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Unlocking the GeForce 6800
Timmus writes "Firingsquad is running a story on how to unlock all 16 pipelines in nVidia's GeForce 6800. By default the card only ships with 12 pixel pipelines enabled, but with a tool and a few mouse clicks, the card can be unlocked to run with all 16 pipes. Performance improvements are seen everywhere, so it's a pretty nice free upgrade. These cards are currently selling for $200 online, so a 16-pipe GeForce 6800 delivers great bang for the buck."
because you want to charge an extra $50 for those cards.
It's cheaper to do things this way than it is to actually alter your production lines.
AGP only, it seems. No love for us PCI-E types.
I think the people above me are having sex - or they're sleeping restlessly and agreeing with each other a lot.
This is actually one of the best found "upgrades" for video cards in recent past.
In order to enable the extra pipelines all you have to do is modify the Registry (in Windows) and if all of the pipelines are functional then it "just works". The great side to this is that if there are any problems witht he pipelines then you can just revert back to the original settings.
Previous mods like changing the Radeon 9800 pro into a 9800 XT required flashing the card with a different firmware to unlock the disabled features, or worse (like the old geforce4 to quatro mod) required soldering contact points on the card.
The first few batches of this card were pretty hit and miss ( and usually 75% miss) but as Nvidia refined their chipset manufacturing process more of these cards are actually using high quality chips that have fully functioning pipelines that have just been disabled to sell at the lower price point, so your chances of getting this "free upgrade" are pretty good (esp with certain models).
There is even a free tool http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163
that gives a GUI interface that shows all of the pipelines, their status, and allows you to change them on the fly (you can change the settings back and forth but a reboot is required to take effect).
The overclockers.com forums has a sub-forum specifically for video cards and their mods.
http://www.ocforums.com/
check out the video card section here:
http://www.ocforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=7
This kind of thing has been going on for a very long time. ATI does it too. What happens isn't that the card isn't tested, it's that it /is/.
/. would have you believe...it was actually innevitable. Shit, soon /. will have a press release out on how to mod your x800/6800 into a fireGL/quadro :) Whooppie...what news...
After the card is made, they run a series of tests on it. If all parts work perfectly, you have the "6855,5 UltraDuper"; if all parts work, but instability occurs at higher clockspeeds, they call it a "6849 Ultra"; if certain parts (ie a few pixel/vertex shader units) don't work, they lock these off and call the card a plain "6800"; if more than a certain number don't work, they just trash the card.
Thing is, it's nothing new; ATI has been doing it (and softmods [software based] and hardware based modshve been available) since at least the 8xxx series. So whilst this is news, this isn't as hot as the blurb or
BTW, the same kind of thing goes on with cpu's, where it's called 'binning'.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?