Gutted...

[Splash]

...So I figured my X800 Pro VIVO was starting to show it's age and I might as well flash the BIOS to the XT PE version as detailed here - before doing this I removed the stock cooler and replaced it with a Zalman VF700 AlCu, then clocked the card to XTPE speeds using ATITool - ran it at that for 3 hours and all looked to be fine. I then made the boot disk with the XTPE BIOS and flashed as per instructions - this seemed to go through fine (though I flashed to FLASHROM.ROM rather than .BIN as that was the format it came in...)

To cut to the chase I now have a card that won't initialise - the fan is spinning up etc but my machine will not pass POST. And here's where you guys come in...

Is there ANY was you can think of that I can flash it back? Do people have any tips on the upgraded BIOS? Did I use the wrong BIOS? I can confirm that the card is a Sapphire X800 Pro VIVO with 1.6ns RAM. Any help that anyone could provide would be VERY appreciated, as there's no way I can afford another card for at least another 6 weeks, which will largely annoy the hell out of me as I've just put another 60 day game card on my WoW account.

Anyways, I'll stop rambling and see what you lot say

[Max Tractor]

You can flash back, with an old pci card, did you save the old bios?

[Splash]

Yep, just don't have a PCI card to do it with...

EDIT - thinking on I can take the card in to work and do it from there. Does anyone know of a good, reliable guide to flashing the BIOS to unlock the extra 4 pipes? My card should be pretty much guaranteed them according to a few sites out there.

[Dark Horse]

Best thing to do is buy a pci graphics card from ebay for ~£5 and flash it back using that.

[Max Tractor]

I only know how to do the pci method, it is pretty straight forward, boot with both cards, the pci should be first, if not go into bios and set it. The flash from the floppy or boot cd.

I have also read about flashing from windows, but have never done it

[Splash]

Cheers guys - I realised where I went wrong - I flashed with flashrom.rom and not the newbios.bin, like the retard that I am. I'm now headed into work to flash it properly on a machine with onboard VGA and an AGP slot...

Hooray for brain farts and badly written guides!



Edit - think I'm going to start saving for a decent (ish) card anyhoo - any recommendations (I'm still stuck with 32bit for another 6 months or so I reckon, so based on my motherboard it'd have to be AGP)?

[Naggallywoo]

Edit - think I'm going to start saving for a decent (ish) card anyhoo - any recommendations

Whats your budget?

[Splash]

heh - I'll prolly look to spend a couple of hundred quid within a couple of months, though to be honest I'll really be looking for the very best I can get bearing in mind I'm stuck with AGP

Anyhoo - now flashed to X800 XTPE, so I'm a happy bunny

[Max Tractor]

You have a limited choice of top end cards with agp, and they are more expensive than pci-e cards. There are rumours of some form of 7800 agp. The card you have is no slouch, I would keep it and wait for the full pci-e upgrade

[Splash]

Yeah - now thinking that's prolly the way forward. Think it's time to start saving for a serious new system and maybe blow 7-800 notes on it.

[GDVS]

Go for the PCI-E upgrade then join me on the (nVidia) Dark Side

[chrisj]

I agree, the current nVidia cards really do blow away ATI's offerings