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increasing preformance on my geforce 6800?

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for one thing, disabiling af hardly helps. and i won't bother with a motherboard update, i'm pretty much up-to-date.
 
first of all, what is 'unlocking'? and second, is that like overclocking? does it have a chance of screwing my card up? i'm not in the mood for that.
 
Taken from the RT FAQ.

1. Run RivaTuner and look at the main tab. You'll see your current graphic processors configuration and amount of active pixel / vertex units in device status string, for example: NV40 (A1,12x1,5vp).
2. Click "Customize" button located at the right of device status string to activate device customization toolbar.
3. Click "Graphics subsystem diagnostic report" button in device customization toolbar to activate RivaTuner's diagnostic module.
4. Scroll down "Report categories" list and tick "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" report category.
5. Click "Capture report" button in the "Report preview" window to refresh report.
6. Scroll down "Report preview" window and find "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" manually or simply double click "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" category name in the "Report categories" list to automatically navigate to "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" in the "Report preview".
7. Look at line displaying "SW units mask". If you see "none" there, it means that VGA BIOS allow activating all non-hardware masked GPU pixel / vertex units, so your configuration is determined by hardware. In this case, I strictly recommend you to forget about softmodding if you are beginner and if you don't understand what do you do exactly. Power users may proceed and try to activate hardware masked units. If you see something different there (for example, pixel 0001b, vertex 000000b) - you have high chances to unlock software locked units.
8. Click "Low-level system settings" button in device customization toolbar to activate "Low-level system tweaks" panel.
9. Select "NVStrap driver" tab.
10. Press "Install" button if you never installed the driver before. If you already have it installed after the previous version of RivaTuner, ensure that you have followed RivaTuner's warning and updated driver when RivaTuner offered you to do it. If you have mistakenly ignored the warning, simply press "Reinstall" button to update the driver manually.
11. If you are a power user, if you have read the previous questions carefully and understand what does the "Allow enabling masked units" option do, and, the most important, if you understand what side effects can it cause - enable this option. Otherwise proceed with enabling software masked units only.
12. Select "Custom" in the "Active pixel/vertex units configuration" list to activate the "Customize" button, then click it to activate "Custom graphics processor configuration" dialog.
13. Tick all disabled pixel and vertex units and click "OK".
14. Reboot system when prompted.
16. Start RivaTuner and look again at your current graphics processor configuration and amount of active pixel / vertex units in device status string. If you see no changes there - the units you tried to unlock are hardware masked and you have not enabled "Allow enabling hardware masked units" option. Otherwise, if you see desired configuration, - proceed with system stability testing to ensure that unlocked units are really fully functional.

Important note for users / display adapter sellers / reviewers testing many NV4x based boards in succession: If you're experimenting with NV40 softmodding, please ensure that you've uninstalled NVStrap or set "Active pixel/vertex pipelines" to "determined by VGA BIOS" before replacing an adapter with new one. Otherwise you'll see the pixel / vertex units configuration set by NVStrap instead of hardware default configuration. If you forgot to do it before installing new adapter - simply uninstall NVStrap or click "Reset to default" button in the "Custom graphics processor configuration" dialog then reboot the PC to see hardware default configuration for new display adapter.
 
Look at this pic: Text

In "Target Adapter" you'll see the second little window that says "256bit NV40...." Now..click the arrow next to it and then click the vid card icon. Then click the NVstrap tab then..you need to install NVstrap. Then once it installs it may ask you to restart yoru computer..do so. Then you'll see the AGP sideband addressing support..put it on Determined by VGA Bios, then the next one "Agp fastwrites support" same. Then Graphics Adapter IDentification Determined by Hardware. Then put in the check boxes under "Graphics Processor Config..."Allow enabling hardware masked units" And do so for the box below it. Then click Customize. You'll see Bit 01, 02 and so on. If you look to the right you'll see under the header cell "HW Masked" Third one down will have a "yes" in it so will the 13th one. To the left of all the cells you'll see check marks. But if you notice there will be no checkmarks next to the ones with "yes" in the cells. Now put the check marks next to those. Then press OK.
 
WOAH!!! the yellowish water in cs : source isnt supposed to be yellowish???
since when? also i think it makes aztec look good..
 
sanius if it says 12 then 1unit is masked becuase there are 16 total

Now follow Cdubneeddeal's directions and you will be able to get the 4 pipes unlocked

When you click customize a table will pop up, the first 4 rows will have 3 checkmarks next to them

WHICH EVER OF THOSE FIRST 4 ROWS IS MISSING A CHECKMARK PLACE ONE IN THAT EMPTY SPOT



then there are 4 more rows almost blank, after those there are 6 same deal here dude, whereever a check mark is missing put one there (they end at bit13)


BTW try putting one checkmark at a time, restart run 3dmark05 and look for artifacts (especially game3) if ok then leave that chackmark and try the second. If you want help do what ppl tell you here they know their stuff...from your last post it doesn't look like you do.

good luck
 
ok..now it says 16x. I have 16 pipelines when i restart, can someone tell me some things first?

1) isn't the level of pipelines disabled because they are cheaper? which means my card has 16 pipelines, with 4 disabled?

2) whats the success rate with enabling pipelines? if i get artifacts, thats fine. i'll turn it back to default. but I don't want to risk a wrecked card, and I don't think they will let me return it for a new one if I do.
 
sigh, ah well. I really am not in the mood to do anything shady to my card. I would overclock, but coolbits is like "no! don't do that, please!" if I try to overclock 2D, but 3D lets me up it to like 400/800. ah well. i'll just wait for new drivers, or just wait until I can get a new processer. seems there is nothing more I can do..
 
No offense, dude, but the people in this thread have given VERY good advice for you. Just follow it. Take your time and try to unlock the pipes given the instructions by the previous users. I don't think they can get any more blatent. You will increase your performance.
 
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
No!

Fastwrites should be left on unless you experience problems.

As for AGP Aperture it is a highly debated subject. SOme argue equal to VRAM, others say 1/2 of system RAM. THe best advice anyone can give is leave it at 128mb unless you are playing DIII or HL2 or Far Cry.

Secondly 2500+ will not bottleneck him much at all. Now is that 512mb in Dual Channel or in Single Channel. Dual Channel will improve performance a LITTLE. But going to 1 gig should increase by a decent amount. For the record i get better HL2 framerates with my 5900XT @ those settings so something is definately wrong.

What Chipset drivers are you using? What M/B are you using? Can you get us some voltage readings? When you install the drivers can you geta reading on clockspeeds?

-Kevin
Click to expand...


why do i need a 256 apature ... fo HL2 D3 and FC? ive had mine at 128 and it plays fine in HL2, havent reinstalled doom3 and well ok FC is BSOD'ing the minute i load a map
 
Because those games commonly use more than 256mb of texture memory, moreso DIII. As stated on DIII on Ultra settings uses 512mb which is 256mb of onboard texture memory and 256mb of aperture memory. You could probably be just fine with 128mb but for those games 256mb is safer.

-Kevin
 
Originally posted by: Sanius
ok..now it says 16x. I have 16 pipelines when i restart, can someone tell me some things first?

1) isn't the level of pipelines disabled because they are cheaper? which means my card has 16 pipelines, with 4 disabled?

2) whats the success rate with enabling pipelines? if i get artifacts, thats fine. i'll turn it back to default. but I don't want to risk a wrecked card, and I don't think they will let me return it for a new one if I do.
Click to expand...

Don't forget about the vertex pipe. You'll want to try unlocking that too. It's just as easy as unlocking the other pipes that you've already done. On the screen where you added the checkmark to enable 16x1, further down you'll see the vertex shaders listed in a similar way. Again, another one will show as disabled. Add a checkmark to enable it, just like you did before.

To answer a few of these questions:

1) In a word, no. The reason nVidia provides specs for the 6800 as 12x1/5 is pretty simple. When creating GPU's (in this case the NV40) to make the high end (Ultra and GT) cores, they have to be a "perfect" match to the specification. In this case, the GPU has to work properly at 16x1/6 at the proper speed without artifacts. Now, since the manufacturing of these cores isn't 100% perfect, sometimes there are defects in the GPU's, making them unable to run properly at these specs. If the location of the defective pipe can be identified and disabled, the GPU will run stable (albeit slower due to a disabled pipes). So instead of losing $$$ on a non-perfect chip, nVidia can sell the disabled-pipeline chip for at least some $$. They don't lose money, consumer gets a cheaper product. Win-Win instead of lose-lose.

So, what happens next is the important part. So, now manufacturers have a product line (ie the 6800). Well, since these cards are cheaper, demand is greater for them. People are willing to sacrifice some performance to save some $$. Pretty soon, nVidia can't meet the demand for the GPU's for these cards, so they ship GPU's which don't have defective pipelines to keep up with production demands for these cards. However, the cards have to be sold at the 6800 specs, so working pipes are disabled so the cards will be 12x1/5. So there is a chance that the GPU is actually quite capable of doing 16x1/6. By using RivaTuner, you simply bypass the lock mechanism to see if your particular GPU can do 16x1/6.

2) Success rate is about 90% that at least either the vertex or shader pipe is without defect. It's just over 50% that both are working and can be unlocked without error (probably greater now that 15.3 is out). There is virtually no chance that enabling these pipes will cause damage to your card, and the unlocked pipes can easily be relocked if the pipes end up being actually defective.


 
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