Turning A FX5900 Into A FX5950 Ultra, Tool-Free

A reader writes "Some very interesting details coming from various tech sites such as ExplosiveLabs and 3DChips that shows it is possible to turn a GeForce FX5900 into a FX5950 Ultra (which is NVIDIA's top of the line video card chipset currently available) through simply using the FX5950 Ultra BIOS on the FX5900 video card."

Comments

Deja vu

[aardvarko]

It's the Quadro all over again!

When will they ever learn?

[LostCluster]

Why do businesses sell underclocked hardware when they know some geek somewhere is going to try loading the higher software in and seeing what happens? If that test comes back positive and can be duplicated... we'll be reading it here on /.

Re:When will they ever learn?

[AvantLegion]

Because it costs less than developing two separate pieces of hardware, and they don't really care if the geek fringe overclocks - they'll do it anyway.

Re:When will they ever learn?

[EmCeeHawking]

Why do businesses sell underclocked hardware when they know some geek somewhere is going to try loading the higher software in and seeing what happens?

Because they also know that 99% of their customers don't read slashdot and don't care.

Cost savings by using the same architecture in several products: $ LOTS

Revenue loss from slashdotters who value their time much less than their money: $ NOT MUCH

Net Profit: Only a very small amount less than $ LOTS

Re:When will they ever learn?

[MBCook]

I doubt that such is the case here. My guess is that the chips on the 5900 didn't pass QA at 5950 speeds. The people who are doing this may get a performance boost, but they are playing with fire. There are two possibilities:

1. The chips passed as a 5950 - They got lucky, but the board might still not be designed for the higher clockspeed or whatever. You could run into problems.
2. The chips failed at 5950 - OK, you may not notice it now, but problems could appear soon. Maybe just little graphical artifacts, maybe full scale crashes. You could be about to ruin your card.

This is probably just like if you discovered that you could do something to change the multiplyer on the Pentium 4. Maybe it will work better, but there is a decent chance that it won't. And you might not find out untill you've been playing for 3 hours online and are about to cream the top ranked guy on the server in CS. You're about to jump out from behind a box and knife him in the skull (I always loved that) and *WHAM*... your computer crashes and the video is screwed up. If you're lucky a reset will fix it. But if you were lucky, that probably wouldn't have happened. Hope you didn't break it.

It's not always corporate greed, there can be a reason.

Re:When will they ever learn?

[Cyclone66]

I would imagine that many buyers of $500 video cards are the slashdot type. Don't forget, the high end video cards are the flagship product but they aren't the big sellers. They make much more cash from the sub $200 cards (check the financial statements). The high end cards are just for reputation and bragging rights.

Re:When will they ever learn?

[AvantLegion]

>> It's not always corporate greed, there can be a reason.

It's not even "corporate greed".

The consumer gets a card with a higher-quality product than advertised. Give me an "underclocked" card rather than one pushing its performance envelope as far as it can go, at the same price, anyday.

The manufacturer gets to keep costs down.

WHO LOSES? Nobody.

Some people will complain about anything. :)

Re:When will they ever learn?

[Waffle Iron]

Why do businesses sell underclocked hardware when they know some geek somewhere is going to try loading the higher software in and seeing what happens? If that test comes back positive and can be duplicated... we'll be reading it here on /.

You've answered your own question. Countless thousands of potential customers are eagerly reading about nVidia's products on /. right now, and it didn't cost them a cent in advertising budget.

Think of it like a discount coupon. The geeks reading about it here probably weren't going to buy either board until they saw this story. But now with the prospect of getting something "for free", many will rush out to grab one, and nVidia makes sales that otherwise would not have happened.

Re:Why?

[AKAImBatman]

If I'm not mistaken, why would you even want a fx5900 in the first place?

Because NVidia supports FreeBSD and Linux, while ATI has been giving less than stellar support to Linux? Besides, my GeForce2 GTS is still sufficient for most games. Does the performance gap between ATI and NVidia really change things that much?

uh, looks SLOWER to me

[compwizrd]

did i miss something, or are those benchmarks showing the "upgraded" bios is actually making the card run slower if they don't overclock even further?

Re:Pay More, Get the same

[cyberlotnet]

God I wish people would get off there "I want everything for free" High around here..

The people who bought a FX5950 Ultra payed more for a card rated to work at higher speeds, For a warrenty that will still be valid if there card fails due to normal reasons.

They paided more because they choose to do so.

Tommorow someones going to complain that a version of quickbooks pro can be upgraded to quickbooks business with a simple crack, and that is just not fair to the people who spent real money on quickbooks business.

Or.. The diamond ring my friend bought is exactly the same as mine, but I paided more.. Its just wrong.. How dare stores charge diffrent prices.

Windows 2003 Can support unlimited users, But you pay for it. Its the exact same software regardless. How dare microsoft expect you to pay for such a thing.

Professional card?

[NanoGator]

So does this just make overclocking easier, or does it turn on other features? I ask because the 'professional' cards (i.e. the kind use 3D artists would benefit from) have acellerated wireframe drawing and the like. Is that the case here too, or is it just a few extra FPS in Quake?

Let's hope this doesn't get too widespread

[pummer]

or NVidia will be forced to take the approach AMD did. AMD got tired of newbie overclockers buying $90 XP2500s and easily overclocking them into $500 XP3200s, so they locked the multiplier, one of the methods used to overclock AMD chips.

Thus proving, the many ruin things for the few.

Re:I wouldn't recommend this

[Frobnicator]

As you said, overclocking will sometimes break stuff, rather than gradual failings.

Notice that this is an increase in the voltage, inside the chips.

Then note that we're talking about the lowest-micron fabrication in general commidity chips.

Do you REALLY want to be increasing the voltage, and therefore temperature, magnetic fields, and other properties, on something like that?

I guess if you have the money to throw away, go ahead. I don't have a 5900 (I can't get my work to spring for it, so I bought my own FX card before it), but I wouldn't just try something like this until I'm willing to throw out the card.

frob

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer a card that has *OPEN* drivers. It may not matter to you, but it does to me. My Matrox Millennium II still works like a champ.