x800 pro to XT Hard mod

[Paul]

Guys, I have been thinking about doing this mod for some time now. I
currently own a Sapphire x800 pro. It has a blue board which is different to
what alot of the sapphire boards are, and in particular, most of the people
who have done the hard mod have had a red board.

I am in Australia.

My card currently oc's to 515 Core / 540 Mem. It's pretty good on stock
cooling, and I live in a hot area which doesn't help.

I thought about buying one of the vivo edition cards and just doing the bios
flash, but alot of those cards reportedly fail to go past 500/500 mhz I
wonder what the comparison is between an extra 50 mhz clock speeds compared
to an extra 4 pipes. I don't want to spend all that money to find that the
card can only hit 500mhz when I already run at close to xt PE speeds.

So anyway, I want to know has anyone had any luck with this mod with a the
blue board? I know the success rate for this mod is not that great. but I
have also seen some of the attempts and my goodness, they really have
butchered the whole job. Also I have not heard of attempting the hard mod
having any negative affects on the card, it either works or it doesn't. so
as a calculated risk I thought I might give it a go.

any experience with this guys? please share...

 

[robin.gordon1]

apparently if you take off the HSF in the top corner there are two small
unconnected pins. these need to be shorted to enable the extra pipelines.
one or two ppl think that the pro bios is better than the XT so benchmark
and then try flashing.

Robin