X800GT BIOS Update Boosts 7% Performance
 

Powercolor appears to be making its mark with the X800GT, ATI’s answer to NVIDIA’s 6600GT. Since Powercolor is one of the first few board partners to actually have a X800GT in the market, it’s getting all the attention it possibly could. With that said, Powercolor does have a strategy behind promoting its X800GT offering. Unlike other board partners that went with ATI’s R423 chips in order to save cost, Powercolor went with the R480, making the card highly overclockable and a solid performer at stock speeds. Powercolor earlier pointed out that almost all of its X800GT cards can overclock to X850 speeds with decent cooling.

To take it a step further, the company released a new BIOS that improves stock performance of the card by seven percent, possibly making it the fastest X800GT in the market currently (and even in the future). However, there appears to be a glitch with 40 of the X800GT cards. A recent report confirmed that 40 X800GTs can’t be upgraded to the new BIOS. If users do try to upgrade to the newly published BIOS, they risk damaging their cards.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to identify which 40 X800GT cards can’t be upgraded. Therefore, if you’ve recently purchased a X800GT from Powercolor, we suggest you hold on to the BIOS upgrade until Powercolor can definitely point out the "defective" X800GTs in their lineup.

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.ph...k=view&id=1709