My X800Pro with the XT PE core?

[shoman24v]

Does my X800Pro have the XT PE core?

Let me know if im going crazy

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33790149

 

[papashex]

You may be in luck. My Pro (non vivo) GPU is marked thus:
(no laser cut)
Radeon X800
215RADCGA11F
GA8998.1
0427AA
taiwan

The clincher would be a "Rage Theatre" i.c. on the back side of the board. I lucked out. Somehow my ATI x800 Pro had all the right parts, a quick bios flash (thanks to all the folks here) and my card doubled in value (almost).

 

[pablofrogo]

Pros and XTs have the same core, just that the pro has 4 pipes disabled. Only the ViVo versions of the Pro can have their pipes unlocked by softmod, making them into XTs that run at Pro speeds.

 

[shoman24v]

But what would justify the card being classified as a PE? What kind of tests determin that its not capable of being an XT PE, I mean mine seems to be stable at 520/560 at the stock voltage of 1.395. Im really interested in knowing what makes the card exactly what it is. I mean, I have the Core, I have the ram.. I read that XT PEs core voltages are 1.38?? It over clocks the core to 590 before a error is found and the mem to 570

 

[blobster21]

None seems to find a reliable answer about those successfull/failed XT cores. Some X800Pro are capable of achieving great things (just like your card), while some others qualified X800XT offers mild clock performances (my card is one of those).

 

[shoman24v]

this is a very interesting topic as to what makes the cards actually what they are

 

[blobster21]

what makes the cards actually what they are

....most probably at the 3rd party manufacturer discretion (see also Gigabytes X800 line of products shipped with every 16 pipelines activated by default, and Sapphire opting for Hinyx 1.6ns tiny BGA memory modules for their own X800 series cards)

One thing is sure though : the cards are not handpicked to become either X800pro or X800XT

 

[ReconCX]

I noticed in the other forum u asked about failed pipeline, a while back, I posted this, the only way to know for sure of course, is to enable them =)

"I read somewhere out there on the internet (yea, that's real specific) that the GPU die requires a perfect wafer of silicon to make the perfect chip. Tens of these processors are thrown away to make a few working ones. That's one of the reasons why graphic cards are so expensive. Now manufacturers obviously have to think of a way to lower the cost. They can't be throwing away every single chips that may have even the slightest defects.

So, ATi (and probably NVidia as well) have created a design to maximize the amount of usable chips by constructing the architecture to where if there was a fault on the chip, it would be in the pipeline. This way, many more chips are saved and if there was a fault, 4 pipelines would simply be disabled to create the weaker version of whatever series card and if there wasn't, then all 8 would be enabled to make the "Pro" version. Hope this explains it."

 

[blobster21]

It's quoting time !

NRP (registered member of this board) formatted a very nice answer to the question "what make the cards actually what they are"

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=4294&postcount=62

Lazy ? there you go:

Originally Posted by NRP

All X800 series cards are based on the same R420 gpu, which is built with 16 pipes (four groups of four pipes). Sometimes some of these pipes are faulty due to the manufacturing process, but the rest of the chip is perfectly functional. If only one group of pipes is defective, the manufacturer simply disables the defective group of four pipes (leaving the gpu with 12 functional pipes) and sells it as an X800 Pro.

Sometimes, all 16 pipes are functional but either the gpu or the memory can't run at the X800 XT PE speeds (520 core/560 memory). In this case, the manufacturer simply disables one group of pipes in the card's Bios (again, leaving the gpu with 12 pipes) and sells the card as an X800 Pro VIVO (475 core/450 memory), or leaves all 16 pipes active and sells the card as an X800 XT (500 core/500 memory).