Geforce 6200 SLI!

[goophie]

Avalon, where are you picking up these leadtek 6200 cards? I'm looking for a chance at unlocking one of those cards as well.

also, can you unlock agp 6200's?

thanks

 

[Bull Dog]

NO becuase they use the NV44 core which doesn't have anything to unlock

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Bull Dog
NO becuase they use the NV44 core which doesn't have anything to unlock

really? I though the agps were all unlockable, just the TC pci-e were not unlockble.

 

[imported_Finny]

Sadly, from personal experience, I can attest to this non-unlockability in the AGP 6200s. 🙁

Ah well, good luck with that SLI'd 6200s thing. 😀

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

ya, please let us know how it goes and try fear out when you can!

 

[beggerking]

wow, so cool. Avalon, do you get full 6600 speed ? or is it still 6200 speed with 6600 label on it?

did SLI work? how is it compare to 7800GT?

oh,, I'm sorry its toasted... but congrads on getting a new one..

 

[imported_Finny]

...The only reason I can think of for comparing a 6200/6600 SLI to a 7800 GT is for a good laugh. I highly doubt that two of these could even scratch the surface of the 7800 GT's power.

A slightly more fair comparison might be with a 6800GS/GT, but even then...

Of course, this would probably only cost someone, say, ~$100 if he/she were to get lucky on two artifact-free unlocked, refurbed 6200s, so the price-preformance ratio might actually justify it...

 

[beggerking]

Originally posted by: Finny
...The only reason I can think of for comparing a 6200/6600 SLI to a 7800 GT is for a good laugh. I highly doubt that two of these could even scratch the surface of the 7800 GT's power.

A slightly more fair comparison might be with a 6800GS/GT, but even then...

Of course, this would probably only cost someone, say, ~$100 if he/she were to get lucky on two artifact-free unlocked, refurbed 6200s, so the price-preformance ratio might actually justify it...

lol. you are probably right. I set my hopes to high for a $100 setup..

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: beggerking
wow, so cool. Avalon, do you get full 6600 speed ? or is it still 6200 speed with 6600 label on it?

did SLI work? how is it compare to 7800GT?

oh,, I'm sorry its toasted... but congrads on getting a new one..

Yes, I get the full 6600 speed with a 6200 unlocked. In fact, when I change the deviceID to 6600, or bios flash to a 6600, I gain a small boost from that as well. Not sure why, but we're talking 250 3dmarks in '05, which is significant when you're in the 2000's range. I remember checking a game or two out as well, and noticing a very slight boost.

As far as the AGP version, it was supposed to be unlockable. I don't know if they had different core revisions that wouldn't unlock, but back when 6200 unlocking was going on, it did work for AGP versions.

Since the Leadtek fried, I didn't get to test SLI mode until I received the Asus, due to not having the deviceID problem figured out at the time. Flashing the Asus to a 6600 allowed SLI to work in 2d mode, but the Asus would produce a few artifacts when unlocked, so I flashed it back to a 6200 and sold it to someone who will be able to enjoy the card as it was intended.

I've been finding the Leadtek PCI-e 6200's on Newegg's refurb section.
My original one I bought for $50, and it unlocks and runs at 400/675. It's max is around 450/710, but I don't wish to run the memory that close to max, and the core gets too warm running at 450mhz. So far my costs are pretty good...$50 for the first card, $8 to return the toasted Leadtek I had originally, and $59 for this new Leadtek coming in on Wednesday. So ~$120 when it's all said and done, if I can get this new Leadtek to unlock. I've had great luck with Leadtek, and no luck with Asus (gone through multiple cards of each, mostly personal use at the time), so we'll see. I'll be able to finally get some benches up by the end of this week if all goes well, but keep in mind this probably won't be a viable option for anyone since...

A) PCI-e 6200's are no longer in production and for the most part aren't for sale
B) You can only get them at a good price refurbed
C) You're taking a chance at getting a working card when it's a refurb
D) You're taking a chance at the unlocking not working satisfactorily.
E) You can probably get refurbed 6600's for $10 more

I'm only doing this project for personal amusement. Other than that, this will actually be a fairly capable setup at an amazing price if I can get it to work.

 

[beggerking]

awesome!! It 'd be sweet to have a $100 Sli setup. I've always been a advocate for multi-CPU technologies. Why have 1 chip running at high temperature when you could use 2, each running at cooler temperature. Traditionally its more expensive, but your experiment really cracks it.

 

[Avalon]

Alrighty, so I've got the new Leadtek, whick thankfully also mods.
Leadtek - 3/3
Asus - 0/2

Anyway...I've already got the card BIOS flashed to a 6600. Right now, my original Leadtek I'm just leaving soft-ID'd and soft-unlocked for ease.

The only problem I'm having is that a BIOS flash does not set me to 8 pixel pipelines. I'm still stuck at 4 after the flash, even though I can confirm the other 4 do work. I could have sworn that when I was playing with the Asus, flashing it caused it to show up as 8 pipes, because I know I had removed all prior rivatuner settings at that time.

Anyway, while I'm going to go flash my new Leadtek with that Asus BIOS, does anyone have any ideas on how to unlock a secondary card?

 

[Avalon]

Up in hopes someone might know how to softmod a secondary card, or any other method to get the card to unlock.

 

[Cooler]

So will a SLI 6200 = 6600GT?

 

[Avalon]

If there are benches out there of 6600DDR2 SLI'd, it should be almost identical to that. I'm guessing around the speed of a 6800NU.

 

[Avalon]

Well, I sort of have it working. I still can't unlock the cards, but I have them SLI'd as 4 pipe 6600's. I'm having a whole assortment of issues here. 3dmark05 kept crashing everytime it went to calculate my score, and CS:S ran at about half the framerates of a single card. Now, granted these cards aren't unlocked and my single card was, I'd still think that at equal clockspeeds + a little overhead from SLI, that I'd come close to my original fps in CS:S.

In FEAR, I do notice a framerate boost, as the game feels smoother yet looks much jerkier. Does that make any sense? It almost seems like the cards are rendering internally just fine, but I'm only seeing every other frame, so it's like playing a very smooth slideshow.

I switched from the 79.11 drivers to the 81.64's, or whichever is the latest official Nvidia drivers, and that hasn't changed anything. I downclocked my Opteron from 2.8 to 2.7, and lowered my memory speeds. Then I did some fiddling with Rivatuner. Now 3dmark completes and says I'm getting a score of 3800. When I watch Return to Proxycon, it looks very jerky yet smooth at the same time, and the framerate is noticeably higher.

Any thoughts? Ideas? SLI experts here?
I think I'm going to reflash my cards to a different BIOS and uninstall Rivatuner, and see what happens. Also, I put up some pics in the OP.

 

[beggerking]

Can you flash them to the same bios?

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: beggerking
awesome!! It 'd be sweet to have a $100 Sli setup. I've always been a advocate for multi-CPU technologies. Why have 1 chip running at high temperature when you could use 2, each running at cooler temperature. Traditionally its more expensive, but your experiment really cracks it.

Do you know anything about how videocards work? Why would two cards run cooler than one?

Not flaming... I am curious to hear the theory behind this as it is generally accepted that two cards run hotter overall than one.

 

[beggerking]

Originally posted by: Crazyfool

Originally posted by: beggerking
awesome!! It 'd be sweet to have a $100 Sli setup. I've always been a advocate for multi-CPU technologies. Why have 1 chip running at high temperature when you could use 2, each running at cooler temperature. Traditionally its more expensive, but your experiment really cracks it.

Do you know anything about how videocards work? Why would two cards run cooler than one?

Not flaming... I am curious to hear the theory behind this as it is generally accepted that two cards run hotter overall than one.

because you get to use 2 fans/heatsinks, or perhaps passively cooled.

 

[tvdang7]

where can i find pci-e 6200s that unlock ? i dont see any at all at newegg. which brands unlock.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Seems to be Leadtek with the most success with unlocking.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Just flash 'em

 

[blckgrffn]

Huh...

Well, I wish that I had more info for you Avalon, but here's to hoping that you figure it out! 🙂

Nat

 

[Nextman916]

Ive been following this thread, its interesting, i havent heard of anyone else but you trying this.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: Nextman916
Ive been following this thread, its interesting, i havent heard of anyone else but you trying this.

Yeah, really. What's the goal? To make two 6200's run as fast as a 6600? 😕

 

[AzNPinkTuv]

well in theoryh 2 6200's unlocked u 6600's so hes just trying to do it for personal enjnoyment