AMD Radeon HD 6950 Can Be Unlocked To HD 6970

An anonymous reader writes "AMD's new Radeon HD 6950 can be unlocked to a HD 6970 via BIOS mod. Performance of the unlocked card is identical to the full blown HD 6970!"

Comments

It is still different HW

[BadAnalogyGuy]

A lot of manufacturers will do this, actually. Their first device will contain very high quality, standard HW that is somewhat overspec for what they intend, but due to driver support and ease of implementation they can get it out the door in a reasonable amount of time. Then for their successor device they will take the lessons learned, use cheaper parts, use better optimized software, and sell it as the "cheaper" version.

You are getting lousier HW, but arguably better SW, so the performance gap isn't as big as their marketing lit will let on. On paper, the expensive first gen device looks better, but when the rubber hits the anus it's pretty much a wash.

Re:It is still different HW

[Lt.Hawkins]

Except that all the drivers are pretty much unified, so it comes down to detuned hardware... and I suspect manufacturing tolerances these days is such that the detuned hardware isn't as out of spec as it might once have been.

Re:It is still different HW

[ZDRuX]

"...but when the rubber hits the anus it's pretty much a wash."

I was like whaa....? But then I looked at your name and all was set right in the universe.

Re:It is still different HW

[cheater512]

Considering I've got a AMD X3 and Linux is reporting 4 cores, I'd agree with you.

They do bin the chips based on performance, but that doesnt guarantee that you dont get a higher performance chip, nor does it mean you cannot use the additional hardware assuming its not completely dead.
In my example, I've obviously gotten a chip that was binned as a AMD X4 but they needed more X3's so they just turned a working core off.

Re:It is still different HW

[SuricouRaven]

Or perhaps they turned it off because, while it works almost all the time, it'll fail one in ten million floating point operations at random, or is prone to fail at moderatly high temperatures or workloads. If you want to use the 'disabled' core, I suggest you run your own tests to determine if there is some minor fault. Slow the fans so it runs hot and calculate pi. If it can run for 24 hours and produce the right result, it's probably good.

Re:It is still different HW

[cheater512]

Its been running for 18 months. I'm quite confident what I got was indeed a X4 or at least any problem with it is so minor it can not occur with my usage patterns. :)

Re:It is still different HW

[santax]

"when rubber hit the anus", I see a titl

Re:It is still different HW

[drinkypoo]

I ran for maybe a year overclocked and then one day while playing Alpha Centauri and watching a video at the same time my system became unstable... back to stock speed, no more problems. Good luck! Silicon DOES degrade over time.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! They've been doing this for more than 15 years now. Is it supposed to be different now just because you say so?

They grow a crop of chips, they test the chips, the ones that pass higher test specs get branded as 'high end' and the others....well you know.

It all comes down to crop yields, and if the whole crop performs as expected.......what do you think 'they' do? That's right, they cripple their shit on purpose....wow that was hard.

Re:It is still different HW

[aliquis]

Except in this case it looks like either there is the same quality hardware (at least as far as chips goes) where all of them are 100% working but one is slightly disabled and sold for less.

Or there is a differences in over-clocking ability/stability but in _THEIR_ cases not enough to make a difference at stock speed, or some chips may be slightly faulty and they just got lucky with theirs.

Re:It is still different HW

[BadAnalogyGuy]

What do you mean by quality?

Re:It is still different HW

[realityimpaired]

That actually does make sense from a fabricating standpoint... crippleware, that is. It's a lot cheaper to just have one product line to manufacture, which would allow them to take advantage of economies of scale. They can then split it into two product lines by disabling certain features, or lowering some of the spec in software. I'd wager it's a *lot* cheaper than building/operating a separate fab, and separate supply line for the other product line. :)

They wouldn't be the first company to do that, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's actually pretty common in home electronics... Who here doesn't know somebody who's got some stereo or DVD player that has a USB port it can't use? Or a camera that looks identical to the top-of-the-line version, but is lacking that fine-grained white balance tuning?

Re:It is still different HW

[aliquis]

Perfect sample?

Working when not pushed too hard vs working even under evil conditions?

Or in the case of somewhat broken GPU actual non-functioning parts but disabled so you won't notice (or you enforce usage of them and eventually notice.)

Re:It is still different HW

[Suki I]

"when rubber hit the anus", I see a titl

that made me lol too. Now, how to fit one of these cards in my iPhone . . .

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed..
Back in the mid 90's, I converted my Yahama 200T SCSI 2x CD burner to a 400T 4x burner with nothing more than removing a surface mount resistor and reflashing the bios. Saved myself over $200 and burned another 1000 or so discs until I retired it.

Re:It is still different HW

[dns_server]

It's a feature of some amd motherboards bios to unlock extra cores if they exist.

It seems to be a feature to allow you to use the extra cores if they exist but amd is probably only certifying that the cores you pay for work.
if you use the bios setting the extra cores may or may not work so you could be lucky or unlucky.

It also allows amd to make 6 core cpu in bulk with a low yield rate and sell it as a 4 core cpu if one of the cores does not work.

Re:It is still different HW

[Dishevel]

If you have an iPhone you do not care about performance/price. You care about iShit and puppies. You are also more than willing to over pay for stuff that Steve may have wiped his balls across.

Re:It is still different HW

[Lord Byron II]

Just to reply to the parents: -Just because you run the system for 6/12/18 months without a crash does not mean its stable. Most apps won't crash if 1+1=1.9999. You're not likely to notice if a single pixel in a single frame in a YouTube video is the wrong color. -Just because your system is stable, then has a crash doesn't mean that the silicon is degrading. Even a "perfect" chip will have a fault or two every few 10^x calculations (where x is some large number).

Re:It is still different HW

[Kreigaffe]

An image of Steve Jobs hovering precariously atop the production line, straddling the birth tube of his empire, a smile on his face as he hunkers down and lets the conveyor belt drag each and every item ever so gently under his balls for the Reality-Distortion-Teabag.

Re:It is still different HW

[Low Ranked Craig]

Engadget points out that the power connecters have different numbers of pins. I'd post a link if the fucked up javascript on this site would let me...

Re:It is still different HW

[Stele]

"when rubber hit the anus", I just see a back

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

So does thermal transfer compound. It dries up and shrinks, making air pockets/fissures.

If you were me, or I was you, ... I'd have checked the heatsink before blaming the silicon. Then, I'd have blamed the ram, the motherboard capacitors or electromigration (if redoing the heatsink made no difference).

In the unlikely event the processor truely degraded from electromigration, I'd suspect the internal solder joints first. Simple solution for that is put the processor in an oven until the internal solder joints reliquify, then allow it to cool slowly.

Re:It is still different HW

[drinkypoo]

I don't think I degraded my silicon, I think I finally stressed the CPU enough to overheat and fail. No problems now, running the same stuff.

I only mention it because running the hardware past spec increases wear and decreases lifetime. If you're running nominal hardware past spec the odds of failure are high.

Re:It is still different HW

[UninformedCoward]

Its 6 vs 8 pin. The 8 pin has +2 grounds. The advertised power consumption is a difference of 25w between the cards w/ the 6970 being the higher draw.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, this is an old Fark reference (maybe not that old... but old enough).

Re:It is still different HW

[hairyfeet]

But how stable will it be when the HD6970 uses both an extra 50w AND a different pin connection than a HD6950. The 6970 uses an 8 pin and a 6, the HD6950 uses a dual 6 connector setup. Can dual PCIe connectors pull the 250w load that the HD6970 requires? This isn't like some Athlon X3 where the only thing you have to do is flip a switch, the other chip pulls more wattage at load and there is no telling if there are other parts besides the connector pin set that they have changed between the cards. Since both cards are over $300 and I'm sure the BIOS flash kills the warranty that is sure a lot of "ifs" there.

Re:It is still different HW

[rwa2]

From RTFA ( http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159 instead of the click-thru announcement / ad page linked in the summary :P ), only a tiny amount of performance is gained by enabling the disabled shaders... (from the graphic only 2 out of 24 are disabled).

Most of the performance match is accomplished by overclocking it 10% to match the higher spec card. The higher spec cards appear to have a beefier cooling hardware, though.

They needed to raise (effectively eliminating) the "PowerTune" limit to achieve identical / maximum performance, which pushes both cards to higher temperatures and power consumption. Otherwise, PowerTune appears to throttle the performance to keep power consumption down: the lower spec card throttles performance slightly more, perhaps due to less cooling. They show the GPU temperature as similar on both cards, but I've never known those thermistors to be very accurate.

It's probably not bad to be able to get a 10% improvement in a card that costs $60 less. I wouldn't mind the 5% increase in performance from enabling the extra shaders just on principle. But the rest of it doesn't seem worthwhile to reduce the life of the PC / GPU.

Re:It is still different HW

[hairyfeet]

I don't think it really has anything to do with silicon degrading as much as when you are OCing you are running way out of spec. Think of it THIS way: You buy a Chevy that was engineered to run smooth at 4k, redline at 6k. You "tweak" it to run at 6k, reline at 8k. Will it run? Yep, it'll run. Will it last? Not likely because you are pushing it harder than it was designed to run when you OC it!

And I already know what some are gonna say "These parts were built to run higher, binned as lower, yada yada yada" but IRL the odds of you running into a high binned part that was sold as a lower clock simply to fill an order is actually pretty damned tiny. What happens IRL is that all the parts are tested at high speed, which very few pass. Those are your high clocked black editions. Those left are tested at lower clocks and lower cores until it passes muster and THAT is what it'll be sold as. Will it run higher? Sure just like the Chevy. Will it last or continue to run low term? Just like the Chevy it is nothing but a crapshoot.

And lets be honest folks: It ain't like these AMD chips are high to begin with. Hell I bought my full cache 925 quad for a grand total of $135. I have a 7550 dual sitting in a drawer here waiting for me to get a chance to by a cheap core unlocking board which I paid a whole $60 for. If it unlocks and works? Well yippie skippy, if it don't? Well who bloody cares! It'll still make a damned good dirt cheap dual or triple or whatever it checks out at for a family member. But trusting an OCed chip on a machine you actually care about is just nuts. If you want a faster chip it isn't like the AMD chips are high in the first place, show your support and get a faster chip! If this 7550 was going in one of MY machines as opposed to a kid's gamer box I wouldn't even bother. Dealing with possible stability issues or corruption just isn't worth it when chips are this cheap. After all it ain't like the old days when the difference between that OCed Celeron and the Pentium was several hundred dollars you know. The difference between the low end duals and the top quads is...what? Something like $50?

Re:It is still different HW

[aliquis]

The 6870 ran more units and at a higher clock rate so not that weird that it will consume more energy.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

not really "different hardware", in any meaningful sense. a 6950 die and 6970 die could easily come from the same wafers, or certainly the same lots; they're made with the same mask set. it all comes down to speed and defect binning, combined with market demand.

Re:It is still different HW

[Kjella]

Internally computer programs have lots and lots of pointers to memory addresses whether your programming language exposes them to you or not, and a flipped bit in a pointer will almost certainly make it crash. Maybe if you're talking "just outside tolerance limits" kind of error rate, but a CPU that regularly fumbles would be very noticable.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

A company I once worked at made a cable modem test meter. This device is an advanced DSP+FPGA device with a CPLD to manage boot up and other tasks and a monochrome LCD. You could buy just the basic version and as your needs grew you could unlock features by purchasing a code for your serial numbered device. The device and the code would unlock that particular feature. A basic unit was $2500, one with all the codes possible was ~$5500 depending on quantity. There is very little in the way of hardware in the device, they had a very good hardware development team to minimize parts yet it function properly. Where the device shines is in the software and it's use of the DSP+FPGA.

Re:It is still different HW

[mrmeval]

283 watts for HD 4870 with two six pin connectors.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-15.html

Re:It is still different HW

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Your analogy is a bit weak - you buy the crap chevy (seriously, 6k redline?) and tweak it to run at 6/8 - that means a balanced crank, beefy connecting rods, and upgraded vavletrain. it may not be as reliable as the crap baseline version, but that's because it's a faster design and those tend to require more care. The analogous CPU already has the upgrades because it costs about the same to make the fast version as the slow. You just mark them as slow so you can maintain market segments. Sure, this only happens after the process is mature, but that takes a few months to a year (generally).

But yes, the CPU is pretty cheap these days; my next build will be spending more on each of the SSD and GPU. I don't OC because it's never been my bottleneck.

Re:It is still different HW

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I have an iPhone and it's the first phone that doesn't break in stupid ways that piss me off. What can I say, I like having something that actually works.

Re:It is still different HW

[Khyber]

"I only mention it because running the hardware past spec increases wear and decreases lifetime."

Yet my two+ decades old overclocked Packard Bell 5MHz 8088 STILL RUNS while every other computer I own has failed within 2-3 years.

What?

Re:It is still different HW

[kurokame]

It depends.

I don't do chip design myself, but a few guys I work with do. They spend quite a while trying to get the fabrication pass ratio up to workable levels when there's a new part. It's nowhere near as simple as "all 6950s are secretly 6970s." It probably will mostly work for many of them, which is what a sane overclocker is going to expect anyway. However, it's very likely that a part from a later production run will have better odds of passing an "aftermarket upgrade" to the higher bin since fabrication pass ratios tend to improve somewhat with later runs as the kinks get worked out. For the initial runs, I'd say 60/40 is probably the most you can count on unless the sales of 6970s are internally estimated to be very few compared to 6950s (which is sometimes the case - the higher-spec part often serves as advertising for the unit they "expect" you to buy). This would be higher if, for example, it draws heavily on a part which has been in production previously (quite possibly the case).

Re:It is still different HW

[sjames]

It's one of those things that points out clearly that a purely capitalist decision making process actually offends our sensibilities. We would all like to think that it would never make economic sense to spend MORE money to make a crippled version that sells cheaper. That instead, the market would drive the inclusion of the features at the lowest possible retail price-point. In short that we aren't in the position of getting nothing for something.

However, business hasn't worked like that for quite a while now.

Re:It is still different HW

[Surt]

Bell curve dude. You got one system out in the fourth standard deviation.

Re:It is still different HW

[Khyber]

I have overdriven stereo amplifiers and other pieces of electronic gear. They all work perfectly fine.

New shit I have, STOCK CONFIGURATION, doesn't last three years.

One system? Try thirty. I still have a TI 99/4A that works, even.

Re:It is still different HW

[hairyfeet]

Actually I answer the "higher bin/lower bin" bit, as i said the odds that you will get a class A chip that has been binned as a class C is VERY low. I wish the site still existed or I had copypasta'd the conversation, because I had a real nice chat with a guy that actually worked the line at Intel on a forum when the whole Celeron 300a OC thing was big, and he explained it like this: Sure occasionally you'll get a class A chip with a yield much higher than expected and so you'll dump some as a lower spec to fill an order, but usually it is just the opposite. You end up with VERY few of the Class A really high clocking chips, a shitload of Class B "decent, but not great" chips, and a smattering of Class C barely pass at the low end chips.

So you are more likely to either get a Class B chip at a Class B price, or if they are really hurting on someone who orders a crapload of "Best Buy Specials" a Class B chip that has been dropped into the Class C bin. It is VERY rare for you to get a Class A binned at Class B, simply because they have a crapload of Class B already, and it is much less likely for a chip to clock high enough and be stable to get a Class A rating in the first place. But if you take a Class C chip, like say the new Sempron Sargas? Sure most of those are lower Class B Duals and Triples that they dumped simply because they had too many. But the odds that Athlon Triple is just a Phenom II X4 BE dropped into the lower bin with the L3 blown? Not bloody likely. More often you're just hot rodding the Class B to higher than it would pass muster at the factory. Will it work? As another said software is pretty tolerant and often won't shit itself if "1+1 = 1.999" but just because it doesn't crash and burn doesn't mean you've got a Class A, just that you haven't managed to hit whatever the error was that caused it to get the Class B label. After all how many IRL would hit the right conditions to cause the early Phenom TLB bug? I've sold quite a few of those to customers and they are quite happy at the much lower costs, and know if it does throw an error all they have to do is enable the workaround in BIOS. So far none has had to.

But I have to agree with you 100% that all this talk when it comes to the CPU is mostly moot anyway. The AMD chips are so cheap that frankly skimping just in the hopes of a core unlock is really kinda stupid, when the CPU is rarely the bottleneck and the 2.8-3.2GHz AMD chips are beyond cheap right now. I'm running the AMD Phenom X4 2.8GHz 925 quad and like you have found the HDD and GPU to be MUCH bigger bottlenecks than the CPU. The ONLY time I even tell my customers about the possibility of a core unlock anymore is if for some reason they HAVE to go dirt cheap, and even then I try to warn them away if it is a machine they are actually gonna do anything important on. It is just too big a risk for such a little gain, especially when they can get the full L3 cache (which of course you don't get even with unlocked cores) for so cheap nowadays. Like I said it ain't like the old days where the difference between the Class B Celeron and Class A Pentium was several hundred dollars here. With AMD the difference in price between the low end triples and duals and the mid to high Phenom IIs is something like $35-$60 depending on what is on sale. On a new build that is such a small price difference it really doesn't make sense to risk stability.

Re:It is still different HW

[cheater512]

I dont know how overclocking got in to this conversation. In my instance there is no overclocking - just unlocking a extra core that works correctly.

In the article's instance, its unlocking the additional pipelines and so on, with optional overclocking.

Re:It is still different HW

[Surt]

The real explanation is likely to be electromigration, which is a negligible influence on older, larger process technology. Newer technology is so close to atomic limits that it is vulnerable to a whole lot of new potential problems.

Re:It is still different HW

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

You could get a good aftermarket cooler for it for around $50. That makes it a little cheaper than the 6970, but you do get a much cooler and quieter card.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

"They show the GPU temperature as similar on both cards, but I've never known those thermistors to be very accurate."

It's very unlikely to be a thermistor-based temperature reading. ATI chips have had an on-die bandgap-based sensor for years now. The sensor is calibrated, and the accuracy should be reasonably good (within +/-2C).

Re:It is still different HW

[ushering05401]

Bell curve dude. You got one system out in the fourth standard deviation.

I don't know about that. I'm not an over-clocker, but my C-64 SX, Amiga 2000, and my grandmother's 8086 on which she wrote her life story all still boot. Computers Pentium era and later I have had fail for all sorts of reasons - and I am not including any sort of storage failure - that is a different issue.

I'm betting the problem is just the integrated aspect of everything. My mother's expensive laptop had everything and the kitchen sink on-board - and then the wireless stopped powering up or something... Doorstop despite the fact that it has more computing power than all my fossils combined.

Anyhow, I'll check my museum pieces again in 2-3 years. Worst problem so far was actual storage media failing - but the net provides and I found the images on-line along with replacement media.

Re:It is still different HW

[cheekyboy]

18 months is enough, after that, we upgrade to something 2x faster, for same cost as last cpu.
The outgoing cpu gets relegated to the other less important box, like a spare fileserver, or mediacenter, or hell, sell it on ebay for $20.

Re:It is still different HW

[Khyber]

No. What blows in newer equipment are capacitors and transformers, usually. On occasion, resistors go out.

I have yet to encounter any major problem with electromigration and I work with quantum dot phosphors, which are smaller than your current transistors.

The problem is cheap assholes driven for constant sales and profit creating substandard equipment.

Re:It is still different HW

[644bd346996]

The 6900s were originally intended to be build on a 32nm process and be released as the 7x00s, but then TSMC cancelled their 32nm node, so AMD axed half the features of the 7x00s and moved them to the 40nm process that they first used on the 4700s, and used on all the 5000s and 6000s. (The earlier 6000s had also been planned to be 32nm, but ADM switched back to 40nm for cost reasons before the 32nm node got canceled.)

Long story short, the 6900s are being manufactured on a process that is quite mature and that they have a lot of experience with, since it is roughly the 4th generation product on that process. It should be no surprise that yields would be very high out of the gate.

Re:It is still different HW

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to encounter any major problem with electromigration and I work with quantum dot phosphors, which are smaller than your current transistors.

You are John Titor, AICMFP.

Re:It is still different HW

[mcneely.mike]

And yet, I've been running all my life with occasional crashes here and there and people STILL call me stable.
The fools.

Wait..... where did i put Pinky again? Ohhhh, there you are big guy!

Re:It is still different HW

[Khyber]

Umm, QD phosphors have been around for a year or two, now.

No time travelling, here.

Re:It is still different HW

[countertrolling]

Or more likely, funky, no lead solder

Price Difference

[Hynee]

I just checked a price list, the price difference is about AU$80-100, ~$390 compared to $480. I wonder how long that difference will stay.

Re:Price Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure modding the BIOS on a graphics card ruins the warranty somehow.

Re:Price Difference

[Xugumad]

I was about to point that out; this is fairly clearly modifying the hardware outwith the manufacturer's intention. Maybe it works, maybe it turns out 2 months down the line that the chip overheats when run at a 6970 and burns itself out.

If you like meddling with hardware, this is going to be brilliant for you. Personally, I find myself just wanting it to work, these days....

Re:Price Difference

[iamhassi]

Yeah I just looked that up:
6950 = $300
6970 = $360

$60 savings, yippy!! 20% off!!

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD secretly released the hack to sell more $300 cards. Seriously what idiot is still paying $300+ for a video card in 2010? 2001 called and what their video card prices back.

Re:Price Difference

[Hynee]

I tend to agree with other posters, it's not worth voiding your warranty for. I've paid 20% extra for extended warranty before.

Re:Price Difference

[cheekyboy]

$370 vs $470 at cpl.net.au

Still to pricey, are there any 57xx hacks out there? I want a $150 card to be uphacked to a $250 one.

Re:Price Difference

[Hynee]

Exactly, that's a much better price point. Don't hold your breath waiting for it though, I don't think it will ever happen for CPU's again.

Quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

DMCA to the rescue! Of profits.

If this

[velja27]

If people start to buy this kind of "locked" graphic cards and unlock them then the manufacturers will start to cripple the cards for good. Or simply make truly weaker graphic cards instead of limited ones with the same chipset.

Re:If this

[hellop2]

So, what's your point? Don't hack hardware?

We can't control what they do. Luckily, they can't control what we do.

Re:If this

[larppaxyz]

Long time ago, i was using a tool that let's you modify any NVidia card BIOS. I very soon had dirty words appearing when BIOS POST was running. It also made it possible to change stock GPU and memory clock frequencies.

Re:If this

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, maybe not.

They'll certainly TRY to cripple the cards for good. If they had figured out how they would probably be doing it right now; what's their incentive not to if they know how? And ultimately, it's not a big deal if they succeed. People will just have to buy the proper card for the level of performance they want, just like most people who don't know about these sorts of things do right now.

As far as making truly weaker graphics cards, that's a lot less likely. The entire reason that they do this in the first place, with the obvious potential for people to find a way to unlock faster hardware while paying prices for slower, is because it's far cheaper to fabricate one model and then lock it down than it is to re-tool to produce multiple, truly distinct models. Either the market realities or the number of people unlocking would need to change significantly.

Re:If this

[Zakabog]

Luckily, they can't control what we do.

That's his point, they can control what we do. If we hack their hardware to run better with simple software solutions then they'll just redesign the hardware so there's a physical restriction on how well the card will perform. Though there would be no point in being able to hack the device if you're too afraid to do it for fear that they might cripple future devices.

Re:If this

[SuricouRaven]

I think I used the clock-modifying tool too... on my old FX5200. I got Half Life 2 to play on that card with a bit of overclocking.

Re:If this

[antifoidulus]

Ultimately it depends on how much they actually (think) they end up losing. The reason they ship the same hardware to begin with is because it obviously costs them more to set up separate lines for the two cards than it does for them to put the extra bit unused hardware in the lower spec'd card. If ultimately they think that doing this will cost them more in lost sales than they gain in increased manufacturing efficiency then they will start shipping divergent hardware, but if only a tiny portion of their customer base mods their cards then they will probably just consider it collateral damage and maybe up the difficulty of modding the software in the next version.

Re:If this

[Rockoon]

That's his point, they can control what we do. If we hack their hardware to run better with simple software solutions then they'll just redesign the hardware so there's a physical restriction on how well the card will perform.

Why presume that these hacks arent just a profit-motived feature?

What incentive do they have not to do things like they are now? or more to the point, if they did "permanent" disabling, what would be their incentive not to change to a disable method with an easy workaround?

I think that you people are forgetting your history. Both AMD and Intel used to always do real physical disabling. Now they don't always do that.

Re:If this

[couchslug]

Then their competitors will leave the unlocking "easter egg" to gain sales and win anyway.

"Limited" "protection" has its advantages, like the favorable publicity it creates through stories on /. :)

Re:If this

[Bengie]

Then I'll whip out my mechanical pencil and connect the traces... oh wait, wrong chip.

Come on, raise of hands on how many people "modded" their AMD chips to have unlocked multipliers?

My Celeron 300a->450 overclock was the best though.
P3-700 -> 933 wasn't bad either.

Re:If this

[SharpFang]

So?
Don't hack it now so that you could hack it later? But don't hack it later so that you could hack it even later?

If we don't hack it, there's no practical difference whether it's locked out or not.

Besides, how many cards was that tested on? How reliably can the hack be replicated across different batches of cards?

Thing is, often the "disabled" part is one that didn't pass tests. So, they get 60% yield of the chip with all the features, the remaining 40% have the extra parts faulty. But the market demands a 40% more expensive - 60% less expensive production split, so on top of the batch of 40% with faulty, disabled features, 20% of production that is all good gets this part disabled. So, you have 1/3 chance the card you bought can be "unlocked" and run the extra stuff, and 2 in 3 cheaper cards will overhear, throw random errors or not run at all with the extra parts enabled.

Re:If this

[CAIMLAS]

This is AMD we're talking about, here.

You know, the same company which basically started the whole "unlocking hardware" phenomenon in the commodity hardware realm? IIRC this started with the Thoroughbred Athlons - quite accidentally. Now it's usually possible to 'unlock' them in the BIOS, if that's your cup of tea.

Video cards have been 'upgradable' by changing the clock speed, in the past - the 'defaults' were just lower for the cheap card. This is really nothing much new.

Though, considering that higher end cards/chips are the bread/butter of companies like this, you may be right.

Re:If this

[Khenke]

And they will actually sell more cards due to this, and in the end earn more money.

I am just in the plans of buying a new gaming computer with Sandy Bridge and was considering either 2 AMD 6950 in crossfire or wait for 2 Nvidia 560 in SLI.
Now my decision became easy, I will get more for my money with 2x 6950.

I know I get something like PhysX with Nvidia but I get DisplayPort and 2GB with AMD, so in the end it was the highest FPS that was going to decide it for me as I'm going for 3x 1920x1200 displays.
And I bet I'm not the only one choosing a cheaper AMD instead of a more expensive Nvidia (with the unlocking counted in).

Re:If this

[Khyber]

"We can't control what they do."

Wanna bet? Cut their communications and cut their power. They can't do shit and we control them.

What are they going to do? Attack their pissed off customers? Yea, NO.

Re:If this

[Khyber]

HL2 played just fine on a GeForce 2 MX400 with 64MB RAM, I don't know why you had to overclock considering the Source Engine is quite capable of auto down-tuning the graphical details to maintain performance.

Re:If this

[Rockoon]

Also, not a Mac fanboy, but i feel compelled to point out your sig is referring to IE for Mac, which used the Tasman rendering engine, not Trident like the one on windows and was quite impressive in its time, actually.

You are in error. The quote is from Jobs in 1997 (Macintosh IE 3.x) while Tasman wasn't used in any product until 2000 (Macintosh IE 5.x)

Even IE 4.x for the Mac didnt use Tasman, and that was released in 1998.

Re:If this

[Nyder]

If people start to buy this kind of "locked" graphic cards and unlock them then the manufacturers will start to cripple the cards for good. Or simply make truly weaker graphic cards instead of limited ones with the same chipset.

Guess your new to the internet, this has been going on for at least 5 years if not more.

I got my 8800GT 2-3 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

for about $200. You know what I mean.

O! the Humanity!

[jabberw0k]

If people start buying underclocked CPUs and overclocking them, the manufacturers will start to cripple the CPUs for good, or make weaker CPUs... Wait, haven't we been down that road before?

Re:O! the Humanity!

[Charliemopps]

Worse yet, people will start buying the cards en-mass, bios modding them and then selling them on ebay.

Re:O! the Humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Intel plan on blocking out overclocking unless you buy a K series? Hell, most of AMD's higher end stuff is multiplier unlocked, so not only can you overclock, it's far easier to overclock.

Re:O! the Humanity!

[rtyhurst]

Athlon XP?

Overclocking guide

[nicholas22]

An overclocking guide can be found here. You *might* get problems under extreme load, because the 6950 uses the 6-pin power connector, whereas the 6970 can draw more power, because it uses the 9-pin connector.

Re:Overclocking guide

[chichilalescu]

are you saying that the differently named hardware is actually different hardware? I think the crowd here will hate you for siding with the big bad corporation.

Re:Overclocking guide

[contabil]

You are right. It can do the same things, but... because of the power consumption the inferior device is not good enough. Contabilitate Ploiesti

Re:Overclocking guide

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, the guide in the original says there are no issues - the power draw under extreme load here is negligible.

Re:Overclocking guide

[dunezone]

You *might* get problems under extreme load, because the 6950 uses the 6-pin power connector, whereas the 6970 can draw more power, because it uses the 9-pin connector.

This is the problem to take into account. Even if you run this card for 24 hours straight doing calculations and nothing "appears" to go wrong it just might take 72 hours of processing to do it, and not necessarily 72 hours straight just 72 hours all together. This is the risk because you might think your saving $80 or whatever but in reality you're destroying a good chunk of the cards life which will cost you more in the end when you replace it prematurely.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Elledan]

That's not correct. The 6 and 8-pin PCIe connectors are identical. They have the same number of ground and 12V wires between the GPU and the PSU, the same wire gauge and can carry the same amount of power. The 8-pin connector exists because in the PCIe spec they had a sense wire for the 12V line specified on this connector, which would then allow the connector to carry more current as the PSU would be able to better regulate the voltage. In practice this is much more easily done at the PSU side, making the 8-pin connector useless and allows the 6-pin connector to carry the same 150 Watt as the 8-pin one.

Want to check this? Just use a 6-pin connector and short the remaining two pins on the GPU to ground to satisfy the GPU if it checks for a connection there and everything will work just peachy fine. If you check 8-pin PCIe connectors you'll see that this is all they do: short the two extra pins to ground.

Re:Overclocking guide

[idontgno]

An unmodified stock top-of-the-line card could also be 24 hours away from failure. I've RMA'd enough video cards to know that stock or OC'd, it's a crapshoot. The power design issue is really the only one which would give me pause.

As to replacing the card "prematurely", LOL. This is an enthusiast card. The customer demographic replaces their video HW more often than they change underwear! Long-term survival is a non-issue. If unlocking shaves two years off a three -year life expectancy, that still leaves several months of viable service life before it's ripped out and binned as "obsolete ".

Re:Overclocking guide

[Anonymous Coward]

see below from elledan. you are wrong. the card will function the same as it would otherwise. both 6950 and 6970 use the same power draw, and have the same capability.

so it will cut zero hours off of the card. when it's unlocked the function the exact same. not similar, exact same. this is like having a 20hp limiter on your car vs the model for 50 bucks more than has the 20hp. you're simply enabling what is disabled, not "for stability reasons" or any of that hype/jazz/bullshit.

Re:Overclocking guide

[QuantumBeep]

That's the problem.

Modders just assume that, if they can unlock the performance, the entire implementation must be designed for it.

You know what I've seen? Melted-solid power connectors. A video card PCB turned brown from the heat. And some idiot hot-rodder paying me to install a new video card (because it fried), motherboard (because the video card fried it), and power supply (because something inside it EXPLODED).

That was a very unlucky guy, but he's a poster child for people who make the stupid-ass mistake of thinking that power delivery and PCB design intent don't matter.

Re:Overclocking guide

[X0563511]

Wouldn't you want to short with some kind of a load? Just shorting them is a nice way to burn something.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Lashat]

Don't be too quick to lump all hot modders into on group of "I dunno what happened to it".

-I am NOT standing up for this single instance of a dolt you have encountered.

- I am standing up for those in the hobby that know what they are getting into and like to squeeze every bit of power out of their rigs.

Most (obviously not your guy on that attempt) are going to supply extra cooling to the card and will monitor the temp of their components. Any hot modder with any street-cred has smoked something at some point.

I remember blowing a capacitor across the lab that sounded like a .22 went off. We all had a good laugh at my expense and I thanked God I wasn't looking into the case at the time. You can shoot your eye out with the official Red Rider overclocker.

Re:Overclocking guide

[QuantumBeep]

Mr. AC, the GP, was definitely in the idiot modder group. I got a firm respect for those with the chops to overclock properly - even though it's a dubious savings by the time you adequately cool and power the overclocked hardware, usually.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Khyber]

"That was a very unlucky guy, but he's a poster child for people who make the stupid-ass mistake of thinking that power delivery and PCB design intent don't matter."

No, he's the poster child for the typical retard on 4chan's /g/ board.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Khyber]

"even though it's a dubious savings by the time you adequately cool and power the overclocked hardware, usually."

Ten bucks for a couple of extra fans and about 15 minutes to redo the air flow in the entire system, versus an extra $60 for an incremental upgrade, gee I wonder which seems more economically feasible?

If you're having that much of a problem with heat, stick with integrated, you're not meant to be working with the big boy toys.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Khyber]

It's a ground, you don't put a load on the ground unless there is an overload, that's what the ground exists for. Everything else should run on hot and neutral wires.

Re:Overclocking guide

[nabsltd]

The 6 and 8-pin PCIe connectors are identical. They have the same number of ground and 12V wires between the GPU and the PSU, the same wire gauge and can carry the same amount of power.

Right, but the HD6970 has a 6-pin and and 8-pin, while the HD6950 has only the 6-pin.

So, the real 6970 should be able to draw more power than a 6950 with the 6970 BIOS, as it has a thicker wire total.

Re:Overclocking guide

[QuantumBeep]

Unless you buy total crap, your voided warranty is worth the other $45.

Re:Overclocking guide

[QuantumBeep]

Sadly, these people are REAL and NUMEROUS. It's a teenage phase or something.

I recall running an AMD 486 clone at 150mhz for years. No matter that it was consistently hot enough to burn me and Windows 95 crashed twice a day from a standing stop.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Khyber]

So you say while I still do gaming (like Crysis and Metro 2033) with hardware that's an easy 5 gens old on all but RAM.

But then again I'm experienced in this sort of thing.

Re:Overclocking guide

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, no.

both cards have identical performance, power draw, and thermals at identical clocks. go read the fucking article.

Nothing to see here, move along

[WaroDaBeast]

Another instance of history repeating itself here. Some people just don't listen during history class, that's all.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

[JustOK]

Some people just don't listen during history class, that's all.

That's certainly something we've learned from history...over and over and over again.

9500/9700 all over again

[lostmongoose]

same thing was possible with the 9550 Pro -> 9700 and with the 9700 -> 9700 Pro both were done with BIOS flashing

Re:9500/9700 all over again

[Anonymous Coward]

Same with the 9800se and the 9800pro

Re:9500/9700 all over again

[bami]

And radeon 9800 LE (4 pixel pipelines) to the radeon 9800 pro (8 pixel pipelines).
I softmodded it with no problems, got quite the performance gain. A friend with an identical card (same brand/same chipset and bought within a month of eachother) got artifacts from about half his pixels being garbage.

That same softmodded card still works today (I gave it to another friend so that he could play BF2), while the crippled card of my friend is long dead.

Sure you can 'upgrade' it that way, but unless you stress test it first and make sure it works properly, will seriously shorten it's life by putting a heavy load on components that were already declared dead.

Re:9500/9700 all over again

[cbope]

I think you meant 9500 Pro > 9700. The 9550 was handicapped even more compared to the 9500 Pro (one of ATI's great naming disasters, and don't get me started on the 9600 Pro that had only 4 pipes). On the 9500 Pro all the mod did was remove the clock lock that ATI had put on it. Both the 9500 Pro and 9700 had 8 pixel pipes, but the 9700 had a wider memory interface, 256-bit if I remember correctly, compared to the 128-bit interface on the 9500 Pro. So while you could get the pipes on a 9500 Pro clocked up to 9700-levels you were still handicapped by the 128-bit memory interface compared to a real 9700. I know all this because I had a 9500 Pro that I bios modded to remove the clock lock. In many games that did not stress the memory interface it was close to 9700 speed (the fillrate was very close), but across the board it did not match a real 9700 due to lack of memory bandwidth. I actually still have this modded 9500 Pro in a box of old boards.

In this case, it appears that you are actually unlocking the disabled shader cores, but as I'm not familiar with the memory interface on these new boards it could be similar to 9500 Pro / 9700 from years ago. I have never seen a board that could have the memory interface unlocked/widened, because this is usually a hardware decision on the PCB and memory chips installed. A wider interface leads to a more expensive PCB design due to the number of additional traces required. You can't unlock traces that don't exist in the first place.

6950 -- 6970

[dangitman]

So, that's 20 faster?

Re:6950 -- 6970

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, 20 bitflopsahertz faster to be exact

Re:6950 -- 6970

[TeknoHog]

It's only 0.29 % faster, probably not worth it.

Re:6950 -- 6970

[machine321]

Obviously a number means nothing without a unit of measure. Do you think it's 20 Libraries of Congress or football fields?

Re:6950 -- 6970

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a $100 price difference at my local store, I have to assume the performance difference is greater then that.

AC because I'm too lazy to log in.

Re:6950 -- 6970

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're talking about a whopping $100 performance difference? That's amazing!

Re:6950 -- 6970

[adeft]

"No one knows what torque is, but this has 144 of them." -Jeremy Clarkson

3.5" floppies

[bonniot]

Reminds me how the way drives recognized 1.44MB floppies (3.5") from 720KB ones was by checking if there was a hole in the bottom-right corner (the bottom-left corner being for write protection). And sure enough, if you made a hole in a 720KB floppy it would be possible to format it as 1.44. There might have been a few more errors, but I remember when HD floppies were 3-4 times more expensive, so it was definitely worth it. At least for a teenager with only pocket money. Ah, those floppy drilling afternoons... Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

Re:6950 -- 6970 MODDER UPPERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOL'd PERTY HARD!

bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the world of "economy of scale". You may also be interested to see how routers are sold/marketed. (see: dlink, linksys and motorola, etc)

The interesting part is NOT why this can be, but rather whether it is legal and also how the bios code was extracted. This is why consumers should demand more "open hardware". Because consumers are consistently paying for the manufacturing of quality hardware only to have the manufacturer bundle crap software (cripple ware) onto it. And for what? so they can target various price points within their target markets.

Question: do you think this is an environmentally sound practice? It isn't very "green" to sell a physical product to the consumer only to restrict its usage to some lesser subset of its full potential. I don't understand why the geeky tree huggers among us don't get on this and start demanding more and longer functionality out of the products we consume. ex: I have access to 4 cannon cameras that look much the same, are the same age and yet all the batteries and chargers are incompatible. Why? so i cannot reuse batteries or charges and must trash and re-buy each individually. With other products I cannot charge everything thru USB even when it is possible. Why? for additional after market adapter sales. I have routers that are exact same hardware yet function and priced quite differently. why? do i have to tell you. I have portable devices that have rechargable AA batteries taped into a pack with a unique plug, instead of just using a regular AA slot. Why? i think you know. Cell phone pricing/plans/contracts/packages are designed to encourage me to "revolve" phones every year or so... why? its too obvious to say.

We consumers are being forced to make additional garbage for the landfills and discouraged from thinking about the consequences when we really could squeeze much more life from our existing electronics. We should be outraged (those that care for the future). But instead we are lulled into the belief that our existing equipment is crap and that getting something new benefits us. We are convinced that we are the ones demanding this from the manufactures. I tell you it is the other way. In reality this only benefits the manufacturer... who is actively limiting the functionality of our beloved products to further this fallacy to maximise their profits.

What you can do when possible (if you care): Buy generic brand electronics, use open source and demand refunds for bundled software when possible. Note that Windows is always refundable when sold with a computer... read the contract... if you care to read contracts before accepting them. ie: keep the quality computer hardware, but drop the cripple wear (windows 7 starter).d

Re:bad for the environment

[unity100]

what you speak of, is capitalism. as long as profit maximization is the goal, and businesses are allowed unregulated freedom, they will do these.

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

you guys are amazing... who is supposed to take their freedom away? the all-wise government?

Re:bad for the environment

[Elbereth]

Wow. That's some entitlement complex you've got there.

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Question: do you think this is an environmentally sound practice?

Answer: Running hardware at lower speeds is generally more energy efficient.

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think "doing what I want with stuff I bought and own" to be much of an entitlement, personally. :-P

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is better for the environment - an underclocked video card or a full powered previous generation video card? Unless the power requirements dramatically jumped (does happen, but usually means dramatic jump in performance as well, negating the alternative) the underclocked newer generation card will probably take less power. It also requires fewer production lines, etc, so you save on tool production as well. That "crippled" card is more green than the alternative card at that price point and likely more powerful too. I'll grant that the camera market's unique battery craze is stupid, (the memory incompatibilities are worse, if anything). I've never understood the desire to recharge things through USB and all such cameras I've seen have had a battery charger included, so I don't think it is so much the gouging as a lack of universal demand pushing it to after market rather than default. I think I remember a similar complaint with one of the consoles and a lack of HD cables being included - they had found most customers didn't care about it even if the geeks did.

Re:bad for the environment

[fostware]

This is capitalism.

If you went into a BestBuy and saw the 6970's and one marked "6970 but slightly dodgey" you'd ask for a cash discount.
They've just made it easier for some peoples sub-par IQs and marked it 6950 to save everyones time.

Hey, AMD could have binned the whole "faulty" chip - so where's your tree-hugging mentality now?

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you suggest they do?

To make the HD video card, it costs $X for research and development and $Y per video card ( for the actual hardware ). From previous experience they know that at a price point of x1 they'll sell y1 cards, and at price point x2 they'll sell y2 cards. They then modify the best HD card they come up with to sell some of them at the lower price point x2. What would you rather happen? Would you rather they didn't develop the graphics card to begin with?

The fallacy of maximizing profits? The only reason anyone makes these video cards to begin with is to maximize profits. What do you want them to do, just give it away for free without trying to make a profit? Why would any investor risk their capital then? For altruism?

"We consumers are being forced to make additional garbage". No one is forcing you to do anything. If you don't like the products they are making, don't buy them.

Re:bad for the environment

[slaingod]

Profit maximization isn't necessarily the problem IMO. One issue is that there are externalities that are not factored into the cost of production, such as the impact of pollution or disposal. Say you had two LCD monitors, one using a lot of arsenic and mercury that cost $100, and another that used less damaging materials for $200. If the externalities were factored in, then true cost of the monitors that the consumer might pay could be $300 for the first, and $250 for the second.

The other main issue, somewhat releated to externalities, I would call 'incomplete information for the imperfect consumers'. If the consumer can't know the mercury/arsenic content in an LCD, then they can't make a real choice. If they don't have the education to even understand why mercury/arsenic would be bad, that is another problem. Or if they don't have the ability to know the technical aspects of why one heart strent is better/more expensive than another, they can't make an optimal decision.

But our lives are littered with these non-optimal decisions. And that is why the government has stepped in to force certain industries/products to incorporate those externalities, or established standards and testing to ensure that the quality of the product is as described when the consumer is unable to determine this themselves.

If you can think of some other way besides government to include these obvious economic factors into the actual costs of products, then feel free to pass that along. Though I would guess it would end up looking like government in the end.

Re:bad for the environment

[QuantumBeep]

I agree with the batteries and power adapters thing, mostly. Mostly because battery shapes, sizes, capacities, and related technologies are, in fact, not all identical. I'd be bloody surprised if a big Canon SLR worked well with the same power delivery hardware as a smaller camera.

Also, don't forget that software has value. Using Canon as an example again, a lot of the more useful recent improvements in digital cameras are just better onboard software. Manufacturers do deserve to be paid more for the same camera with better software.

And this brings us to routers. Again, software, implementation, and testing has value. It's not like they just plonk in Ubuntu or something.

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they do that, then consumers will just buy from their competitor, which doesn't do that. Hooray, capitalism is saved!

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what the word "forced" means. Even if only one camera manufacturer existed and you had to buy from them if you wanted to own a camera, you're not being *forced* to buy a camera. Now if the government stepped in and said you absolutely must buy their camera or face jail time, THEN you're being forced.

If you don't like this practice, then don't buy the products.

Or, if you're an engineer, work to develop an open set of standards for power and interoperability. Go to trade shows and encourage manufacturers that your design and processes will save them money and improve their sales/make them more competitive/whatever. Tell consumers what you're telling them here, that companies are trying to make a fast buck by selling them vendor-locked equipment. Encourage people to only buy vendors who use your interoperable devices. Let people vote with their dollars and work proactively with consumers and manufacturers to develop a solution which implements the changes you wish to see.

Re:bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

So you buy four Canon Cameras, then bitch about how the producer is evil for 'forcing' you to buy more chargers? What the hell, man. If you're concerned about the environment, don't buy so many damn cameras!

Cell phones? I've been using the same cell phone since 2005, and I burn my recycling to tick my "green" neighbors off!

For crying out loud, you are literally complaining that companies are enabling your wasteful buying, and then pouting that it makes you feel guilty!

Re:bad for the environment

[Fulcrum of Evil]

They aren't paying for the manufacture of superior hardware or some crap like that, they're paying for some goods that function as advertised. It doesn't matter whether they're overspec or not, they work: if you want to try for more, good luck to you, but you're on your own. The environmental angle is fairly specious anyway - you're arguing that we shoudl force manufacturers to do... something so you don't toss hardware as frequently, but we do that anyway. Sure that's a problem, but this isn't the solution.

Re:bad for the environment

[Khyber]

"I'd be bloody surprised if a big Canon SLR worked well with the same power delivery hardware as a smaller camera."

As long as you provide proper voltage and the supply has the ability to drive it at proper amperage, you have no problems.

I've driven tons of gear with power from sources never intended to operate such equipment. Most recent, I took a 4.5v 720p camcorder, and hardwired it with a 4.0V power supply (because the thing still operated at 3.6v on rechargeable batteries) and it works just fine. Of course, I'm stuck to wall outlets, but that's okay because 10 minutes of battery life SUCKS.

Re:bad for the environment

[QuantumBeep]

Dude, are you following me around posting spastic daredevil horseshit?

You can sew a monkey heart into a dog and it will live for a while. Doesn't make it a good idea.

Re:bad for the environment

[Kjella]

And for what? so they can target various price points within their target markets.

Well, let's say you want to replace the 6950/70 with a single product, what should the price be? They can make it as expensive as the 6950, losing a bunch of profit on the 6970 sales they would have made. Or as expensive as the 6970, but then you'd lose lots of sales that just wouldn't pay what a 6970 costs. You talk as if price points were made up by the industry when they in fact reflect that people have different amounts of disposable cash and put different value on things. There's not a single card that would simultaniously satisfy both markets and be a sound investment for AMD. And if serving each market with its own design costs more, then of course they choose a common design as anything else would be just stupid.

Maybe it's easier to see the point with software and features than hardware and binning. The difference between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is probably a #ifdef in the source code. Why then should they offer a "crippled" version? Well because some people are interested in paying for the missing features and some aren't. It's reasonable that the people that want CMYK separation pay for CMYK separation and the rest don't need to subsidize them. Those who pay for the 6970 are the ones most willing to pay for performance and so they do. Isn't it completely reasonable and logical they cover more of the R&D tham the 6850 owners?

Question: do you think this is an environmentally sound practice? It isn't very "green" to sell a physical product to the consumer only to restrict its usage to some lesser subset of its full potential.

Actually, the costs in developing two product lines are probably larger both environmentally and economically. That it would be offset by a better design is unlikely, since the difference between the two boards is largely making use of more energy-efficient but slower components. If there was a significant saving to die size, they would do it quite quickly as on this point since the economic and environmental cost are largely aligned.

Re:bad for the environment

[Khyber]

No, I'm not following you around. Also, this 'daredevil horseshit' is stuff I routinely do as a research director, so you might want to lower your shield and stand down on your phasers.

Also, it may not make it a good idea, but then again you don't know the circumstances. There might be a particular antibody brewing in that body being sustained by the heart.

It's about manufacturing yield...

[EmagGeek]

So if I am a graphics chip manufacturer, I know that the fewer unique designs I have, the cheaper it will be to manufacture my product line. If I make both chips and boards, the same economy of scale applies to both the chips themselves and the assembled boards.

If I can determine both my chip and board yield at in-circuit test, and configure each manufactured device to its maximum possible stable capability, then my manufacturing product yield is maximized.

This type of yield binning is nothing new.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Splab]

Also, this will definitely pump the sales of the 6950 board. When precious little snowflake needs a new GFX to run the new game given for Christmas, there is definitely going to be some pushing for the "cheap" 6950 with upgrade in mind.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[EmagGeek]

That's entirely possible, but one must consider that they may run into stability issues in unlocking the masked processors. They don't create a cheaper card because they want to. They create it because it allows them to make money selling "defective" product as a simply lesser-capable product.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you're wrong about how parts are binned. It's generally not so much about yield binning, and more about market segments, 10% of the market will buy the best part for twice the price, 80% will buy whatever is best value for money, and the last 10% will buy whatever is cheapest (percentages made up), the trouble is when you are in the business of semiconductor manufacture, and you have tweaked your process to 99.98% yield with 0.02% tolerances, over 80% of the parts coming off the line are topend parts, just about your entire cost of manufacture is in plant capital, and 90% of your profit comes from the top 10% units. You basically have to create an artificial lowend to create a highend market. Generally it makes more sense to fuse parts to lower spec, as softmods basically ruin sales of topend devices.

Environmentally friendly, fuck no. Required business practise, almost certainly.

It also doesn't make a lot of environmental sense to mass-produce parts which are obsolete in 6 months, it would be better from that perspective to develop semiconductor fabs until they reached their natural atomic-resolution limits, and then produce parts that are as good as they practically can be. But that would again completely canabalise their business and they'd go bust. It would also be a disaster for everyone who needs more computing power right now, and the results of that would probably be much worse than the silicon waste we have now (which is mostly energy and gold, as silicon, copper and boron are abundant and cheap).

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[realityimpaired]

The overwhelming majority of consumers will likely never hear about this mod even being possible. They'll buy the 6950 for an entirely different reason: it's cheaper, and it's good enough for most gaming content.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the natural yields and market demands don't align and they have to cripple good hardware, but your cautionary note is a good one.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[msauve]

The overwhelming majority of consumers wouldn't even think buying a separate graphics card, let alone paying $300 for one. The overwhelming majority of consumers will just go out to Big Box Store and buy whatever prepackaged PC appeals to their wallet.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Anonymous Coward]

Copper is not that cheap. However, I see nowhere in your post the incredible suggestion that maybe, just maybe, a quad core 3GHz CPU is not necessary to run most software, yet software manages to find a way to expand to use all that hardware and give the same result back...

The real harm to the environment is bloated software.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[QuantumBeep]

Compare the quantity and quality of free software available with what we had ten years ago.

The massive surfeit of processing power means that developers are free to do other cool stuff instead of spending all their time optimizing performance.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say is true. However once you reach that 99.98% yield, why not cripple the features in software. This way, you can have the end user purchase a "low grade" video card now, and upgrade (unlock) later through the purchase of a software code that is placed in the driver software suite.

Before anyone bitches and complains about the idea of selling hardware as a service, we already do it all the time with cloud hosting and what not. Want more virtual CPUs? You might have to pay extra regardless of the fact the hosting hardware has spare to go around.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Khyber]

"They don't create a cheaper card because they want to."

GeForce 6 series would LOVE to disagree with you. 6200LE unlocked to full performance of 6800ULTRA because the 6200LE was just intentionally crippled in software/firmware. The chips were PERFECTLY FINE.

It's done to force market disparity and to gain favor to their stuff. It's a goddamned dirty trick and these shitheads all need to be held accountable for it.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Khyber]

"The massive surfeit of processing power means that developers are free to do other cool stuff instead of spending all their time optimizing performance."

Yep, it gives them more time to bloat up the software with DRM, privacy-invading garbage, and shit YOU DON'T NEED but THEY WANT SO THEY CAN CONTROL YOU.

Optimize your shit. Fuck you if you can't make it as slim and as fast as MenuetOS, you don't belong in the programming industry and you should go back to flipping burgers.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[izomiac]

What has always confounded me is how this is fairly unique to semiconductors. A chef doesn't overseason 80% of the steaks he cooks so he can charge more for premium ones. Movie theaters don't charge extra for not paying someone to annoy you in premium screens.

I've never understood the logic of spending money to make your product inferior. It'd be suicide to spend that money and then have your "highend" products cost twice as much but perform about the same as your competition's "standard" model.

I'm not saying that's not the best way to make profit, but it opens a huge vulnerability that a proper competitor would exploit. But maybe I'm being paranoid in thinking that semiconductor (e.g. LCD) manufacturers would collute. (High cost-of-entry industries seem particularly vulnerable to this sort of behavior.)

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[QuantumBeep]

Congratulations, whoever you are, on the success of your new SlashdotParanoiaBot. It's ready for release.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[rockfistus]

We should learn from this eventually & be able to implement a system that profits but doesn't waste resources due to "supply and demand" at some point in the future perfect(TM.) Less money making bullshit and more humanity. It's going to be a long evolution.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[Khyber]

You could only wish I was a bot. Sadly, I've been there and done that. I quit working software and went with pure hardware instead, with arguably more use than your current computers and software.

Re:It's about manufacturing yield...

[cheekyboy]

Then they should make high end 400$+ cards with extra value.

ie. dual DVI + analgue out + hdmi.
DDR5 1.5GIG ram or 2gig ram. instead of just 1 GIG of DDR3.

Its kind of silly to see 450$+ cards with the same ram as $70 cards.

I also prefer the latest model low/mid range, as their wattage usage is much lower, which does translate to
real dollars per year if you game X hrs/week or idle desktop 247/365.25.

5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[whovian]

It was possible to use the flip side of 5.25" floppies by notching the other edge of the disk. Specialized cutters were sold for making square notches, but round-hole paper punchers worked too. Manufacturers certified, of course, only the original side of the disk, but I never had a problem using the flip side.

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[Glonoinha]

I used to do this also (had a dedicated hole puncher made for the purpose - it was blue, as I recall.) I hypothesized that the problems (rare, but not unheard of) weren't from the media not being good enough, but because running the disk backwards gave all the grit and crap that got caught in the white soft layers of the cover a chance to come loose and get back onto the media, and occasionally onto the drive head.

But yea, given that a new ST 251-1 (40 meg hard drive) was $300~$400 at the time, being able to store 2.4 megabytes of data on a single $1 floppy disk seemed worth the risk.

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[realityimpaired]

I actually remember a couple of games I had back on the IBM XT that used the flip side of the disk, so they could be distributed on a single floppy.

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[Anonymous Coward]

The IBM XT used 360K double sided drives. There was no need to flip the disk to read the reverse side as it could read both sides at the same time. (Also, flipped disks wouldn't work)

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[kevorkian]

The comment of "flipped disks wouldnt work" is misleading ..

When you would read data from the rive , you would specify the "side" .. Yes , you could not read the second side from the drive directly by specifying the second side.

But you could still flip it like everyone else.

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[drsmithy]

But yea, given that a new ST 251-1 (40 meg hard drive) was $300~$400 at the time, being able to store 2.4 megabytes of data on a single $1 floppy disk seemed worth the risk.

You couldn't do this with 1.2MB disks as they were already double-sided (ie: the drives had two R/W heads), so your memory might be a bit hazy there.

IIRC, the biggest disks that could be used as "flippies" were 720K - 360K on each side (though might have only been 360K - 2x180K ?). Single-sided drives on IBM-compatible PCs were uncommon, however, as even the IBM XT had a double-sided drive.

Re:5.25" floppies: instant 2x space

[Glonoinha]

Holy crap, you're right. SSDD disks (single sided, double density) were 360K on a side, and that's what we were using at a buck a piece.

The other trick was to drill out the notch on a 3.5" double density disk so the drive thought it was a high density, upping the space from 720K to 1.44M (highly recommended that you test the disk first with scratch data, as they didn't all work at the high density settings.)

Grab it while it's hot

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

AMD has already got to know about this mischief and I bet new revisions of HD6850 will have a hardware protection against unlocking into HD6970. So, grab it while it's hot.

Thanks for the link - psst, don' tell anyone else

[G3ckoG33k]

Thanks for the link - psst, don' tell anyone else or else AMD will stop it

3 words for you

[thegarbz]

I got 3 words for you. Economies of scale.

It underpins the manufacturing of all processors currently out there. What is being done here is nothing new. It's as old as overclocking. Some manufactures tried various ways of locking them. Ultimately though once you customise a chip enough it adds to the bottom line production cost. That's why AMD's version of hardware locking at the time included setting 5 jumpers external to the CPU die and then laser cutting them. Remember the pencil trick to get Athlons unlocked?

Creating a truly weaker card means customised production runs, which means setup costs for the batch. Not something you want when margins are next to nothing.

Re:3 words for you

[DaveGod]

TFA is reporting a 100% success rate, but don't assume every 6950 is going to mod as well as this batch. It may be that the foundry have utterly nailed this chip and every single one is going to roll out at 6970 spec. But, it's probably just scale economies on the initial supply, scale economies do change over time. It might also be that *spins wheel* they deliberately did this because the 6970 is the only fully tested board yet. Or *spins wheel* they wanted these rumours to help sell their cards.

Or *spins wheel* their BIOS is coping brilliantly with potential problems, so even failures are being perceived as successes. For example, AMD's new approach is to underclock cards when they get near the TDP limit. Perhaps a "genuine" 6970 is only ever downclocking itself on Furmark, while the modded 6950's are doing so much more easily - quite plausable given you still only have the 6950 power connectors.

Anyone planning on buying one of these cards just found another reason to grab one sooner rather than later, but personally I'm going to be waiting a while anyway before considering modding mine.

THEN ill use other hardware

[chronoss2010]

End of stupid

Anyway to unlock it to NVIDIA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Radeon blows goats, despite what people pretend!

Re:Anyway to unlock it to NVIDIA?

[fostware]

I read that as "blows goatse"

But that image is the hole left by a nVidia card melting through the laptop base and into their lap...

Stealing.

[Anonymous Coward]

So... if you buy the cheaper unit and hack it, you're effectively stealing $100 from AMD.

Shame on you. /sarcasm

Re:O! the Lawyers!

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm pretty sure Overclocking voids the warranty, so if someone manages to make it work, yay for him, but officially disabling the core if it came from a suspect batch is how to avoid company-destroying lawsuits.

Re: Crippleware

[TaoPhoenix]

My guess is that it only makes sense for batches that have failed Quality Control. No one ever has a legal problem with back ordering and supply shortages. Then per comments elsewhere, if someone overclocks and wins, great, it just becomes an urban anecdote to be shared around pizza.

But to purposely wreck a QC-certified higher grade item purely for marketing positioning is a much uglier math problem.

Re: Crippleware

[Kreigaffe]

nah you're looking at it wrong.

graphics card makers have been doing this for many many years.

so you get a new card design. the biggest cost is going to be setting up production for it. once everything's all tooled up and ready to go, your biggest expense is out of the way.

then you get a better design. you tool up for it, but you still want to sell the older design at a lower cost -- not everyone wants to drop bank for top of the line. except, dang. you're not making those cards any more. well, rather than go through the expense of re-tooling everything and doing limited runs of an inferior product... it's a much better decision to just take what you are producing and cripple a certain number to meet the specs for the old card and sell them. Sure, profit margins might be more slim than had you stuck with the original tooling, but it's important for your production to be of the most advanced card possible -- so you won't need to redesign and retool everything for the longest time possible.

basically, it's probably quite a bit cheaper for them to sell a higher-tier card for a lower price with some features disabled than it would be for them to take production offline and retool for an already-obsolete design

Question...

[Ecuador]

During that era I had an IBM PS/2 386SX, and I could not figure out why I was hearing the stories about the hole in 720KB floppies, when I could simply take said floppies, put them in my drive and format them using the appropriate switch (was it something like /F:1.44?) at the 1.44MB capacity. They would then work (unreliably) as high density diskettes. So why the hole? Was it a different OS version that did not let you format at will? The PS/2 came with IBM DOS 4 originally IIRC but I had upgraded later (eventually to 6.22).

Do they go to 11?

[MtlDty]

Why don't they just make the 6970 better and make 6970 be the top number, and make that a little better?

Re:Do they go to 11?

[QuantumBeep]

History. The next one better will be 6990, and it may be a dual-GPU card.

DL Burners

[WED Fan]

I bought a NEC DVD burner a few years ago. There was a flash mod that upgraded it to a DL burner. Worked great. Basically, same hardware, just a BIOS change.

We used to do that

[0123456]

When I worked for a hardware company, we built one basic chip and different boards used a different BIOS. In theory you could have installed a BIOS from the fastest cards --- if we hadn't blown fuses in the chip to prevent that from working -- but the high performance boards used the chips which had been proven to work reliably at those clock speeds with all components enabled, while the lower performance boards either didn't check out at the highest clock speeds or didn't pass all the hardware tests so some parts of the chip were suspect and had to be disabled.

So in our case if anyone had managed to get a different BIOS working on the chip and work around the blown fuses, odds are it would be flakey or simply refuse to work.

Re:We used to do that

[Khyber]

"So in our case if anyone had managed to get a different BIOS working on the chip and work around the blown fuses, odds are it would be flakey or simply refuse to work."

Psh, we just wrote new microcode to handle the broken sections.

Peek Poke End Run

[Anonymous Coward]

Help me, help me. I'm trapped in the internets. All I have are this AMD Radeon 6950 and two tubes of Preparation H.

How Long

[DaMattster]

until AMD issues a DMCA takedown notice.

Same die, different result

[ericcj]

The C6950 and C6970 can come from the same wafer yet not be equivalent. Semiconductor wafers, like everything else that is manufactured, do not always come out exactly to spec. Instead they lie within a certain tolerance. The C6970 may require etchings that are 45 nm +/- 0.5 nm. The C6950 could have more relaxed tolerances, and only require 45 nm +/- 2.0 nm. Only 10% of the yield may meet the specifications required by the C6970. Also, the C6950 does not use as much of the die area, so that zone does not need to be to spec.

Assuming they have identical warranties, the C6970 probably goes through more rigorous burn-in and testing at the factory.

been there done that heh

[luther349]

people have been modding there cards for ages. my onbord 3100 on my labby can be overclocked to 800mhz with extra colling. as for the 6850 it has less connectors then the 6870 therefor cant draw as much power under load. so unlocking the extra core still isnt gonna give you the same preformance as a real one. you might even get errors due to the lack of power it can draw to the extra core. but of course that doesn't stop the modders any.

"a few more errors"

[Viewsonic]

Generally we found that the disk would work once, maybe twice before it was tossed for good. We tried all brands with no luck. This was back on the Amiga 500, and it used a bit of...unique way to read and write to floppies, so maybe it was the drive more than anything else.

Re: Crippleware

[lsatenstein]

In the auto industry and similar manufacturing industries, you are quite correct. In mother board and perhaps even wafer production, the MB is drilled by the same digitally controlled equipment for the new device as for the old one. The cost is really for creating a new drill and component insertion program, and the big expenses are for setting up the marketing costs -- new boxes, new advertising, new docs and QA testing,

Re: Crippleware

[realityimpaired]

In economics, there's a simple theory called the Laffer Curve. It's talking about taxation, but the basic principle can be applied to pretty much any equation where you're considering the economics of profit versus price point.

The basic principle is that your final revenue (profit) is driven by the price point... if you set the price point too high, then your revenue actually drops. The key is trying to figure out what the price point is where you can maximize your sales, and thus your profit.

By keeping production simple, they can minimize (and stabilize) the first part of that equation, manufacturing costs. This allows them to focus purely on price point, and to find a price point that maximizes profit while not necessarily maximizing margin. Which is better: selling 1 unit with a margin of $150, or selling 200 units with a margin of $1 each?

If they can move significantly more units at a smaller profit margin, then it just makes pure economic sense to set the price point lower. As for why they would, then, disable certain features in the device? So that they can market the same device at a higher margin to enthusiasts. It's similar to how car manufacturers can add a body kit and a Type R sticker to a Civic, and sell it for $5000 more to idiots looking to go faster. (the extra weight from the body kit would actually make it slower....)

Why do you say 'we' when you mean 'I'?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a member of your group and I disagree with your thoughts. Why do you insist on consistently saying "we" instead of "I"?

Not really news IMO

[Hamsterdan]

Radeon 9500 > 9700
GeForce 6600 > 6600 GT
X800 Pro > X800 XT PE
Radeon > FireGL
GeForce > Quadro
AMD X3 > AMD X4

So on... Manufacturers have always sold hardware that had been *crippled* on purpose to meet demand for lower market when yield is *too* good. They're not really mods, you're just getting those parts to run the way they were designed to...

Re:Not really news IMO

[rockfistus]

Hey! Sshhhhh! The overclocking douchebags can hear you.

Re: Crippleware

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's similar to how car manufacturers can add a body kit and a Type R sticker to a Civic, and sell it for $5000 more to idiots looking to go faster. (the extra weight from the body kit would actually make it slower....)

But the Type R sticker adds extra horsepower which overcomes the body kit weight. And don't discount the acceleration boost provided by the spoiler.