X800 GTO and GTO² to X850 XT Mod

Introduction

Sapphire's special version of the X800 GTO is called X800 GTO². As you can see in the following picture it uses an R480 core, which is also used on the X850 Pro, XT and XT PE.

The GTO² is a special product from Sapphire only. Neither the regular GTO, nor the GTO Ultimate use the unlockable chips. If it does not have ² in the name, it can't be unlocked.

UPDATE: The X800 GTO cards from Connect3D can also be unlocked, see page 4 of this article.

UPDATE Dec. 1st 05: It seems the Connect3D GTO modding times are over, read page 4 for an update.

UPDATE Jan 30th 06: Many users have reported that their Sapphire X800 GTO² cards come with 16 pipelines out of the box. According to Sapphire ATI has relaxed their regulations and so they are allowed to sell the GTO² product as 16P card.



The GTO² comes with 12 pipelines enabled by default, but the only lock which limits it to this number of pipelines is located in the Bios.

No cards with defective pipelines have been found yet, which means (so far) the success rate is 100%.

An AGP version of this card does not exist. Some shops list a Sapphire GTO² AGP but this is not a Sapphire product, it's probably regular GTO's which are labeled "wrong".

The mod presented here allows to unlock your X800 GTO² to run at 16 pipelines.

Is my card moddable?

I added this section, since so many people ask "can I mod my card?".

• Download and install ATITool
• Hold down the shift key and click on "settings"
• Now scroll to the bottom of the list, you should see four new values listed. (The screenshot here is from an X850 XT PE)

Only the red marked numbers (marked red for reference, yours will be black) are of interest here. If you do not have F for the red numbers, your card can not be modded.

When you try to mod a card which has a different fuses setting, nothing will happen. The pipeline count stays at 12 and the card will work just as normal. But please make a backup of your original BIOS for your own safety.

If you want to help understand the structure of these registers better, post your screenshot here and include information like model and number of active pipelines.

Performing the mod

1. Download the modified Flashrom from here. You MUST use the modded Flashrom, other flashing utilities will not change your pipeline configuration.
2. Next you will need an unlocked Bios file: Sapphire X800 GTO² | Connect3D X800 GTO.
(only the number of active pipelines has been changed, clock speeds remain the same).

Original, unmodified Bios: Sapphire X800 GTO² | Connect3D X800 GTO
Please note: Many people complain that they get a "file not found" error when trying to flash the Bios under DOS. The problem is that DOS does not know long filenames, so all files are truncated to some funky names like Powerco~1.bin. Either use the dir command, when in DOS, to find out the short filename or rename the file to something shorter while still in Windows.

3. Use the modified flashrom to flash the Bios to the card. More extensive flashing instructions can be found here. They talk about atiflash - you use the modified flashrom, usage is the same.
4. After a reboot your card will immediately run at 16 pipelines. No driver installation is necessary.
5. Verify the number of active pipelines using ATITool. Go to Settings -> Overclocking. The list there shows the number of pipelines the card is running with.



6. If you want to boost your performance even more, you can overclock the video card. In our tests we could go from the standard clocks of 400 Mhz core and 490 Mhz memory, to the XT PE speeds of 540 Mhz core and 590 MHz memory (actually a bit more).
However, not every card might overclock as well, but all of them should be able to run at the XT speeds of 520 MHz / 540 MHz, probably more on the memory, since it's Samsung 1.6.

Benchmarks

Test System
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)
Motherboard:	ABIT AL8, Bios 1.4 i945P
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8
Video Card:	Sapphire X800 GTO² 256MB PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.8

We did a quick benchmarking round to find out how much performance is actually gained.

Connect 3D X800 GTO

Not only the Sapphire GTO² can be modded, the regular GTO cards from Connect 3D are also moddable. However, the success rate is unknown. If you try this mod, please let me know of your results.

Success 128 : 7 Failed (as of Nov 27th 2005).

Success 182 : 87 Failed (last update Dec 24th 2005).

The steps to do the mod are exactly the same as the Sapphire GTO² mod outlined on page 2.
You just use another Bios.

However, there are some drawbacks compared to the Sapphire GTO² cards:

1. Sapphire uses faster 1.6ns memory, while Connect3D uses only 2.0ns.
2. Sapphire uses a guaranteed R480 core, while Connect3D uses only R423.

The fuses data (see page 1) for the moddable Connect3D GTO cards is as follows:


Update:
Over the last days (end of November) I have received a few reports about unmoddable cards:

• 20 cards from Newegg
• 8 cards from eBuyer.com in the UK
• 3 cards from Watford in the UK
• 2 cards from a retailer in Hungary
• 1 card from dabs in the UK
• 1 card from CCL Computer in the UK
• 1 card from VV-Computer in Germany
• 1 card from webbhallen.com in Sweden
• 1 card from ccl-computer
• 1 card from verkkokauppa.com in Finland
• 1 card from Datorbutiken.com in Sweden
• 35 cards in Finland, one reseller is Elektroni.fi, there is a second merchant, but the name is not known

• The first benchmark "12p" is with the X800 GTO² running at default, like it comes out of the box.
• "16p" is with the card running at 16 pipelines, but still at the GTO² default clocks for 400 MHz core and 490 MHz memory.
• The "X850 XT PE" series is when then card is running at 16 pipelines and is overclocked to 540 MHz core and 590 MHz memory.

As you can see the performance increases are quite big, especially overclocking seems to help the card a lot.

The performance increase from stock to modded and overclocked is about 30% in all benchmarks. Final performance is the same as a regular X850 XT PE. Quite impressive for a $220 video card and a 100% mod success rate.