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Can flashing hurt your x800pro?

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Jacobman

Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Location
redding, California
Can flashing harm your x800 pro? Like doing something wrong and then having issues. The x800pro should be enough to run any game at high settings right. So is doing all this soft modding to it actually improve gameplay that much. Or is it done for some numbers on a benching program? I mean is it a whole hecka lot better in actual gamplay? Or would the average user be cool with raising it a little in ati-tool.
 
If you can flash your pro to a xt-pe the answer is yes to all your questions it can hurt your card it does improve gameplay especially in doom3 and for the average user its enough to o/c in ati tool but the extra 4 pipes does make a diference even at stock pro speeds Nad doing anything to your card VOIDS the warranty.............
 
I mean it would be a total improvement from my 9600xt without oc'ing it. And im sure those guys who are doing all this are looking for perfection from there system, which we all are but shoot just having an x800 pro would own, ya know what i mean.
 
i definately like my x800 pro...even with a mere 12 pipelines...fast as fast can get and I did have mine long before any 680Gt's or X800 XT PE's came out. It was king of the hill for like 2 weeks. That's the computer world, I saw the X800 pro though in a local shop here in Minot ND and just couldn't resist. The 6800GT's are a very nice card though and I would be just as happy with it.
 
yes, I know a bunch of people who killed their x800pros after weeks or months of modding to x800xt. also bye bye warrenty.
 
if that xp3000 cpu is yours, dont bother overclocking, you wont gain anything with such a massive cpu bottleneck. I gained almost nothing overclocking till I went a64 and I didnt have half the card you did
 
I have own this card for at least a month, it is stable and fast...

I also flashed to enable the other 4 pipelines, and what I did was flash back to stock BIOS to regain the warranty...

now if i want to use it as an XT PE I can just overclock to that speed...

Tbird, how do you know the XP3000 is a bottleneck of the x800 pro cards...have you test it yourself?

Benchmark means nothing to me, but the real world game performance is what is important.


Computer Maniac :)
 
The reason the cpu would be the bottle neck is because it just doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to keep up with what the video card is pushing through, the A64 does a bit to alieviate this problem with its onboard memory controller.

(For the love of god correct me if I'm wrong)

-Goateh
:sn:
 
The reason people kill their x800 pro's by doing the mod is because they overclock the core way too high. The x800 pro is designed to run off a 475mhz core speed and a 450mhz memory speed. Opening the extra 4 pipelines, this does assume the card in quest can be opened, will not actually kill the card. The problem is people then use the default XT PE bios which sets the default speeds to 520 for the core and 560 for the memory. This is a +45/+110 mhz overclock. Many people do this FIRST without testing the full overclocking potential of the card by gradually stepping up the clock speed. MANY of the x800 pro's were MADE as x800 pro's simply because they could NOT reach the correct XT PE speeds. They ARE and were suppose to be XT PE's but because of some flaw or what not, never made it and got delegated to x800 pros. This is called speed binning and you should read up on it. Happens all the time.

So, as I said, opening the extra 4 pipelines on the card itself will NOT kill the card. It's trying to push the card too far that WILL kill the card. Just like any other video card out there. If you take the proper steps and proper precautions, your chances off killing the card drop to near zero.
 
Overclocker550 said:
yes, I know a bunch of people who killed their x800pros after weeks or months of modding to x800xt. also bye bye warrenty.
You've popped into every X800 discussion with this same quip, and every time someone had to follow you around to clean up the misinformation.

Flashing the bios doesn't destroy anything.
Overclocking significantly beyond the hardware's capabilities can kill things.
Overclocking without proper cooling can kill things.
Overclocking and overvolting can kill things regardless of cooling.
Flashing the bios can make certain overclocks unstable; you must retest your max clock after flashing.

I have an X800Pro Vivo for four months now; since day one it's been flashed to an XTPE and has yet to complain. It's played FarCry, Halo, UT2K3, Doom3, NFS:HP2, the original Unreal series, Q3, you name it. It's been powered on for 18+ hours at a time during the hardcore gaming sessions :)

Use some common sense and you'll be perfectly fine. Don't just assume it will work at XTPE speeds, even if it does, don't assume it will be cool enough there. Start with "stock" clock speeds, start with "stock" pipes, and at least in the beginning, start with "stock" cooling to get an idea of what the normal temperature should be.
 
Doc I opened the extra pipes on my x800pro and run it at stock pro speeds ..............it lasted 2 weeks........
 
Temps on the chip? Powersupply? Motherboard? What bios did you use to unlock? How did you manage clockspeed? What driver did you use, and was it trying to enable overdrive?
 
Goateh said:
The reason the cpu would be the bottle neck is because it just doesn't have enough memory bandwidth to keep up with what the video card is pushing through, the A64 does a bit to alieviate this problem with its onboard memory controller.

(For the love of god correct me if I'm wrong)

-Goateh
:sn:
I do plan to get an a64 3000-3400 sometime. But i wouldnt have the money to do that and the registered ram all at the same time. So i hear some newer 64's are coming out that you wont have to get regestered ram to run them, that will be when i get mine.
 
The CPU will certainly bottleneck the X800 if you're running 1024x768 without any AA or AF. But you can still drag an X800 card into the dirt by running 1600x1200 with full AA and AF depending on the game.

So "take advantage" of your CPU bottleneck and just run the resolution so high that it equals out ;)
 
Sorry to jump the subject here, but speaking of bottlenecks, that was one of my concerns. I have a P4 2.8C with a 9800pro and was looking at getting an x800, I just wondered if my computer would benefit at all from it, or would the CPU bottleneck as well?
 
bigswede2 said:
Doc I opened the extra pipes on my x800pro and run it at stock pro speeds ..............it lasted 2 weeks........


Then it was a DUD card and was going to die in 2 weeks in any case. That happens. According to ATI and NVIDIA and pretty much ANY techonology company, the first 30 days off the shelf has the HIGHEST failure rate for any technological product. After the first 30 days have been reached successfully, the chances of it dying drop to NIL for whatever the warranty period tends to be. Which for ATI cards is 3 years. So the likelyhood of it dying AFTER 30 days to 3 years, so long as it is running as specified, is not likely to occur.

Same thing with cars.. ever wonder why they offer stuff like 10 year drive train warranty or whatever? because the chances of the drive train screwing up after the first 30 days is almost zero chance.

Now, either A) you got a dud card and it was going to die in 30 days regardless of what you did or B) you screwed the pooch in some way that killed the card. The B part usually means, overclocking, improperly flahsing the bios, bad install like not correctly seating the card and causing a short, a molex connector short when connecting to the card, you bent a capacitor or something when installing, power surge... bleh the plethora of different ways to kill a video card is almost as great as the many ways you can die too.

Look, the likelyhood of card dying to a flash of the bios, as long as all proper directions were followed, is next to nothing. You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning.
 
Albuquerque said:
The CPU will certainly bottleneck the X800 if you're running 1024x768 without any AA or AF. But you can still drag an X800 card into the dirt by running 1600x1200 with full AA and AF depending on the game.

So "take advantage" of your CPU bottleneck and just run the resolution so high that it equals out ;)
I will still be able to run farcry and stuff 1280x1024 on high settings with aa and af on right? Thats all i want too know, because when i get my x800pro im sure not gonna run it with 1024x768 with know aa and af on.
 
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