X800 GTO² to X850 XT BIOS Mod

[john57]

try turning on the verical sync just to see if that would improve on this. When you overclock your card your FPS may run higher than your refresh rate and may cause tearing in some images.

 

[shreaker]

Update on the new GTO2... as mentioned earlier, it's got dual-dvi and and VIVO, R480 core, 1.6ns GDDR3, and 16 pipelines out of the box! Will post a pic soon

 

[Tyte]

Hello. I recently bought the x800 GTO from Connect3d. I'm going to be blunt, I have no idea what to do to install the card properly. Do I have to uninstall the drivers? If I do will the card no longer be usable while it is in the tower? Also it saids I need a 6-pin power connector. I can't find a 6-pin on my power supply. The box comes with something that looks like 6-pin but it only has 2 cables coming out of it. I'm totally lost, someone help!

 

[Mr_Torch]

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

Turn off Alternate Pixel Center on the Catalyst Control Center, this is a known problem.

 

[Dav5049915]

I bought my connect3d x800gto from newegg for 149$ after rebate.

i (believe) i found this site that also had a link to another site that had the very nice guide to modding it to the x800xt.

the mod turned out successfull.

stock the card ran at about 4500 3dmark05
unlocked to 16pipes it runs 5000 3dmark05
and overclocked 530/550 is 6000 3dmark05

i've been reading through the posts around the 110-120 page mark in this thread.

all i have to say about the temp problems people are having is:

80c is waaayyyy too high of a temp to have on a video card. mine runs at 60c (full load with atitool) with stock cooling.

also, setting the fan to 100% all the time just seems dumb, unless you have like 5 other fans that run at 50dB.

I set the fan control in ATITOOL to vary its speed based on the cores temp.

my core idle is around 30c with the fan @ like 30% when i run the core under full load, it jump up temp real fast and the temperature levels out at around 60c with the fan running at about 80%

and during gaming (CS:S BF2 BF2S) the core never sees above 42c.

i MIGHT buy the aticooler thing, but then again, i like my fanspeed to spool down when its time to watch a dvd or browse the internet.

i've also not had the car problem or any problems at all with this awesome card.

(i upgraded from an AIW 9800 pro)

also, havne't seen if its been posted yet or not, but i read rumors that the newer GTOs are REALLY locked down now, and you can't unlock their pipes. is this true?


edit: and then i read the title of the thread : DOH! :

it should still all apply to the GTO2 as well i'd think. (at least the temp part)

 

[Mr_Torch]

Yes the Connect3D X800GTO My Fiance' just got from Newegg on December 1st is LOCKED.....we took a gamble, but it's a good card she is not disappointed.

 

[Sasqui]

all i have to say about the temp problems people are having is:

80c is waaayyyy too high of a temp to have on a video card. mine runs at 60c (full load with atitool) with stock cooling.

also, setting the fan to 100% all the time just seems dumb, unless you have like 5 other fans that run at 50dB.

I set the fan control in ATITOOL to vary its speed based on the cores temp.

I agree, 80c = too hot! Its interesting that ATITool defaults to 100% only when GPU is at 98c! I set mine as follows:

0c = 25%
45c = 50%
50c = 75%
60c = 100%

Not much noise diff between 75% and 100%, but my temps never get over 67c now, before they were up to 78c at core of 553.

 

[Dav5049915]

i started off with setting my fan for idle temps.

i turned the fan down to like 5-10% and the temps hovered around 35-40c

with the fan at 100% it idles at around 28, so i upped the speed so that its at like 20% for anything above 20c and 30% for anything above 30c. i have the rig in a cold basement, so it still idles around 29-31c

then i moved to the higher end (full load via ATITOOL) i have it set to like run anything over 50 runs it at 70% anything over 60c run at 80% and 70C is 90% and so on. works quite nicely

(i'll have to get the exact #s when i get home.

 

[Lux770]

I have an arctic cooler on my unlocker GTO² and it's very quiet.
However as I said, although my temperatures never go above 55°C, I get artefacts as soon as 520MHz memory (stock value is 490).
What happens? I thought the Samsung 1.6n was good for 600.

 

[XeoNoX]

JimmyHa, my 2 80mm coolermaster fans @ 2000 rpm do just fine for me, to my surprise it seems like they even make fans like that now, this company pretty much stole my IDEA!!! http://guru3d.com/article/cooling/300/
as you can see in the review though, it works good if you got a cheap case like me, if you have one of those epensive cases i guess it wont make much difference, i guess my case value just went from $30 to $40!! hehe,. its not that loud at all, my stock AMD athlon 64 fan makes more noise!

btw: i did something similar to the above link, and it lowered my connect3d gto card from 70c+ to about 60c at full load on ATI tool.

 

[Ombracol]

I have an arctic cooler on my unlocker GTO² and it's very quiet.
However as I said, although my temperatures never go above 55°C, I get artefacts as soon as 520MHz memory (stock value is 490).
What happens? I thought the Samsung 1.6n was good for 600.

Try flashing the x850 xtpe bios might get higher oc I did

 

[Sasqui]

I have an arctic cooler on my unlocker GTO² and it's very quiet.
However as I said, although my temperatures never go above 55°C, I get artefacts as soon as 520MHz memory (stock value is 490).
What happens? I thought the Samsung 1.6n was good for 600.

It's luck of the draw - I have 2.0ns memory on my Connect3D GTO X800, and I can get up to 546 before artifacts - seen some people posting 570+. Remeber too that overclocking the core can also affect memory addressing... i.e., if your core is overclocked, it may affect your memory speed limit.

 

[shreaker]

I have an arctic cooler on my unlocker GTO² and it's very quiet.
However as I said, although my temperatures never go above 55°C, I get artefacts as soon as 520MHz memory (stock value is 490).
What happens? I thought the Samsung 1.6n was good for 600.

You're right, it is rated at 600mhz. Have you tried putting arctic silver 5 and some ramsinks on? Could be your memory is not getting the cooling it needs... even with the stock "aluminium sheet" cooler on the back i got 590mhz mem with as5...

 

[Professa Oak]

I know my card is moddable and I'm pretty sure I'm making the bootable CD correctly. But I keep getting a flashrom error when I type in flashrom -s 0 gto12.bin
I used UltraISO to create the CD and put the modded GTO .bin on the CD, then unzipped the flashrom file and put the files from there on the CD (.exe .rom .chg). Burnt it and booted up off the CD. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Peter949]

GTO2 mod to xt pe

O.k. finally got around to modding my gto2 to xtpe running currently on 540/590. Temp hangs around 60s though. Think the temp is too high? Idle is 60 running ati 3dview its 68.

 

[Ombracol]

I know my card is moddable and I'm pretty sure I'm making the bootable CD correctly. But I keep getting a flashrom error when I type in flashrom -s 0 gto12.bin
I used UltraISO to create the CD and put the modded GTO .bin on the CD, then unzipped the flashrom file and put the files from there on the CD (.exe .rom .chg). Burnt it and booted up off the CD. What am I doing wrong?

You need to force flash put a -f infront of -s 0 gto12.bin

but when i flashed it it was -p not -s is it cause you are booting from cd-rom?

 

[Ombracol]

O.k. finally got around to modding my gto2 to xtpe running currently on 540/590. Temp hangs around 60s though. Think the temp is too high? Idle is 60 running ati 3dview its 68.

its a little high normaly under 60 is the best but these cards can withstand upto 90 but obviously the lower the better and more performance and life you will get out of your card i keep my pc in my farthest room of my aprtment that I close the door and run cables to my monitor cause I leave the window open and the room gets real cold my card idles at 15 and peaks at 45c and i can get it up to 567/624 on real cold nights my case temp idles at 5 to 10

Thats another thing your case needs to be cooler and it will help in performance so try to do something on keeping it cool and youll see better performance

 

[Professa Oak]

You need to force flash put a -f infront of -s 0 gto12.bin

but when i flashed it it was -p not -s is it cause you are booting from cd-rom?

The numbers stand for different actions you want to take. F causes a flash that is forced, p i believe performs a regular flash and s saves your current Video Bios. I just can't flashrom to work.

 

[ShadowFlare]

The numbers stand for different actions you want to take. F causes a flash that is forced, p i believe performs a regular flash and s saves your current Video Bios. I just can't flashrom to work.

Hmm, you are trying to save your existing bios, right? You can't do it from a bootable CD unless you have some kind of disk or hard drive to save it to. If you want to save your bios but don't have something to save it to that you can access in DOS, use ATITool to do it.

 

[enigmaxp]

For some odd reason, I wasn't able to unlock my pipes from 12 to 16 on my Sapphire GTO2 (version 100130SR) using the guide's bios. I was however able to get it to 16 using the 850xt and 850xtpe bioses. I'm happy at least it works.

I'm running it with Artic Cooling ATI Cooler 5rev2 but PE speeds seem to cause artifacts even at about 30 deg. Celcius. So for the time being I'll stick with the 850xt bios and overclock from there. Anyone with ideas? Maybe I should use artic silver instead of the thermal paste on the card?

 

[Silver-Arrow]

Anyone have trouble OCing their Sapphire X800 GTO2? I successfully unlocked the 4 extra pipelines but I can't OC the core pass 480Mhz. As soon as I set it pass 480Mhz, my PC will just freeze and ATI VPU recovery will kick in. This happens with stock GTO2 memory speed. I've tried ATITool and ATI Tray Tool to OC and both will do the same thing. I did use Driver Cleaner Pro before installing the new Cat 5.12 driver.

I did manage to OC to 480/590 and the temperature was hovering around 55C under full load and 33C during idle. No artifacts at all and I scored 6102 on 3DMark05. The memory is OCing nicely as expected. The core speed is nowhere near the speed everyone else is getting.

PC Specs:
Intel P4 3.4Ghz
Intel P915PGN motherboard
1GB of 533mhz DDR2 ram
550W Antec TruePower supply

Any ideas as to what's happening?

 

[Peter949]

OCED GTO2 to XT PE - Heat problem

Can I use something like artic silver 5 to keep temps down? and where would a apply it to?

 

[enigmaxp]

For the application of Artic Silver, I'm guessing clean up the thermal paste on the gpu and then apply it directly onto the gpu chip.

 

[Justin1983]

I have the Sapphire GTO2 and the store I bought it from had a link to the article here on modding the bios but I can't for the life of me get it to unlock the extra pipes. I used the unlocked BIOS from the article here but it says its the wrong one and if I force it nothing changes pipe wise. Any more clues or newer unlocked BIOS'es? Thanks.

 

[Justin1983]

Update, just tried the bootable ISO cd by Locutus and while I didn't have to force it, I couldn't unlock the extra pipelines either.