X800 pro to XT / 6800 GT to Ultra

Status
Not open for further replies.

Apokalipse

Golden Master
Messages
14,559
Location
Melbourne, Australia
so you want a high-end card, but can only afford the lower-end version?
fair enough, you see the 6800 Ultra's for over $1000 (Aussie dollars) when the GT's are about half that, or the X800 XT's for $900 when the Pro's are $600
although what a lot of people don't realise is that the only difference is not the card's chipset, but it's BIOS.
you can actually update your slightly lower end video card's BIOS into the higher end version, so you can have that XT or Ultra without paying for the difference

http://www.madshrimps.be/gotofaqlink.php?linkid=2606
 
Um, there is a lot more that goes into it than just flashing the BIOS. You can seriously mess up your card. I flashed the bios on my 9800pro succesfully to a XT. Regarding X800s, you can flash the bios to an XT-bios IF you have one of the older x800's that are VIVO. I believe ATI caught on and and it is 50-50 with the newer VIVO X800 Pros. In general, it is not as succesful of a mod if done on a bb-ATI X800 Pro, as sometimes the x800 Pros are not capable of unlocking those extra 4 pipes due to one or more of those extra pipes being damaged during manufacturing. I have not gathered the courage to try flashing the bios on my vid card yet. Also, the bb-ATI X800 pro also needs a hard mod, not just flashing the bios. You have to use a conductive pen (or pencil) to bridge the two thingamabobs on the card so that you can unlock the extra four pipes. I have a link somewhere that goes into great detail about the soft and hard mods on the X800's. I have no clue about Nvidia cards though.
Flashing a 9800 pro is cake though, you can just flash the bios as long as it has the r360 core. The only way to determine if its an R360 core is to pull off the fan/hs and see it with your own eyes. There is no program that can tell you for sure if its a r360 core as opposed to an r350. ATITool showed my core as a r350 but low and behold I checked the chip and it was a 360.
 
well the eVGA 6800GT I believe can simply be OC'd up to 6800Ultra speeds. Don't think it needs a BIOS flash except to maybe display the card as 6800Ultra
 
the 6800 GT's already have the extra 4 pipelines, so appart from the clock speeds increasing, a softmod would only make a difference to the card being recognised as an Ultra instead of a GT
although the vanilla 6800 has 4 less pipelines
 
It's not as simple as that, though it sometimes can be. You've got to know exactly what you have and want to flash to prior to it, or it could all end in disaster. Similar chipsets can generally flash to others to some degree, but they won't have the architecture to support it in a lot of cases.
 
How do I tell if my X800 Pro is VIVO? I would LOVE to be able to safely unlock those extra pipes. I think that would end my Doom 3 lag problem.
 
but will it work chris, i dont no thats for u to find out , anyway i was thinkin of getting a 6600 GT there very cheap and are will play most games out, very well (but u would have to low the resolution a bit)
 
well i have oc'd it to ultra and i think it would be awesome to save a couple hundred dollars for it to recognize as an ultra. that would be sweet cause i could change my sig to lol.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom