What do you think of the X800GTO?

[anzak]

256mb Sapphire X800GTO - $175
12 pipelines - 400/980

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814102601

I've read 4 reviews of these cards (GTOs) and all of them have hit 520mhz+ core. At that speed it even outpaces a 6800GT in Far Cry and Half Life 2.

Here is a Hexus review http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1621&page=1

The only thing that bothers me is the lack of SM3.0. I really wanted to get a 7800GT, but since my mobo crapped out on me I'm forced to get a cheaper card. The 6800 is an option, but it cost $20 more and performs a lot worse in the games I'm playing right now (DoD:Source). I dunno if its a worthy trade off for SM3.0.

I don't have any interest in Quake 4 so OpenGL performance shouldn't be an issue.

Right now the X1600 doesn't look like its worth waiting for and there is no word of a new midrange product from nVidia.

[Lfctony]

I like the GTO2 offered by Sapphire better, modder's dream. :) More expensive though but guaranteed modding isn't cheap. ;)

[anzak]

I like the GTO2 offered by Sapphire better, modder's dream. :) More expensive though but guaranteed modding isn't cheap. ;)

Yeah, its like $300 at newegg though. At that price I can get a true X800XT over overclock it or even better a 6800GT.

[Lfctony]

I didn't know it was that expensive in the US. In the UK it goes like this:

X800GTO £135
X800GTO2 £158
X800XL £188
X850XT £205

So it's a better deal for UK buyers. Sorry about that. :(

[msxyz]

This card won't be lasting for long. They've been made to clear the inventories stocks of R420,480 chip.

If you're looking for a fast card (in AGP, too) and you don't mind the absence of PS 3.0, it's a real deal.

[anzak]

So it's a better deal for UK buyers. Sorry about that. :(

No problem. Yeah, it was $199 for about 2 days at newegg and then they quickly knocked it up to $299 once they discovered it could be unlocked.

[slick]

Damn... I KNEW I should have gotten that GTO2...

At any rate, the X800GTO's are defiantely the best bang for the buck right now. Lack of SM3.0 wouldn't bother me much on $175 card that has 256mb of GDDR3 at 256 bit.

[anzak]

I just ordered it along with a new DFI mobo. For $175 it seems like the best bang for the buck option. There are very few games that take advantage of SM3.0 at the moment and I don't see any in the near future that won't run great on this card. Plus the new Adaptive AA works on the R300 and up. :)

[anzak]

Well, I haven't had a whole lot of time to play around with it yet, but so far I'm really impressed. After a fresh install of Windows and the Catalyst 5.10, I installed the FEAR MP demo and the CoD MP Demo.

In the FEAR benchmark w/ all settings to medium, 1290x960 w/ 8xAF, I'm getting 87% above 40fps and 0% below 20fps. That was at stock clock speeds.

I've been busy workin on an essay for 2 hours so I decided to take a break and play some CoD2. Tried 1280x960 w/ 8xAF all in game settings as high as they would go (one wouldn't go past medium for some reason). Dunno what the fps was, but it was pretty smooth. A little choppy in the heavy action, but overall the fps was fine. I don't see how people can say it doesn't look much better than CoD, IMO it was a huge improvement.

I had a goal of 500/1000 for this card and it seems to handel it just fine w/ some headroom if I decide to take it further. Even better, ATI Tool says it has the R480 core which means the remaining 4 pipelines could be unlocked.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=13825&stc=1&d=1129181528

:D

[Sazar]

I have to make a decision soon.

Wait for another few months for the AIW 1800xt or grab a 7800gtx oc now :(

Decisions decisions.

I have a buyer for all my current stuff fortunately :D

[SH64]

Hmm kinda hard decision .. you know what ? make a poll about it! :D

[Sazar]

Once I get my new mem and proc, I will consider it :)

[Lfctony]

Glad you're enjoying your card Anzak. :)

[saturnotaku]

That card is really darn tempting, but then I think of ATI's OpenGL support and that temptation quickly fades.

But the only thing that matters is if you're happy with the card.

[anzak]

That card is really darn tempting, but then I think of ATI's OpenGL support and that temptation quickly fades.

But the only thing that matters is if you're happy with the card.

Yeah, the OpenGL performance is pretty bad. Its a little faster than the 6600GT. This isn't really a problem since I don't see any OGL games I'll be playing the near future.

I have to make a decision soon.

Wait for another few months for the AIW 1800xt or grab a 7800gtx oc now :(

It would be cheaper to pick up a 7800GTX and TV tuner now than getting a AIW X1800XT later. I'm a little partial to ATI cards my self, but it isn't worth the waiting and extra cost. Just my opinion.

[mongoled]

No problem. Yeah, it was $199 for about 2 days at newegg and then they quickly knocked it up to $299 once they discovered it could be unlocked.
If you have the Connect3d X800GTO then you have a very good chance of modding it to a 16 pipeline card. Almost every Connect3D GTO card ive seen has modded to 16 pipes.

Instruction courtesy of XS member (thanxs Jup :))

Take of the stock cooler and check what's marked on the core, should be X800 in this case

1. If you had an Nvidia card before, uninstall the drivers. Reboot in safe mode, and have drivercleaner remove the leftovers from the drivers (if there are any)

2. Plug in the card. Install the cat drivers, along with ATI Tool 0.24. Check that the card can run at X800Xt speeds (500/500).

3. make a backup from the original X800GTO bios.
You can use the option within ATI Tool to do that, or use the flashrom tool under pure DOS with the following command :

flashrom -s oldbios.bin

4. Download the new bios at techpowerup (choose the Powercolor X800XT 256MB PCI-E bios)

5. Run the proggy Rabit 1.7 and read the new bios. Check if the clockspeeds are correct, ViVo enabled etc.... If your card couldn't make it at 500/500 (which I doubt), you can change the GPU/memory clocks yourself. Therefore, you should check if the card can run at X800XT speeds before flashing.

6.When all is set, make a bootable floppy and copy the new bios file along with the flashrom tool to it.

7. Reboot and have your system boot from floppy.
At the prompt type following command :

flashrom -p 0 xxx.bin -f Where xxx is the name of the new bios. Because the original name is a bit long, I simply renamed it to Pow.bin (abbreviation from Powercolor).
The 0 = zero and not letter O. Remember to leave a space between each word, so "flashrom (space) -p (space) 0 (space) xxx.bin (space) -f

Flashing only takes a couple of seconds, it will go back to the root after it's done, a:>

Reboot your system, and check if ATI tool recognizes the card as R423.
It might be that you'll need to reinstall the drivers and ATI Tool. You can do that if your card isn't recognized directly.
Run 3d05 to check the performance and compare results.

Here are the links to the necessary files/bios/tools :

ATI Tool 0.24: http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
ATI Tray Tools: http://www.wintotal.de/softw/index.php?id=2569
Rabit 1.7: http://www.ironflak.my-united.net/pa...id=2&themeid=0
Flashrom@16P: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/.../vidcard/127/2
(ATTENTION: ONLY download the Flashrom, not the bios they used for flashing in that article)
Bios: http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/ (and choose the Powercolor Bios für X800XT PCI-E 256MB with Samsung 2.0NS)
Aquamark Patch für X800 Karten: http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/atta...0&d=1127497502
Shadermark 2.1: http://download.winboard.org/downloa...release_id=773

Remember whatever you do with this information is AT YOUR OWN RISK if you break the card dont start crying abt it!!!

Good luck

:)

[kurt454]

Got me a Sapphire X800 GTO on the way ,now. I gave up on getting a cheap GTO^2.