arcadeace
09-29-2005, 08:51 PM
I just read about this new card at Hexus and it looks like a good buy for anyone interested in upgrading their vid card. Here’s part of their article:
Cutting right to the chase, SAPPHIRE's simply bought a large number of ATI's R480 cores (X850-class), used an identical PCB and component layout as found on Radeon X800 XL/XT/XT PE cards, and marketed this 'new' card as a Radeon X800 GTOâ² 256MB. The GTOâ² ships with the basic characteristics of an X800 GTO 256MB but that's where the similarity ends.
A quick BIOS flash unlocks the dormant rendering quad that's not available on regular 'GT/GTOs, and turns SAPPHIRE's GTOâ² into a full 16 fragment processor card. The enthusiast can then further gain by raising the card's mediocre 400MHz core and 980MHz clocks. All in all, with a little work, we can't see why a default SAPPHIRE X800 GTOâ² 256MB card won't function as, say, a Radeon X850 XT or even the XT PE version, thereby saving yourself up to â£100 for a little work. Add in a couple of these cards, preferably unlocked and overclocked, in to ATI's soon-to-be-released CrossFire multi-GPU technology for some serious framerate fun.
I found it offered here (http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?pid=12993&ad=pwatch) for $213.00.
Cutting right to the chase, SAPPHIRE's simply bought a large number of ATI's R480 cores (X850-class), used an identical PCB and component layout as found on Radeon X800 XL/XT/XT PE cards, and marketed this 'new' card as a Radeon X800 GTOâ² 256MB. The GTOâ² ships with the basic characteristics of an X800 GTO 256MB but that's where the similarity ends.
A quick BIOS flash unlocks the dormant rendering quad that's not available on regular 'GT/GTOs, and turns SAPPHIRE's GTOâ² into a full 16 fragment processor card. The enthusiast can then further gain by raising the card's mediocre 400MHz core and 980MHz clocks. All in all, with a little work, we can't see why a default SAPPHIRE X800 GTOâ² 256MB card won't function as, say, a Radeon X850 XT or even the XT PE version, thereby saving yourself up to â£100 for a little work. Add in a couple of these cards, preferably unlocked and overclocked, in to ATI's soon-to-be-released CrossFire multi-GPU technology for some serious framerate fun.
I found it offered here (http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/product.asp?pid=12993&ad=pwatch) for $213.00.