x850 and fx5200, what can i do to max them out?

[Thrall]

Hey guys, i just got my ATI x850Pro and I'm already drooling over what it can OC to and if i can unlock any more pipelines or shaders . I also have an older Nvidia fx5200 (both of my cards are agp) and want to get every last, reliable, drop out of it. I really don't want to buy an upgrade heatsink or do any hardmodding (but i'd love to hear what you can do with those), but im up to overclocking or flashing bios as long as there isn't a good chance of ruining the card. I know my both can be OC'ed and that the x850 can somehow be unlocked but i was just curious on what else i can do with 'em. Btw, the fx5200 dosen't have a fan so i can't adjust the temp without sticking another fan in the case. Thanks for any answers in advance!

 

[W2hCYK]

the x850 just needs a bios flash if it has an R480 core. Make sure it can run 540/590MHz first, then flash with the appropriate BIOS from our BIOS database.

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

You can also flash your FX 5200 to an FX 5500.

 

[dolf]

With the FX5200 you can do almost nothing. Just overclock it to the stable maximum. With the X850 there is more which can be done. If your card is AGP then probably it can be unlocked to 16 pipes and flashed to X850XT or XT PE . If it is PCI-E then probably can't be unlocked but could be greatly overclocked. I will recommend you to visit that thread: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=5367 and to post here your fuse values (only for the X850). Also tell us what cooler your card has (single or dual slot) if it is AGP.

 

[Thrall]

Yes my x850 is an agp card which takes up about one slot (a little over maybe). I was personally thinking of having atitool profiles for the card, normal desktop profile (quitest lowest power setting, possiblily underclocking for quiet), regular gaming (BF1942, not to much new stuff) with the card overclocked some, then max gaming (FEAR, HL2, etc.) with the fan at max an oc'ing to a good amount. Im still a little nervous about flashing the card though. Could it destroy it or would i just have to have a spare x850 bios if it went wrong? Would flashing the fx5200 bios to a fx5500 bios be the same as overclocking it? Would a new heatsink/fan for the x850 be worth the money for the possible additional overclocking? And btw what is the most effiecient/recommend temperature for a gpu? Thanks again for all your help guyz.

 

[dolf]

As I told you flashing of the FX5200 will bring you almost nothing. But eventual unlocking to 16 pipes on X850PRO which can result in 15-25% more performance including the higher speeds. If you want to understand whether it is worth to flash take and post here your fuse values. (How you can see above).

 

[Pinchy]

yea my X800 pro had a score of 1800 in 3dmark06

when i flashed it/unlocked pipes, it went up to 2400


with the fx5200, i used to have one ...it wasnt too bad, it played cs:source pretty well without overclocks ...yea but there isnt much point in flashing it to a 5500, cus the 5500 is exactly the same as a 5200 with higher clocks, so u may as well just OC it

 

[Demon_82]

The FX5200 to FX5500 gives you an automatically done overclock and the Intellisample 1.0 activated, wich is doubtfully useful. I myself did it in the past, and was more of a moral effect to see it with a higher name than other thing. Mine was able to go up from 250/400 to 325/454, independently of the BIOS used. You'll be better directing your efforts to the x850pro, it'll get a much higher performance gain.

 

[Pinchy]

i was gonna say, does Intellisample 1.0 do anything?

 

[Demon_82]

It was supposedly some kind of texture managing technology, wich could deliver better compression and/or enhaced filtering... personally I didn't see a big difference back in it's time when I enabled it.

 

[Pinchy]

lol, nvidia just stuffed up BIG time with its FX series

anyways, back to the question, yea dont worry about the 5200, focus on the x850

btw thanks for clearing that Intellisample 1.0 up

 

[Seany1212]

well you could buy a new card cooler as it should allow bigger overclocks without overheating but that depends on which stock one you have on now, and then theres water cooling which is very effective but it isnt any good if you dont want to spend to much money, thermaltake do a VGA only watercooling kit but dont know if its any good, for stock temperatures i would suppose around 50 degrees idle but temps vary on cards, my x1900 idles at about 50 degrees and hits about 85 under load.

 

[Pinchy]

my x800 idles at about 28*C, load is about 50 w/arrctic cooler @ 67%

then again, you do have a x1900, massive difference

 

[Thrall]

Wow, i was expecting over 50c as idle temp maybe 80c as full load. Then again when i had my x850 (fan failed, maybe to atitool?) the fan failed and it's temps got to 129c and crashed. Hopefully once ati sends a new or fixed card ill see it the temps change. Intellisample sounds interesting, maybe ill flash it to just check it out .

 

[zekrahminator]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but overclocking voids your warranty.

 

[Pinchy]

yeah but if the fan fails, thats an ati problem

 

[cdawall]

lol the fx series is so bad my ti4200 beats up to the 5700

 

[Pinchy]

my 5200 wasnt too bad for some reason....

...in this comp, it was crap. i couldnt even play counter strike source. in my other comp (which now has a 9800 pro), it played cs:s with some settings up to high and trilinear filtering, it actually played doom 3 and quake 4, and it could play warcraft 3 on max settings...mind you it was 64 bit

btw thats with no overclock

 

[Thrall]

Im still kinda curious if it actually knows if you oc'ed still. I mean you can set it back to the stock speed and try to oc it again and it comes up with the warning about your warentte again... Anyway, is there voltage mods you can also do to the x850? Is there any peformance boost from flashing from pro to xt pe other than the higher clock? I agree the fx 5200 isn't that bad of a card but i can't play any of the newest games (lags on lowest fear settings)but it does max settings of BF1942 (is one opengl and other directx, or is it eagames likes nvidia and ati is with the other one?).

 

[dolf]

Is there any peformance boost from flashing from pro to xt pe other than the higher clock?

Of coures that there is performance boost unlocking to 16 pipes (from 12 on the PRO). Namely the boost at the same clocks should be 15-20% plus the higher clocks (which can be acieved also with 12 pipes of course).

 

[Thrall]

Well i meant unlocking the 16 pipes on the pro level then comparing it to an xt pe. So if i flash to xt pe version it will automatically unlock thoose piplines? Is there any shaders than can be unlocked?

 

[Pinchy]

the shaders are equal on both the pro and xt pe.

as soon as you flash the pro into an xt pe, its like having an xt pe, no difference, everything is unlocked