ATI made X800 Pro poor choice for flashing?

Yo guys,

In the near future, I'm making the jump to small form factor. I didn't see this coming, so I destroyed the original HSF to my 6800 GT when I installed the NV5 Silencer, so it won't fit in any of the models I'm interested in without modification (ugly modification at that). So, I decided to sell the card and pick up an X800 Pro VIVO instead.

I've heard that under normal operation, the stock HSF is much quieter than the one on the 6800 GT. Can anyone confirm this?

More importantly, the only Pro I can buy locally is a made by ATI X800 Pro. CompUSA and Best Buy's websites, as I'm sure you're aware, are abosofreakin void of technical details, but for the sake of confirming, these are non-VIVO cards, correct?

I sold my 6800 GT locally (hopefully), so I'd prefer to just run out and grab a card in town if I can, but if this thing has no chance of flashing up to XT without hard mods, forget that.

Thanks for the advice guys.

jbarket said:

Yo guys,

I've heard that under normal operation, the stock HSF is much quieter than the one on the 6800 GT. Can anyone confirm this?

More importantly, the only Pro I can buy locally is a made by ATI X800 Pro. CompUSA and Best Buy's websites, as I'm sure you're aware, are abosofreakin void of technical details, but for the sake of confirming, these are non-VIVO cards, correct?

I sold my 6800 GT locally (hopefully), so I'd prefer to just run out and grab a card in town if I can, but if this thing has no chance of flashing up to XT without hard mods, forget that.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Click to expand...

Its about the same level as noise as the 6800GT to be hoenst.

Some are non-vivo some are VIVO, I belvie there is a way to tell on the retail packaging. You are gonna have to ask around since I dont know what the string of code is. Most BBA cards are non-vivo

Most likely you wont find a card that softmods. In addiition there is a disturbing number of X800s that have been flashed and have subsequentially died from it.

Eeh, frightening I hold my breath like it's the end of the world every time I reflash my 6800, but it's never given me any real problems.

This is another n00b question, but being on the nVidia side of the tracks for a couple of generations has me clueless. Is there any downside to simply overclocking the Pro then? Does the XT/XT-PE have more pipes or anything like that which can't be opened without this flash?

Not really in the mood for a 400$+ paperweight, but don't really want to decrease my scores either.

jbarket said:

This is another n00b question, but being on the nVidia side of the tracks for a couple of generations has me clueless. Is there any downside to simply overclocking the Pro then? Does the XT/XT-PE have more pipes or anything like that which can't be opened without this flash?

Click to expand...

Yeah by flashing it up to xt, you gain 4 extra pipes bringing the total up to 16. I've also heard about quite a few failing but then there are also the large group that haven't failed so it's hard to say whether opening the pipes will have negative effects. Like, if I'm not wrong, ATI has stated that they understand that people are flashing their cards and basically say do it at your own risk.

Hmm...mostly you have to go for the VIVO cards to be sure of the flash working. Production has supposedly been cut for the vivo cards and now they are instead running them as XT's (basically X800XT-PE, with the lower clocks of 500/500).

Poor choice for title , stick with nvidia , yer not worthy.

Great reply. Thanks a lot. I'll work on my titles, and you can work on your English.

Oh, and for the sake of relevancy, I ended up ordering a Sapphire X800 Pro VIVO from newegg. I'd rather wait and have a good chance of success flashing than pick up a BBA card and guarantee myself failure.

Shoulda got this one http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0180939

Wow, that's an incredible price.