Just a little question on the 6800 +the 4 pipes softmod

[Aleksandar]

When the softmod is redy 4 download and if it works on my card evga 6800 128 gddr
will it in any way effect my overclock the card can go to
MAX mem=860mhz
MAX cpu=430mhz
?

 

[The Green Bean]

1. Dunno
2. No

 

[reallyscrued]

i think u misunderstood what a softmod is for. it doesnt increase overclocking capability, it just unlocks idle pipelines that nvidia disabled for various reasons at the factory. thats what keeps the vanilla 6800 from being a GT-UE (cept for memory of course) To make it cheaper and not spend time designing two chips at the factory, they make the NU by taking a GT's chip, and disabling a quad unit. (four pipelines) or if they have problems in the fabrication of one chip and a quad unit is damaged, they dont just throw the chip away, they rebrand it as a regular 6800, saves them money. in simple terms, the more pipelines u have, they more pixels it can push. im eagerly waiting for the next edition of rivatuner to try it on my 6800, the extra 4 pipelines is what keeps it from running at 1600*1200 smoothly and ive read in another forum that a guy bios flashed it and he got a nice performance jump (but he did get artifacts.) remember that this is not a bios flash, its a SOFTMOD, easily reversible. i also read that the memory will not be a bottleneck so for all u people that said a 16 piped vanilla 6800 can never be a GT, ur rite, but its REAL damn close.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: reallyscrued
i think u misunderstood what a softmod is for. it doesnt increase overclocking capability, it just unlocks idle pipelines that nvidia disabled for various reasons at the factory. thats what keeps the vanilla 6800 from being a GT-UE (cept for memory of course) To make it cheaper and not spend time designing two chips at the factory, they make the NU by taking a GT's chip, and disabling a quad unit. (four pipelines) or if they have problems in the fabrication of one chip and a quad unit is damaged, they dont just throw the chip away, they rebrand it as a regular 6800, saves them money. in simple terms, the more pipelines u have, they more pixels it can push. im eagerly waiting for the next edition of rivatuner to try it on my 6800, the extra 4 pipelines is what keeps it from running at 1600*1200 smoothly and ive read in another forum that a guy bios flashed it and he got a nice performance jump (but he did get artifacts.) remember that this is not a bios flash, its a SOFTMOD, easily reversible. i also read that the memory will not be a bottleneck so for all u people that said a 16 piped vanilla 6800 can never be a GT, ur rite, but its REAL damn close.

The slower, less amount of memory is what is keeping 1600x1200 from running smoothly. Nothing to do with piplines.

 

[NightFalcon]

And as I've posted in other threads, it's not "easily reversible"... You have no idea which pipes were locked, so unless you get the exact copy of your bios, you'll be locking pipes which could be perfectly good.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: NightFalcon
And as I've posted in other threads, it's not "easily reversible"... You have no idea which pipes were locked, so unless you get the exact copy of your bios, you'll be locking pipes which could be perfectly good.

Where are you getting your information from? A softmod is simply a driver hack. VERY easily reversible. You're thinking of a BIOS flash which is a totally different animal.

 

[NightFalcon]

Well I think we're definitely talking about different things then, because I don't know how you're planning on unlocking pipelines through the driver... You can do that only with a bios flash, and that's what I mean when I said that it isn't reversible.

 

[someone16]

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?107374
It's a software mod they're developing.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: NightFalcon
I don't know how you're planning on unlocking pipelines through the driver... You can do that only with a bios flash

It's the same thing as turning an ATI 9500 Non-Pro into a 9700 using RivaTuner. The software mod uses a driver level PCI DeviceID forcing approach. RivaTuner's script modifies PCI DeviceID request (ANDs and ORs some bits of the PCI DeviceID) so the driver just thinks that the regular R9700 is installed in the system.

 

[stnicralisk]

Originally posted by: NightFalcon
Well I think we're definitely talking about different things then, because I don't know how you're planning on unlocking pipelines through the driver... You can do that only with a bios flash, and that's what I mean when I said that it isn't reversible.

You realise of course that it is EASY to reverse a BIOS flash? Also that it is EASY to copy your own BIOS?

 

[lestat0521]

Originally posted by: stnicralisk

Originally posted by: NightFalcon<BR>Well I think we're definitely talking about different things then, because I don't know how you're planning on unlocking pipelines through the driver... You can do that only with a bios flash, and that's what I mean when I said that it isn't reversible.

<BR><BR>You realise of course that it is EASY to reverse a BIOS flash? Also that it is EASY to copy your own BIOS?

Im going to have to agree with him, anyone that is "affraid" of flashing their card should not worry. It takes all of 5 minutes to read a few faqs get a boot disk, save your old bios and stick a new one on. I got my 9800pro flashed to an xt with no problems. if you mess it up just flash it back to the old bios. Simple as that, and the riva tuner rules, SOO simple and if it works you just got 100 bucks in card for free. If not turn it off and you still have a good card (--=.