Possible Gotchas with Sapphire X800GTO2 Modding

[Deez]

Hey, I just wanted to throw this one out there to see if anyone else went through anything like this and also provide a potential warning to anyone who is modding up their Sapphire X800GTO2.

Please forgive me if someone's already been through this, I read as much as I could of the 150 pages of posts about the X800 to X850 XT mod (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles//overclocking/vidcard/127/1)

I purchased the Sapphire Card, installed the drivers which came with the card (version - I don't know, I can't figure out except the disc says Catalyst Driver Suite 5.8).

I check with AtiTool and it said I had 12 pipes unlocked, but all the Fuse locations were right, so I went ahead and flashed the bios.

I was surprised when I rebooted Windows and XP no longer knew what my graphics card was, especially when the guide said no driver update was necessary. I checked AtiTool and this time it said only EIGHT pipes were unlocked. So, I freaked out a bit and headed straight to ATI's website, hoping the latest drivers would fix it (v5.13 for XP). I installed, it picked up the card, rebooted and this time - 16 pipes in AtiTool.

BUT...

I began noticing I was having problems each time I tried to do anything using hardware acceleration. Each time I launched something using the acceleration, my computer would reboot.

So, I checked temperatures - 46 degrees on the GPU, lower on the CPU. Memory was 100% fine according to Memtest v3.2.

I restored the old bios, came back in and no reboot problems. Said what the hell and reflashed with the x850 bios and everything seems okay now.

I ran through all the Dxdiag DirectX tests, and I'm going to throw the card through some tests tomorrow (F.E.A.R, NFS MW...some other things), but I was wondering if anyone else had gone through any oddities like this and if it was in fact not having the latest drivers installed prior to flashing and if anyone else had suggestions for testing the stability of the GPU (or could it just have taken the flash wrong, even though it said it verified fine)?

Just wanted to throw this out there and sorry if it's beating a dead horse if it was already brought up.

Thanks!

 

[peta01]

These 8 pipes after flashing are OK. You have to reboot after drivers recognized a new type of card (nothing forces you to reboot, but you have to).
The unstability could have a lot of causes. Bad mem timing, drivers incompability, too high temps, ... Unlocking the 4 pipes brings you 25% more performance, but it also brings you almost the same temperature rising.
There is always big problem with temperatures, because everyone sais temp is OK, but it is not. You have to measure the temperature after atleast 10 minutes of VERY high load, but not after, but during the test (Run some temp monitoring in background and use Alt+Tab while in test). Another problem is that the temparature sensors are often inacurate.