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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."
Thsi is kinda old news. People have been doing this for about a year now ever since the card came out. Either way its a good guide to getting some extra bang for your buck although everyone needs to remember that if the card worked 100% fine with 16 pipelines they would have sold it that way.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
In the first place, why would you deliberately lock down 4 of the pipelines to begin with? Wouldn't it make more sense to just go ahead and have all 16 pipelines pumping out the frames in the first place, to give a TRUE impression of what the card can actually do, instead of crippling the card?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
does anybody know whether there's a website where a comprehensive list of these 'free update' hacks is maintained?
there seem to be an awful lot of them (Sony Clie 710->740, Siemens A55->C55, 720kb-->1,44MB Floppies, etc.) but usually they pop up in rather dubious threads on some weird forum, and having them in one nice place would certainly be nice.
This sounds rather like the incident which occurred with the Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel where the entry level model had very similar features to the higher end "professional" model costing hundreds of dollars more. However, it was discovered by some enterprising users that a relatively simple hack, flashing the BIOS with a modified version, could "unlock" the hardware and enable most of the features that were found on the more expensive model. This type of hardware homogeneity protected by software locking is advantageous for the manufacturer because it reduces manufacturing costs, since only one version of the hardware need be produced, but it is also vulnerable to those users who are sophisticated enough to circumvent the software locks. Is it possible that NVIDIA was holding back these pipes as a stop-gap measure so that they could release a new "Ultra" version of an existing card on short notice to counter a new competitor release more quickly? Perhaps, but these two incidents, the camera hack and now the video card hack, may induce corporations to rethink their software locking strategies. In the meantime it appears that savvy consumers can reap the benefits of these companies' mistakes.
I used to be the kind of guy that would spend $400 on a new videocard that you can get for $200 within 6 months. That's since changed
Last night, my mother in law bought me a new videocard (CRAZY!) because she missed my birthday a month ago... it's an ATI X700Pro 256meg that ran $179.00 after instant $20 rebate.
I installed it last night and it was VASTLY superior to the card I got 1&1/2 to 2 years ago for nearly $500. I turned everything up on Farcry, WoW, and BFVietnam. It's smooth as glass on my AMD3000 machine.
I wont be shelling out that much money again anytime soon.
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This does not work on all GeForce 6800's. If you research this hack, as stated by another poster this has been a known hack for some time now, you will find information on why this is possible and why Nvidia "locks" some of the pipes. I seem to remember something about problems inherent in there manufacturing processes.
You can unlock all pixel piplines as will as additional vertex shaders. I bought a 6800 last year and tried this. I was able to unlock everything, but it resulted in artifacts and other issues that made games un playable.
This is unlikely. In the article itself, they note that graphical artifacts appear when you turn on this mod. This is likely because they didn't QA that section of the chip, and it's probably defective-ish. Now, that doesn't mean you'll definitely get a buggy chip, but NVidia won't unlock this because the part isn't tested, and assumed broken.
In fact, it may be reject parts from the Ultra series that makes it 6800 standard. From what it looks like, they deactivate the broken pipelines and then sell it as a lower model, much like CPUs do with clockrates.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
Anyone else find their test results to be kind of odd? No ATi cards in the 3dmark05 benches. The lower end cards (9800 and 5900) achived results that are the complete opposite of every other test I've seen in Doom 3 and HL2. The test system was also fairly out of date, meaning the top end cards were probably somewhat limited. I'm not calling them liars, this stuff just seems kind of... iffy. (terribly sorry for the double post, I had problems logging in, not cowardace)
I also did a softmod on the vanilla 9500. It worked great, and I sold the system to a friend. The 9500 and 9500 PRO were actually different boards, however the 9700 and the 9500 were the same.
As I remember it, the mod was first tried when someone in europe (thinking Germany) spotted the one difference between a 9500 and a 9700, one solder point. They changed the solder point and their 9500 was a 9700.
Someone made a driver that ignored the signal the card sent to identify it's model, just assuming the model to be a 9700. A lot of the cards worked too, it sure kept the 9500 vanilla above the cost of the 9500 pro for a while.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Yep. Just did this with a 6200 card. My 3D Mark scores went way up but I am sometimes getting artifacts. They are not enough to make me switch back but they are definitely noticeable at times.
It will be interesting to see what the various tuners do with the E90 325--presumably the big guys like Dinan who enjoy a close relationship with BMW might get some pressure not to release a cheap 255 hp upgrade. The VANOS systems are supposed to be very hard to modify--it may turn out to be non-trivial to make the change without inside information.
If they are really having problems with scripted spam from logged in users, block the fraggin' accounts! Or better yet, after you prove you ain't a script, remember it in the stupid cookie! How many times do you have to prove you are you?
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go