Overclocking HIS cards is almost always a pleasure, as the IceQ cooler is typically a lot more effective than the stock solutions. In this case we found a difference of around 17 degrees between the reference cooler and the HIS cooler – a hugely impressive reduction, especially when you consider that the IceQ 3 is nearly silent.
Overclocking the Core was very easy, and rewarding with over 90Mhz extra possible without any problems. Above this the system would hard lock, suggesting it is a lack of voltage rather than insufficient cooling causing problems. Memory overclocking was far less successful, with just a few extra MHz possible without artefacts. Nevertheless, there are other ways to improve the performance of this particular X1800GTO
Unlocking pipelines on the X1800 GTO
Several conflicting reports have been released around the web about whether the X1800 GTO can be unlocked to an X1800XL. We therefore simply had to give it a go! The tools you require are ATITool, Winflash and the BIOS file from an X1800XL. Install ATi Tool and check the value from the GB_PIPE_SELECT. If your card has 0x3FE4, you are good to go. If it is any other value, unfortunately you will not be able to unlock your pipelines. From what we have seen, all HIS cards have the 0x3FE4 GB_PIPE_SELECT value.
Next, download the X1800XL BIOS here. Run winflash105.zip and click load image. Select the X1800XL BIOS and check the “force” option. Finally click program.
Once you have done this, restart the machine. If you go into ATiTool again you should now see that the number of pipelines says 16.
To verift this we ran 3DMark 2006. Since 3DMark 2006 is quite CPU limited there would be more gains in real shader-heavy titles, but even so, the difference is clear to see.
So far it seems that only HIS (and some Connect3D) cards can be unlocked. The bottom line is that if you want a card that can be unlocked to an X1800XL, you should definitely invest in the HIS card over other brands.
