Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

4 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. I hate to trolll but.... by packeteer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:Disabled Hardware?? by edwdig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Two reasons to turn off some of the pipelines:

    a) They were defective, and this allows you to salvage the part.

    b) People with too much money will gladly pay significantly more money for a slightly higher end version of the same card.

  3. is there a centralized list of these hacks? by schweini · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Nice Work! by darc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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