Got My 7800go GTX today .. Here's some benches - Page 2

I went to the video card removal instructions from dell's site....and it shows removing the lcd and everything....is this neccesary? How much do I actually have to disassemble to do this?

Everything

but its easy, just screws. Dont Panic!

Just did the install on my XPS Gen 2. Went pretty well, did it without instructions or the manual. Just remember to keep track of your screws. I did panic at one point because after installing the card I booted up and just saw a black screen...*wince*. I removed it and put the 6800 Go Ultra back in - booted up fine. Put the 7800 back in and got the black screen of death. After thinking for a sec I realized that I hadn't seated the card properly. It actually took a fairly hard push down to seat it. My advice is to turn on your system after seating the card...no need to screw anything in. Just make sure you can see your screen come alive!

Ran 3DMark05 with Geforce Tony's 81.94 drivers - 6674 at stock

So I got over a 1300 point increase for $319 USD incl taxes/shipping. Don't ask...that's what Dell Canada charged me for the part.

Will try Auto OCing later and see what happens.

You'll be pushing 7200 with Auto OC on.

What exactly does Auto OC do? Does it configure clock speeds dynamically based on temperatures or does it find a suitable clock speed and set that as a static? Is it anymore dangerous to leave it on Auto OC than to manually OC it?

Thanks for the benchmarks. I just got the email notification that my 7800 GTX upgrade has shipped so I'm looking forward to the performance boost.

One question: have you been able to do anything other than 3DMark05 with auto overclocking enabled? On my 6800U I can run 3DMark05 just fine (boosts me from 5250ish to 5550ish) but if I do any extended gaming my laptop reboots after 15 min or so. I have AS5'd it and run the I9KFanGui but the autooverclocking just pushes it a bit too hard, and I haven't had the guts to do the BIOS flash to enable manual overclocking.

Auto OC will only overclock the core. It's really not worth using.

Flash your bios.

We know the 6800Go Ultra memory will do about 640MHz without any problems.

Flash your GTX to 450/1250 and you'll be in heaven

See my sig and request a new 6800. Flashing your bios won't hurt. If you are scared just do 475/1200, that's nothing.

Thanks, shoman!

I don't really need a new 6800U (the 7800 GTX arrives in a couple days, and the "U" is quite stable when I don't auto O/C it). But I guess I will bite the bullet and flash the 7800 GTX. I'm running COD2 at 1440x900 but I'd really like to move up to 1600x1000 or higher. Same with BF2.

Has someone posted the "real" 7800 bios somewhere?

I'd ask for a new card, what's the point in keeping.... or trying to sell something that reboots?

Please don't pawn off that rebooting card to someone, that's not fair.

When you get your 7800 NiBiTor can read your bios into the application from windows then all you would need to do is save it and start OCing. ALWAYS keep your stock bios handy somewhere.

Thanks for the advice! I have NiBit and understand that it now works with NTFS partitions which makes this a lot easier for me. But where do I d/l the new 7800 bios?

I'm not intending to pawn off the card on anyone; I'll keep it as a spare. But I think you misunderstood me; I only got the reboot when I used autooverclocking. Running at stock (450/1.06 ?) it has always been rock solid, with a peak temp of around 85 c (82 c after I AS5'd it) after hours of Civ IV or COD2.

{post update: never mind - I figured it out. I thought that Nibit was flashing in a bios from a non-Go card that supports o/c, not just reloading an edited version of the native bios}

If you are talking about flashing you can use a small primary FAT partition to put your ROMs on.... and instead of using R:\ you can then you C:\

Shoman,

Amazingly, my 7800 just arrived. Pretty strange since yesterday Dell notified me both by email and telephone that my shipment was delayed (again), and then this morning I got a "just shipped" notice! The packaging was better than others had; still no antistatic bag, but at least it was packed in a sponge-lined solid cardboard box.

In any case, I'm going to AS5 it before I install it and then get some baseline temps and benchmarks. I'll probably try to flash it this weekend so I want to make sure I have all the procedures down. I have Nibit 2.5 but I don't have a FAT partition on my HD. I don't really want to run partitionmagic and create a FAT partition just for this. Are there any alternatives?

Shoman, I'm thinking of trying to flash my 7800 go GTX tonight, so just doing some reading to try and get the procedure down. Most people are nervous about doing it the first time for fear of screwing it up and having to do a blind flash. I personally can't afford any down time because I work on this laptop. Here is what I understand so far:

1. Use NiBitTor to read your current BIOS, save it to a bootable disk, USB drive, or partition (somewhere off windows)
2. Alter the same BIOS to desired clock speeds and save the new BIOS to a bootable drive or disk
3. Use NVFlash on bootable disk/drive to flash NVidia BIOS

Is that it then? System should boot up normally? Do you have to reinstall your drivers afterwards too?

Thanks for any help. I'm almost ready to give this a go.

Follow this http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=112994

Then, go to Tools>Read Bios>Select Device, choose your card (6800Go Ultra or 7800Go GTX). Then go to Tools>Read Bios>Read into NiBiTor It should display all the information of your video bios in the application. Then go up to File>Save Bios Name it what you like.

Now start modding your stock bios. Create some bioses (maybe 10 )

Also be sure you enter your memory clocks correcly. Do not enter the DDR value, enter half the DDR value. If you look at the bios it will read 530 and off to the side it will read your DDR value 1060. If you enter 1060, your actual memroy speed will be 2120 which will basically fcuk your memory up. You guys are smart you will know what i'm talking about when you see it.

DL my bcd crap, put your roms in the folder, burn the CD in DOS, Flash, and reinstall drivers.

That's it.

anybody who is successfull in flashing and overclocking their 7800 ? any chance you guys could come out with an idiots guide for us noobs ......... I m due to receive mine today and am eager to overclock, but the present guide by shoman on the matter is kinda too complicated for me..... maybe someone can do it using plain english kinda like the pinmod tutorial or the 7800-9300 mod...... any help would be greatly appreciated !!!!

It is in plain english. Print it and read it.

If you can't follow that I don't recommend you flashing.

Actually, I think what we need here is somebody to host a pre-created BootDisk version of some ROMs again, as the actual flashing part is not complicated AT ALL, and I think the creation of the BIOSes and BootDisk (using Nibitor, burning a CD from the command line, etc.) is what's freaking people out...

I will create such a disk sometime today and try to find space for hosting...anybody want to suggest a spot on the web, that would be great (Yahoo Briefcase or something similar)...?

EDIT: Okay, disk is done and burnt...works fine...flashed to 425/1100 no problem, so I'm off to test this bugger...will report back later...if anybody wants this image, just gimme a place to upload it and we'll start a new thread titled '7800 overclocking BIOS BOOTDISK' or something...

EDIT2: HOLY SHEEPSH!T ELVIS! Okay, I overclocked as noted above (25Mhz clock increase, 18Mhz non-DDR memory increase) and 3DMark05 jumped from 6715 to 7058!!!! This thing is incredible! That's not much of an overclock for a huge jump in performance...I wouldn't be surprised if some folks can push ~7800-8000 on these things! Yeahbabyyeah! Highest GPU core temp is 71C compared to ~91C on the overclocked 6800Ultra...

Ok, latest update:

7800 GTX has been AS5'd and installed. And it works!!!

Using the TweaksRUs Xtreme ME 81.94 drivers (quality tweak), my out-of-the-box 3DMARK05 is 6606. With autooverclocking enabled it went up to 7036, so I figure I''ll be in the 7500+ range easily after I do the BIOS update. The idle temp is 43c, and the max temp was 75c. However, I did notice that Ik9FanGui was reporting about 5 degrees below the core GPU temp the Nvidia driver utility reported, so I was probably running closer to 80 (still about 8c lower than the 6800u topped out at). I never noticed a difference in these readings running the 6800u so it may be that the I9kfangui utility isn't handling the 7800 GTX correctly.

I played 10 min of COD2 on the British ambush scenario (which has a ton of action) At 1600x1000, AF enabled, AAx2, textures all on extra, shadows enabled, it was smooth as silk. Fraps gave me a 72(max)/22(min)/42(avg) which was totally playable. I may try 1920x1200 with no AA and see which I prefer. I'm sure once I flash this resolution will be quite playable.

I'm mostly ready for the flash update. I have NiBit (2.5) and nvflash (5.15). I made a copy of the default (436/1.06) BIOS. I couldn't download bcd.rar from the site Shoman linked to; it just hung up when the download should have begun (using the "free" download). I do have another utility to create a bootable CD so that doesn't really concern me. So my last question: can you (Shoman) suggest a set of 10 or so settings I should create bios's for? I have the stock system cooling but both the CPU and GPU are AS5'd.

I just created ROMs with the core at 5Mhz increments from 425-525 and the memory set at 1100, 1150, 1200, and 1250 respectively, for a total of 40 different ROMs...they're so small (63kb) that I figure it's better to have too many than not enough...they're also very easy to generate once you get into a rhythm...

Makes sense to me; Thanks!!! - Saturday will be a fun day