Nigel.D

On overclockers .co .uk they are selling a ati radeon x800 gto2 this card is really a clocked radeon x850 which retails for £300.00 all you have to do is flash the bios and hey presto you have a x850 which is the toatal dogs danglies (the card has to be a sapphire brand) though their forum is full of posts about this deal

squiffythewombat

can i point out a few things here:

What your doing when flashing the bios is unlocking "pipelines". When the cards are made, they are made with all the pipelines ready for use, however because making this sort of chip is very hard, theres a high failure rate on the cards with pipes, so thus they disable some of them, making the card run slightly slower...hence you have the cheaper "cut down" version. For the GTO you can unlock an extra 4 pipes taking it from 12 to 16.

HOWEVER....this is not where it ends, a simple bios flash wil not produce you the same equivilent card as this does not take into consideration the GPU clock speed. The higher this is, the higher performance the given card has. Increasing this is known as "overclocking".This is done at your own risk, as it can make the card unstable and produces more heat. Heat=bad and will fry your card. You will NOT be able to get a refund on a card that has been overclocked or bios flashed (although they rarely check to be honest.)

To overclock this card, you will need a small program such as "ati tools" which will give you access to the sequences you need! A google search on the subject will provide better tutorials than i can write. Although if youve flashed the bios you should already have these tools installed.

The next thing to note is drivers, these are oftern overlooked. When overclocking a card, ESPEICALLY for games download the "modded" drivers such as the catalasyt drivers. These are modified to tweak those extra few FPS (frames per second) from your games.

So yes, this is a great card, and will some patience and a little bit of learning you can reap the benifits. But please dont be fooled into thinking, its just clicking a button to get the extra £150's of power, its not that easy, you have to work for your money!

Also, Nigel says its only the saphire branded version, this is not true, its also chipset depandant, asus, pnw and others will unlock fine. Ive yet to hear of an X800 thats not been o/c'ed aok and my friends have LOTS of these cards. a great buy and i highly reccomend it!

PS_ sorry for my crap dyslexic spelling!

Nigel.D

I am afraid your mistaken the r480 core chipset is only available on gto2 also they have the same samsung memory as the x850's Ati have confirmed that they have only supplied Sapphire with this particular board
see http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=17478555 though
for info squif is right though you have to use ati tools to up the core and mem speed mine is running (with additional cooling ) at 627 core and 633 mem which is faster than the x850xt itself and i have all 16 pipelines enabled !! this gives me a 3d mark 2005 score of 7045 which i consider to be a bit good lol all for £150. notes so before you do anything check out some sites that have tested this card ????

Bunkerbarge

Well guys I have to say you completely lost me. If I ever have a computer proplem Nigel or Squiffy you are the guys to ask.

I'll stick to my R/C Steam boat, it is a lot simpler!

squiffythewombat

Sorry nigel, i dont mean to be offensive but i know for a fact the connect 3d card X800 will do these mods as ive done them myself. The memory should be the same as most of these cards started life as the £300 super cards but didnt past the critical test to are reduced. Fast gpu and mem tweaking is essential.

What i ment with my post was that its not quite an "easy mod" for computer newbies to perform, although granted to those versed in pc useage its very simple!

Bunker dude, if you ever have a problem, feel free to PM me any time!

Nigel.D

Squif mate
I dont take offense at anything feel free to say what you think!! I like to think that this forum can generate a discussion and difference of opinion which is good for the world in general! Mind you i still think your wrong because only sapphire were supplied with the x850 boards (thats from ati itself) so yes you can overclock others they are not the proper r480 or the samsung memeory chips that are present in the gto2 if you can send me a pic of one il eat humble pie untill then nah nah nah lol
long may contraversial debate remain
nige

squiffythewombat

lol.....what youve just written is almost a carbon copy of the pm i just sent you, looool!

As far as im aware the GTO cards ive worked on are samsung mem based, will have to check. As for the core, im not sure off the top of my head which one it is but either way the clock speeds are much higher than the XT and higher versioned card (cant remmber its name right now...) I think we may be at cross purposes here tho anyway..... i wasnt doubting the overclockablitiy, i was saying that you can perform the same mods on other cards for near enough the same results?

can wait for the cpu overclock thread, lol