Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro overclocking

[ytrebil]

Hi guys,

I've had my setup a little while now (back end of last year), but thought I may as well take advantage of overclocking. I have some tidy IDE cables and cable ties in doors I was going to tidy up my PC insides with to aid airflow. Currently using a Lian Li case (PC60) which I've had for a while but love it! I've removed the front 2 fan filter bit (to me it just hindered airflow) and aaaages ago I put 2 side fans in to draw air away from the CPU.

Last year when looking at overclocking my x800, I read that you could only seriously overclock it if you had the VIVO, to unlock the 4 extra pipelines that the XT uses. Is this still the case? Is there anyway of unlocking the 4 pipelines on the regular pro? If this is not possible, what is the best way to o/clock this card and what are 'safe' limits? Any answers much appreciated.

Also, wanting to overclock my processor. It's an AMD 3000+ venice. The main reason I bought it was because apparently it has very good overclocking capabilities. I've got a big fat heatsink on it anyway.

I'll be on MSN later and would be interested to talk to someone who can help me overclock my PC. Don't want huuuge gains but thought well if the power is there, I may aswell make full use of it.

Thanks very much.

[NightshadowUK]

What's your full system spec please?

Me thinks you won't be able to flash your X800 to unlock pipelines but there's nothing to stop you using ATiTool to raise the Core and Memory speeds a bit, just make sure you run the Artifact scanner for at least 15 minutes to ensure stability.

[ytrebil]

Thanks Nightshadow.

MSI K8N Neo Platinum mobo
AMD Venice 3000+
1gig RAM (sorry don't know the spec of it off top of my head!)
Sapphire X800 Pro (pretty sure it's the X800 not the X850)

I'll have to boot up CPUz later on tonight and give you more detailed info. Not messed about with PC for a while and I'm so forgetful!

Will also let you know what heatsink is on my CPU, but I used AS3.

Do you have MSN and are you on it in the evenings?

Like I say, I don't want huge gains, just a bit more power. I did overclock a while back but was messing around with settings and got a bit worried. The MSI mobo came with some overclocking utilities and I started adjusting voltage settings. I quickly reverted back thinking it wasn't a good idea.

So this time I wanna attack it with knowing where the boundaries lie!

[schmunk]

Last year when looking at overclocking my x800, I read that you could only seriously overclock it if you had the VIVO, to unlock the 4 extra pipelines that the XT uses. Is this still the case? Is there anyway of unlocking the 4 pipelines on the regular pro? If this is not possible, what is the best way to o/clock this card and what are 'safe' limits? Any answers much appreciated.

This is correct, only the VIVO versions, with the Rage Theater (I think) chip can be unlocked to 16 pipes. However, you should still be able to get a decent overclock from your Pro.

For your reference, I am running an x800 Pro VIVO at 16 pipes bios unlocked, which will overclock from 475/450 to roughly 550/520, although I tend to just use 500/500 as it's easy to remember the numbers...

[ytrebil]

Damn, was hoping by now someone had developed a BIOS update for the GPU on a Pro that would be able to unlock the pipes. Is it physically impossible to or is it just not having the software to do it?

[schmunk]

I think it's physically impossible, i.e. they're different boards. *





* This may be entirely incorrect

[ytrebil]

lol, was told that all of them use the same GPU's, maybe ur right, maybe its just the board that is different. Maybe I could use some cellotape and stick some cigarette foil across to bridge the tracks.