X800 - the XT & XT PE are different cards

All the more reason to like the non PE if this turns out true. Now all we need to do is find out the price.

 

Dang it, this is the second board I've seen you post this on (and thanks for giving the explanation on this one, please disregard me question at that other place as I really aught to stop posting there ) and it's really bugging me!

What is the difference going to be 'tween the "new" X800 pros and the "old" X800 pros......why won't we be able to mod them?

I'm not trying to be a prick and pressure you BB, I'm just sort of thinking the problem out loud to meself just to see if in hearing it I can figure it out or someone else can. (Or at least drop a hint, cues Dave's cryptonese music...)

 

What if the non PE is exclusively for OEM builders? Do you think we'd still be able to get a hold of them thru retail somehow online? (Oh, and yes there is a big reason I'm curious about that! )

 

perhaps the later batches then
I've heard of people managing this mod with PowerColor, Sapphire, ATi as well as ATis reference boards as of yet

 

Could it be possible that they'll be making an R420 core on the .11 process and they are anticipating a lot of "3 out of 4" quad cores out of it? (I'm still on me second pot of coffee, so if it's an idiotic idea feel free to burn me. )

 

*burns*

 

Ok that's fair, but can you name me a couple of possible reasons why the "new" X800 pros will not be moddable? (I ain't meaning that in a challenging ya kind of way, much more of a "please I'm trying to figure it out a bit" kind of way. )

 

One Mr 'Wavey' Dave Baumann wrote this in his review of the x800s on some site I saw somewhere...

"The Platinum Edition is ATI's highest reference specification, and as you may guess there is likely to be another XT configuration with 16 pipelines enabled but with slightly lower clock speeds, but as yet ATI haven't announced anything"

 

Well that would suck, I like the sound of this card. But then again as everyone says memory is more important in this generation anyway.

 

Well it's not in ATi's benefit to tell people that it would work. There have been a number of people who have modified various X800pro cards to attempt to unlock 16 pipes. There have been reports of failure, but only failing to unlock the 4 pipes, not destroying the card. Others have actually succeeded and unlocked the extra 4 pipes. Most of the testers I have seen were using either BBA or Sapphire, and I doubt there is any difference in the manufacture of those two in particular except for the logo.

 

Well you can already get an x800pro for under 350$ if you look hard enough. Perhaps they will just drop the price to 300$ have a x800xt 16 pipeline card clocked similar to the pro (should be a bit faster ) at 400$ and the xt pe stays at 500$ .

While the geforce 6800ultra was swaping blows against the x800pro i don't think it would fair that well against an x800xt . Then whatever the heck nvidia is calling the part under the ultra would have trouble against the pro if it was even against the ultra .

Perhaps this just shows the yields of the 16 pipeline cards are much better than expected and they feel they can make more money selling them as a 16 pipeline card instead of gimping them to a 12 pipeline core ?

 

So question is will the XT PE ever hit retail? ATI promised boards would be out by now and they aren't, reviews had very little luck getting the cards over 540 core, which said to me the PE was clocked to the max with very little headrood left to be safe, plus different reviews had different clocks. I don't know lots of shady tactics going on here, it's seems obvious that the yeilds at the PE clocks aren't good enough and ATI released a vapour card spec just like nvidias ultra extreme to woo the crowd.

 

It would be nice to see a little price war with so many mid to upper range offerings. Looks like it will be impossible to avoid the naming confusion from all the AIB manufacturers clamoring to get the same dollars. Lets hope they don't cross the line into decieving customers into buying something by naming a lower end product similar to other vendors higher end offerings.

 

Cooling and voltages will also have restrictions on potential speeds, so that may just indicate that. The modded Pro we've see appeared to have no trouble reaching about 600MHz.

Yet all of them ran at least the specified speed.

Isn't it a bit early to tell yet? This may be a memory supply issue - something that may not affect 6800 Ultra if they ship with overclocked memory as they did with the reviews.

 

Hehe a volt modded card isn't something I'd put a lot of faith in for reliable retail clocks, how do you know these guys have used the card for 12hours straight lanning in a overheating room. My concern is that most components i have over time their max overclock speed reduces over time, the chips degrade, if the cards couldn't overclock at that much at the shipped voltages which was in most cases, it doesn't bode well for a heavy user a year or 2 down the line, the cards will just fail at default speeds.

Considering the delay of the XT, i'm not surprised we'll see a volume standard xt part with lower clocks, and it seems the XTPE will probably just be hand picked chips with very low quantity available.

 

I'm not talking about overclocks. Its evident that power was a factor in ATI's decisions. You used a lack of overclocking as a link to yield issues, but this could just be a sign of the voltages that ATI have picked for the core and nothing at all to do with yield.

Considering all ATI's board vendors and the SI's they link to from their site only list and carry the Pro or Platinum Edition that doesn't seem likely or they'll have a lot of pissed customers.

Besides, by this logic every single 6800 configuration announced so far must also be hand picked as there have been few to any of them available so far and it was announced several weeks before. If they can't get even the slow version out then they must have really sucky yields.

 

I don't know about killing cards with the mod, but I can see a reason why the mod won't work with later cards.

They probably grabbed the first batches of chips that worked so that they could make X800 pro's and have them on the shelf within a few weeks of launch. Then, they may have been in such a rush that they used chips with both 12 and 16 working pipes, thus letting the mod work on some cards. But now that they can claim that they were available so soon after launch, they can be more picky about things, and use the 16 pipe chips in the XT/XTE cards only.

I only have circumstantial evidence about this, though, such as the vague posts about mods not working later. Also, this theory sort of explains why there weren't so many X800 pro's available at first, since ATI started sorting out the 16 pipe chips for the XT's.

 

ATI made no such promise for the XT boards. They said the X800 Pros would be out by now, and they are for the most part. The X800 XTs are coming in mid June. Nvidia has similar results with their boards regarding clock speeds as well, most of the reviews I saw said they couldn't get them higher then 450 MHz.

XT PEs are already being sold on many sites, to me that doesn't sound like a vapor card. Nvidia denies the Ultra Extreme of even existing.

 

ANova is correct, everything I've heard pointed to a mid-june availability for the XTE, including rumors before launch. In fairness, that's also what I believe I heard about the 6800u as well, although many are saying July now.

Considering how much luck people have had unlocking the X800 pros that are out, I'd think that the yields are pretty good. If they weren't, ATI would be saving the chips with 16 functional pipes for the XTE instead of tossing them into Pro cards. The clock speeds people are posting are phenominal, too *drool*

 

And you have no clue at the giggles that gives me!