Help: TOXIC x800 PRO VIVO --> x800 XT Softmod Question
 

I purchased a Sapphire Toxic x800 Pro VIVO a few months ago and only recently heard about the bios hack/softmod to unlock the extra pipelines and effectively make the card an x800 XT. However, I've seen many posts dealing with both success and failure using different BIOS hacks, so I've got a question I need answered before I risk the card for extra performance. Keep in mind I'm running a toxic so I've got extremely good cooling and Automated Performance Enhancer.

1) If I flash to the Gigabyte BIOS to enable the pipelines, then flash back to the normal BIOS, do I run any risk of the card failing on me a few months down the road because the new pipelines are open?

Depends on what you wanna do with it.

If you're a benchmark junkie, then do it, by all means since thats why you bought the card in the first place
If you're a gamer, it depends if you need the extra FPS. If you only play games like Warcraft III, some old games, a bit of BF1942, CS that kind of stuff, you dont need to do it since framerates are good, even at max graphics settings, but if you play games like Doom 3, BFV and HL2 in the future, maybe you might wanna do it.

If you use the gigabyte bios you cant flash back, you will get a black screen, use the modified flashrom and use the XT PE bios from http://www.techpowerup.com :D

doesnt that run the risk of causing board failure after a few months since it's not the original bios? and I'm using this card for HL2, doom 3, etc

no, you were going to flash using gigabyte bios, which is not sapphire bios, it doesnt matter.