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Unlocking the GeForce 6800

Posted by samzenpus on from the making-it-better dept.

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."

6 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Nice Work! by coop0030 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm surprised, this actually showed a significant increase in performance in their charts. This is one of the best mods I have ever seen on a Video Card.

    I wonder if this would actually hurt, or help Nvidia's sales, or have no effect?

    I currently have an ATI card, and am very happy with ATI, but would be willing to switch to Nvidia since the price/performance on this card is so high now.

    1. Re:Nice Work! by phasm42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They do note that that some games had weird graphical glitches that came and went after turning the additional pipelines on, so the increase in performance may come at the cost of quality, depending on the card you got.

      --
      "No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
    2. Re:Nice Work! by KarmaMB84 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They may also mark down fully functional parts to lower model numbers to meet demand for "low end" parts.

  2. Re:I hate to trolll but.... by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    although everyone needs to remember that if the card worked 100% fine with 16 pipelines they would have sold it that way.

    Not necessarily. If they need to fill a price point, chip companies will sell the higher grade stuff at a lower price point and intentionally cripple it.

    Intel and AMD have been doing it for years, and they are hardly the only ones.

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  3. alas by atari2600 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Again, a lot of newbies posting on slashdot. VGA card modding is nothing new (ATI released moddable cards 9500-9700pro and other stuff) a while back. Just go google for them. Also, 200$ for a graphics card is not overkill - you get what you pay for.

  4. Re:DMCA by zr-rifle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hmmm, lets say more or less a year, if nVIDIA sued tomorrow? This mod has been around for this amount of time now, and I'm suprised this has made it to the main page as "news".

    More or less the same happened back in the Quadro/MX days. Using a soft-mod similiar to the one discussed in the article, you could transform your cheapo-but-great Geforce 2 MX into a much more costly Quadro card for graphic professionals.

    The difference between now and then is that this mod isn't guaranteed to work for each and every 6800 card out there. So unless you get to test the hack before buying don't think you can get away with a 6800 Ultra at a lower price. If you buy it, take it home and the mod doesn't work because the extra pipelines are defective, you're stuck with a really pricey card (check the V9999 from ASUS) that will perfom worse per dollar than a 6800GT (or probably even a 6600GT).

    Also, please read the DMCA again: this kind of mod is perfectly legal, unless you plan to put up a shop that sells them. If it weren't so, even overclocking would be illegal.

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