Radeon X800 Arrives!

Today, I eagerly awaited the arrival from FedEx of my new Sapphire X800 XT PE!

Upon opening the box, I saw a packing slip and a little box with the card in it (hey, it’s OEM. Check out my comment on the other post for reasons of what I do if it breaks). I checked the packing slip — just what I wanted, “XT” (Sapphire’s XT’s are XT PE’s as well as far as I can tell).

After a quick swap out with my old Radeon 9600 in my snazzy clear-blue case (note to self: Plug firewire back up (had to unplug it and forgot to plug it back up)), I was ready for boot. As expected, it detected an X800 series card. So, let’s check ATITool. All looks good here, framerates are fifteen miles above the roof. Hm… 12 pipelines. X800 PRO?!?

Weird. So, time to overclock to XT PE speeds and look up the flashing tool. Good so far, no artifacts (except the time someone messaged me… can’t do anything wile scanning for artifacts). Time to flash. I used the first Google result and came up with a nice guide on flashing an X800 PRO to an X800 XT PE. Make floppy (hah, couldn’t find a good one, had to use an old Internet Explore for Windows 95 part 1 of 2 floppy or something). Reboot. Save old BIOS. Write new BIOS. Reboot. Windows (sorry… games, you know) XP Home boots up and detects a “Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition”! YES! Checking pipes… 16!

So… I highly recommend buying an X800 PRO and flashing it to XT PE. Follow the guide correctly and you will do just fine.

After further investigation, I think that the person who had the card before me had an X800 XT PE, but flashed it to PRO for some reason.

By the way, I have World of Warcraft as well. Look for me as “Clete” (stupid thing won’t take a 2 on the end) in Khadgar.

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