I decided to buy an Asrock 775i65G rev3.03.
This MB supports Core2Quad up to 6700 and the EE 6800.
After i bought it and assembled the rig, i decided the noise from videocard it too much so i bought the best cooler for that card : Raijintek Morpheus 8057.
Before that i had iddle temps like 40 and max temp 86.
After that i have 23-25 in iddle and....45 at max
Now i can say i made the perfect retro rig.

If i could find a good GART for my skt 462 rig for 32bit win 7, I would test it with a 1950 pro then find a 3850 for testing lol

 

[Imperator]

If i could find a good GART for my skt 462 rig for 32bit win 7, I would test it with a 1950 pro then find a 3850 for testing lol

Mate, Core2Quad 6700, along with 2GB DDR1 and HD3850 is the best retro rig i managed to build.
Well, i will hunt an extreme Edition C2Q 6800, but not right now....slowly.
In rest trust me, it works flawless in Vista64 and 7 x64 Ultimate.

 

[HopnDude]

Start with a gpu-z screenshot please

The Fastest AGP card was the HD3870 (never released), so it goes to the HD3850, HD4670, X1950 Pro 512.

Having issues getting XP to install, waiting on my USB Flash Drive Floppy box deal. Issue getting SATA driver to recognize for XP x86 install on my particular motherboard.

Pretty sure it's a flashable version, has the 16 memory, media port and such. If what some say is true, probably won't see the full potential from this GPU w/ the Athlon XP 3200+ anyway. So not entirely sure it's warranted, but if it's unlockable, then why not?!

Also, what are these dip switches for?

 

[eidairaman1]

Having issues getting XP to install, waiting on my USB Flash Drive Floppy box deal. Issue getting SATA driver to recognize for XP x86 install on my particular motherboard.

Pretty sure it's a flashable version, has the 16 memory, media port and such. If what some say is true, probably won't see the full potential from this GPU w/ the Athlon XP 3200+ anyway. So not entirely sure it's warranted, but if it's unlockable, then why not?!

Also, what are these dip switches for?

I havent screwed with a x850 as I went from a 9700/9800Pro to a x1950 Pro (Yes the XP3200 did utilize that card properly (Played COD4 on it in 2007)

@Bones @Mr.Scott @W1zzard, any clue?

@Imperator

 

[Imperator]

Don't have a clue about those switches.
Regarding the XP, i never passed the part where the OS ask for F6.
I mean i didn't find any F6 drivers to work with my mainboards.
So i use all the times my original image of the working XP sp3 and i make a clone with Clonezilla and i use the system with that version of XP.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Also, what are these dip switches for?

i have a Sapphire HD3650 X800GT that had (yes had ... it got ripped off sadly ) a 2 DIP switch like that, it was for selecting NTSC/PAL on that card (for the S-Video out ) ... not sure about yours, but mine where clearly labeled.

 

[Bones]

I havent screwed with a x850 as I went from a 9700/9800Pro to a x1950 Pro (Yes the XP3200 did utilize that card properly (Played COD4 on it in 2007)

@Bones @Mr.Scott @W1zzard, any clue?

@Imperator

Nope - What I have does not have those switches on it.
For setting standard and performance modes of the card or for setting a high/low fanspeed profile?
Could be either TBH.

 

[GreiverBlade]

i re checked, actually my HD3650 has a jumper and the Sapphire i mention having DIP switche was a Sapphire X800GT
never attempted to mod my X800GT tho
the HD3650 and her jumpers


also PCIe


the X800GT and her errr... missing dip ...




for AGP i have a wide selection of retros ... from GF2 to 9700/9800 passing by some oddballs and my all time favorite a Xvi X1950GT Super

 

[pavle]

X850 XT PE

First - save the original BIOS. Use DOS version of ATIflash v. 3.79 or 3.09 on a USB bootable mem-key/flash drive with HP Format utility for drive key (SP27608.exe) and with win98 files for creating it as a bootable floppy of win98 without drivers.
Not sure if the flash will work, but you can always go to original BIOS afterwards.
Or, you can search for the fastest AGP graphics card which is Radeon HD 4650 because of its 32 TMU's and proper ROP anti-aliasing instead of shader shenanigans HD 2xxx and 3xxx did. Speaking of which - I have the Sapphire HD 2600 Pro AGP 512MB, so I know how it fares and it's not well with 4xAA 8xAF, even R9700PRO is faster sometimes...

P.S.: Or you can even search for a GeForce 6800 GT AGP or even a GF 7800 GS AGP, even faster.

 

[HopnDude]

Okay, so I've finally got it put together.

I tried hunting down some of the software tools....but many are no longer available.

Also, noticed my GPU isn't fused/laser cut as pointed out in another article.

Ran through some basic diagnostics and all looks good.

EDIT: used a HEX editor, and edited the 7x line from 61 to 60.

Now to figure out how to flash the vBIOS.

 

[HopnDude]

It worked, it worked! Benchmarking now.

Just need to do some VRM cooling, and a little customization to the aluminum metal backplate.

I'm nerding out a bit right now! Reminds me of my HD 6950 I flashed to a HD 6970.

 

[pavle]

Suh-weet!
Funny how GPU-Z draws up some characters after the BIOS version.
I have one of those HD 6950 (1GB) too with all 1536 shaders and 96 TMUs usable. It's a bit slow though; shader scheduling is not its strong suit.

You can easily check the fillrates with GL_EXT_REME and Fillrate_tester programs.

 

[HopnDude]

unny how GPU-Z draws up some characters after the BIOS version.
I have one of those HD 6950 (1GB) too with all 1536 shaders and 96 TMUs usable. It's a bit slow though; shader scheduling is not its strong suit.

Why does it show those characters?

Also, mine was a HIS IceQ 6950 w/ the blue shroud and single center fan. A 2GB model, was one of the only models up at MicroCenter near me when I went. Sold it for $100 when I upgraded to a R9 290X. Guy who bought it probably had no idea, but it ran well within temp!

 

[eidairaman1]

Why does it show those characters?

Also, mine was a HIS IceQ 6950 w/ the blue shroud and single center fan. A 2GB model, was one of the only models up at MicroCenter near me when I went. Sold it for $100 when I upgraded to a R9 290X. Guy who bought it probably had no idea, but it ran well within temp!

I Miss HIS Digital, Visiontek/OCPC...

 

[pavle]

Why does it show those characters?

Also, mine was a HIS IceQ 6950 w/ the blue shroud and single center fan. A 2GB model, was one of the only models up at MicroCenter near me when I went. Sold it for $100 when I upgraded to a R9 290X. Guy who bought it probably had no idea, but it ran well within temp!

I would guess because BIOS CRC/checksum isn't right. Try opening it with RaBiT (Radeon BIOS Tuner, found here) and save it, it should correct the checksum; RaBiT may complain about problems with its driver...
Interesting, I have the XFX version of the HD6970.

 

[lilkuz2005]

Hey guys, I tried to unlock the pipes on my radeon x850 pro years ago. I think it may have been around 2015, i cant really remember, i just remember reading a post that said if you have a x850 pro VIVO card with the yellow input by the purple molex connector then you could flash the vbios to a x850xt vbios and unlock the pipes, i tried flashing the x850xt/pe vbios but I'm still stuck with 12 pipes. Why did HopnDude need to hex edit that vbios? i think my card is laser cut, i took a pic of the chip a long time ago when i upgraded the cooler to one of those silencer coolers. Is it possible to unlock the pipes on this card?

 

[HopnDude]

Hey guys, I tried to unlock the pipes on my radeon x850 pro years ago. I think it may have been around 2015, i cant really remember, i just remember reading a post that said if you have a x850 pro VIVO card with the yellow input by the purple molex connector then you could flash the vbios to a x850xt vbios and unlock the pipes, i tried flashing the x850xt/pe vbios but I'm still stuck with 12 pipes. Why did HopnDude need to hex edit that vbios? i think my card is laser cut, i took a pic of the chip a long time ago when i upgraded the cooler to one of those silencer coolers. Is it possible to unlock the pipes on this card?

I used a vBIOS from GPU-Z site. Depending on the memory you have on your GPU (if the chips end with 16) then you can flash with X850 XT PE vBIOS, else just as a X850 XT (same pipes, less clock speed).

I had to make a bootable flash drive, I think using a USB A-drive, then booted from that, and flashed the file. I had to force it.

 

[lilkuz2005]

I used a vBIOS from GPU-Z site. Depending on the memory you have on your GPU (if the chips end with 16) then you can flash with X850 XT PE vBIOS, else just as a X850 XT (same pipes, less clock speed).

I had to make a bootable flash drive, I think using a USB A-drive, then booted from that, and flashed the file. I had to force it.

I'm able to flash the vbios but after reboot and loading up atitools it shows the x850 xt/pe clock speeds but 12 pipes