John Blaze! Turn your FX5900 into a 5950Ultra!

[SoulAssassin]

See here.

 

[tedinde]

How do you solder on the extra 128 memory?? To make it 256mb's like an ultra??

 

[ss284]

It changes the name of the card, and the default clock speeds. Other than that, its rather a rather worthless and risky procedure to do on your video card. Not to mention that your card has to be capable of the default clock speeds of 475-950, which already gives you a card thats identical to a 9750 (with a theoretical 128 mb of ram) in performance.

Tedinde: Apparently the nvidia bios checks the memory size at boot, so it will detect as a 128 mb card.

-Steve

 

[pxc]

Originally posted by: tedinde
How do you solder on the extra 128 memory?? To make it 256mb's like an ultra??

My 5900nu GPU won't run at the 5950 Ultra's speed, but the memory runs at 950MHz. I've read that some people have done voltage mods to get the 5900nu GPU to run faster.

 

[maxcom]

these could make buying a used ultra very interesting

 

[CyBeRiANx]

Originally posted by: ss284
It changes the name of the card, and the default clock speeds. Other than that, its rather a rather worthless and risky procedure to do on your video card. Not to mention that your card has to be capable of the default clock speeds of 475-950, which already gives you a card thats identical to a 9750 (with a theoretical 128 mb of ram) in performance.

Tedinde: Apparently the nvidia bios checks the memory size at boot, so it will detect as a 128 mb card.

-Steve

I beg to differ, this mod actually increased my 3DMark 2001 scores by 1k, and my 2003 by almost 500. I can also overclock the card much higher then I could before.
Dont speak before you know what you're talking about.

 

[ss284]

So you card with the standard 5900 bios clocked at 475/950 ended up with 500 less points in 3dmark2k3 when compared to the card flashed at the stock speeds(475/950)?

If so, I stand corrected. I just dont understand why your results say the opposite of what the OP of the linked thread reported.

I suppose better overclocking is a wothwhile reason though.

-Steve

 

[CyBeRiANx]

Actually, quite a few people had great results.

Here are some links. (If posting these links are in violation of something, please let me know)

http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=techdisplayadapters&Number=3258885&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1&vc=1

http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3766

Btw, my card is not overclocked. I found I only gained about 150pts for 3d2k3 with it oc'd, so its not worth it.

My card is a BFG Asylum FX 5900nu, flashed with leadtek bios to a 5950u.

 

[SoulAssassin]

/. just posted an article on this.

 

[Stefan2000]

I can also overclock the card much higher then I could before.

I've heard that by flashing the card to a 5950 the default voltage is increased slightly, and this makes it possible to achieve higher clock speeds. So, it seems that what Nvidia did to enable the 5950 to reach the higher clock speeds they run at was have the bios bump the voltage up a bit. So it may be possible that this mod might allow 5900 cards that otherwise might not be able to overclock to 5950 levels to do so. Of course this may make the card run significantly hotter and reduce it's lifespan.

One thing that might be interesting is whether or not this mod would work in reverse. That is would it be possible to take a 5950 and flash it to a 5900? Why would anyone does this? One reason might be to decrease heat production and power consumption. perhaps a 5950 with it's voltage reduced and down clocked wouldn't run as hot and need as much cooling thus allowing the use of a quieter fan and/or a heatsink that doesn't block PCI slots.

 

[pcmax]

Originally posted by: Stefan2000

I can also overclock the card much higher then I could before.

I've heard that by flashing the card to a 5950 the default voltage is increased slightly, and this makes it possible to achieve higher clock speeds. So, it seems that what Nvidia did to enable the 5950 to reach the higher clock speeds they run at was have the bios bump the voltage up a bit. So it may be possible that this mod might allow 5900 cards that otherwise might not be able to overclock to 5950 levels to do so. Of course this may make the card run significantly hotter and reduce it's lifespan.

One thing that might be interesting is whether or not this mod would work in reverse. That is would it be possible to take a 5950 and flash it to a 5900? Why would anyone does this? One reason might be to decrease heat production and power consumption. perhaps a 5950 with it's voltage reduced and down clocked wouldn't run as hot and need as much cooling thus allowing the use of a quieter fan and/or a heatsink that doesn't block PCI slots.

Thats what I would have thought but from reading the various threads and having just flashed mine the core temps are reading less after the flash, go figure. Oh and 460/950 was about my limit before, now running 490/980 through numerous benchmarks and a few games. Time will tell.

 

[Tates]

This in from LardOCP.com:

LardNews 2nd Edition Sunday January 11, 2004
Posted by Steve 10:09 AM (CST)

GFFX 5900 To 5950 Mod:
We?ve heard about this GFFX 5900 to 5950 mod all weekend. People are flashing their video BIOS to get a 5900 card to think it is a 5950. The mod does almost nothing for performance but it does look like it helps with overclocking. I tried this mod myself and it gave no performance increase at all, and oddly enough it didn?t help my overclocking either, so keep that in mind if you decide to try this on your own.

*UPDATE* I have had a few readers send me e-mail saying the same thing about this ?mod?. Once they flashed the BIOS on their VGA card, no drivers would install. Flashed it back to the original and the drivers still wouldn?t install. I advise you again?.do not attempt these types of mods unless you are willing to risk your card. Even the best of BIOS flashes can go bad and leave you with a dead card.


I want to let you know I just tried this mod, I have an eVGA 5900 non-Ultra. It flashed without a hitch but I couldn't install any drivers, completely uninstalling and reinstalling with a few different versions. I reflashed back to my original and all appeared o.k.. When I tried to reinstall the drivers, no go. Absolutely no way.

I kept getting the same DX error message as with the previous BIOS and just as before uninstalled and reinstalled DX along with the drivers. I reformatted about 1 hour ago and tried with nothing but Windows98 and DX9. The same error message persists and I now have no vid drivers installed as I'm e-mailing you. I've just ordered a 9800pro, sucked up a $200 loss.

 

[nickdigger]

Originally posted by: tedinde
How do you solder on the extra 128 memory?? To make it 256mb's like an ultra??

Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry carrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrefulllllllllllllly

 

[pxc]

Originally posted by: Tates
This in from LardOCP.com:

What's strange about that post is that the 2 threads in the forum don't have anyone complaining about the same problem. Drivers can fail to install if the device ID fails to match the ID in the driver inf file. Sounds like a pretty isolated problem if it did happen.

 

[BobOki]

Find a way to turn my Geforce4GTS into a fx5900, then I will be impressed.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: BobOki
Find a way to turn my Geforce4GTS into a fx5900, then I will be impressed.

I have a mod to turn a Geforce2 GTS into a FX5900, and a Geforce4 TI4200 into a FX5950, but I have nothing for the elusive Geforce4GTS.

 

[unclebud]

bahahahahhahaha
and thanks to the poster for the slashdot link above
time to see why hl2 or d3 are being delayed this time

 

[AMCRambler]

I think this is more of a mod than a hot deal, but hey that's me. Sorry to crap on your parade.