X850XT PE bios expectations

[intel igent]

sean478 -- reffering to post#20 how can you say theyre the same thing? theyre not. a x850xtpe will 99.9% of the time clock higher than a flashed x850xt or any xt for that matter (with stock cooling and voltage).

quaz -- i fully understand your curiosity and want to max out your hardware.

im not tryin to hate on anyone or diss anyone so pls dont interprett it as that. good luck to the both of you on youre endeavours and hit us up with some benchies when youre done.

 

[SPHERE]

sean478 -- reffering to post#20 how can you say theyre the same thing? theyre not. a x850xtpe will 99.9% of the time clock higher than a flashed x850xt or any xt for that matter (with stock cooling and voltage).

nope they wont ive seen xts out paceing xtpes and xtpes out paceing xts its just luck i havent even seen a average of better ocs on the xtpe they like fr instance i know a dude with a xtpe and he got it to 590 and another with a xt @ xtpe and he gets to 600

dont think they even make an effort to sort out the higher clocking cores for the pes

quaz -- i fully understand your curiosity and want to max out your hardware.

im not tryin to hate on anyone or diss anyone so pls dont interprett it as that. good luck to the both of you on youre endeavours and hit us up with some benchies when youre done.

hey dude sry about comin down on ya like that it wasnt called for and thx for the good wishes

 

[Quazi]

Just for some interesting information on the oc ability of flashed cards. This was back last fall, but I purchase a Sapphire X800Pro VIVO and flashed it to an XT PE. Then the curiosity bug bit me (as usual) and I purchased a retail BBA X800XT PE (and at those ridiculous prices too, geesh!). I had read so much hoopla about how the flashed XT PE's were never going to beat a retail XT PE. Something about lesser quality components or something. Well, I can tell you from experience, at least in this case, they were wrong. That flashed XT PE scored higher bench scores, not by much, but yes they were higher. Not only that, but it overclocked further than the retail XT PE. Call it luck, or whatever. But this did happen. Luckily, the retail XT PE was still in such high demand that I was able to sell it for what I had in it, lucky me. But this was truly interesting to me.

Now just becasue I had this experience doesn't imply all are like this. The best overclocking card I have ever had was a X800Pro non-VIVO. And overclocked with it's 12 pipes, it was beating stock XT PE's in bench scores. And I have had some that wouldn't oc for squat on the core, like this X850XT. Now, the memory on this card can run 616MHz with no artifacts. That is the max. So I run it at 610MHz in this modified bios. So far out of the many X800 series cards and this X850 series, it has the best memory clock I have ever had. It just seems the volt mod is to complicated on these X850's. I have made my mind up. As soon as I sell this 3500+, seeing as I purchased and installed an FX-53, I am going to send this puppy to ViperJohn. I can't get the bios to flash, so I am going to do this. I have been wanting him to mod a card for me for a couple years now. It just seems everytime I got around to having that much $$$ raised, something would die, break, or a family crisis would take it. Well, as soon as I get that PayPal receipt, I am not going to give nothing time to die or break. I am packing this puppy up and overnighting it to him. I hope isn't to busy when I do because that means I may get a turnaround in around 48 hours. I do have an X800XT I will use in its place. It is a Visiontek and has a lifetime warranty, or I would consider sending it instead of this X850XT.

All in all, I am not to disappointed that this Sapphire X850XT will not flash. And I am thinking that my friend is right. Sapphire may have installed some kind of a block to keep people like me from flashing it to the XT PE, I don't know. I do know that I am very knowledgeable on how to do it correctly. I really do not feel there is anything I am not doing. I tried flashrom. I tried atiflash. I belive he is right. It would be interesting to find another m8 with one of the newer retail Sapphire X850XT's and see if they could get it to flash. This would be some good information to share with the oc'ing, flashing, public to stay away from the Sapphire X850XT's, if, and only if, this was definately the case. There was a time not long ago that I would have really been pissed. HEHE But, all in all, I am running better than XT PE speeds, so what the hell, you know. I guess I took a chill pill and it is still working. Just can't remember when I did. HEHE

Great boards m8's! Great communications! Thanks so much!

 

[Quazi]

I just noticed something that may have been giving me the error. When I renamed the bios in order to shorten it up, I added .bin to the end of it. When I opened it up with the bios editor, I noticed the name was X850XTPE.bin.bin I am going to change it and give it another shot. Here's to hopin'

 

[SPHERE]

the bios editr saves it as a .rom by default (rabit)lets hope that does the tricK

 

[INSTG8R]

Crazy Quazi....lookin for 2-3 fps more in PF aren't ya LOL
Dont feel bad my X800XT wont do PE speeds (well it will as an XT but if I flash it to a PE no joy) I tried a bunch of different BIOS's (except for that ASUS one on that link but I dont touch ASUS as they done follow reference designs 95% on the time)

 

[Quazi]

Hey...Zup LT!! Not really looking for the extra fr's. Just trying to get all I can out of what I have. HEHE I have never been this close to 7000 point threshold in 3DMark05 and I want to "Giterdone" lol And this situation is really a bother because I have flashed many cards without issue, but this one is being stubborn. I am fixin' to give it another shot. I have been trying to flash it with the file name having .bin.bin. I have changed it. If it works, that'll be great. If not, I am going to volt mod it, just a little, hEHE.

As far as your XT not being able to do XTPE speeds, I had the same problem. I just modified the XTPE's bios that I was using to flash it with to XT speeds. Some say there isn't a reason to flash if you are going to reduce the clock speeds of an XTPE bios. But I disagree. The XTPE's bios reads those geometric shapes faster than the XT bioses. At least according to the ATI Product Comparison site it does. So even though my X800XT wouldn't do XTPE speeds, I still got that benefit from the flash. Something you may want to consider, eh?

BTW, allot of m8's like to use other nick names to register and post in other forums with. I don't because of situations like this. You and I have been participating in the Ubi forums under these names and I think it is cool that we can run into each other in other forums and recognize who each other are.

Now, I am going to give this flash one more shot before I hang it up. Good to have you onboard in this thread m8!

 

[INSTG8R]

the shapes are higher cuz the clocks are the BIOS are identical minus the clock timings(tear one apart with RaBit you'll see what I mean) I have LOL
MANY MANY of them I am jus limited somwhere in the RAM dept(cracks up over 530 or so) so I Usally just run it at 520/520 as for 7000 GL I was happy breaking 6k LOL

 

[Quazi]

Success! After renaming the bios file, the flash worked wonderfully. A big thanks Sean!! I learned allot this time around. The main thing I learned is that the bios files already have a default extension. After correcting that, and fixing another thing I totally screwed up, the flash went smoothly. I really started thinking that Sapphire fixed this card not to be able to flash. It's good to put that false information to rest. Thanks again m8! And I'll see ya on the boards INSTG8R. Oh, btw, a 6521 3DMark05 after the flash, all stock clocks. I might break 6900. But I doubt I'll see 7000. But it will be fun trying, eh?

 

[SPHERE]

hehe told ya u where doin something wrong lol well congrats on the flash dude see if u can confirm that shape performance dif if u get the chance

c ya round dude

 

[intel igent]

way to go quaz what are your system specs for you to reach that good mark in 3dmark05??

 

[Quazi]

way to go quaz what are your system specs for you to reach that good mark in 3dmark05??

I have been meaning to put these in my sig. I will get around to it some time. But here is what I built in March of this year:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
FX-53 AMD 64 939-pin cpu
2X512MB Matched Corsair XMS PC4400 DDR550
Audigy 2 Sound Card
Sapphire X850XT PE (Now, HEHE)
2 WD800JD 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drives in RAID 0 Array
OCZ 520watt Powerstream PSU
Windows XP Home

I scored the 6521 at stock speeds on the X850XT PE and the cpu. Here is a link to my score with the card overclocked to 549/611 I think: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1008804 I thought it would be a little higher. I am going to oc my cpu next time with the card at those clock speeds and see what it scores.