unlocking pipelines

[Jim Bancroft]

In my travels on Anandtech and elsewhere I've heard alot about rogue graphics drivers that can unlock a card's unused pipelines, so that an X800 can use however many pipelines are on its silicon instead of the eight it "offically" has.

How is this possible? I guess Nvidia and ATI use the same schematics for their 6800/6800GTs and X800/X800XTs and rely on drivers to keep extra pipelines dark on the lesser models? Do they ever produce cards specifically for the low end?

I guess it makes economic sense to do it their way, except that if I owned a 6800GT and learned that joe overclock up the road spent $$ less than I did on a 6800 and turned on his extra pipelines with a quick install, I'd be a little disappointed to say the least, and prepared to try it myself the next upgrade cycle. Do Nvidia and ATI figure most people won't do that and therefore it's not worth the assembly line effort to change the boards?

 

[reallyscrued]

I guess Nvidia and ATI use the same schematics for their 6800/6800GTs and X800/X800XTs and rely on drivers to keep extra pipelines dark on the lesser models?

Yup, that's about right, except for its locked on the BIOS level, not the OS (driver) level.

Do they ever produce cards specifically for the low end?

Ever heard of the 6600's and x700s? Those are completely different chipsets, same goes for the 6200s, x600, so on.

except that if I owned a 6800GT and learned that joe overclock up the road spent $$ less than I did on a 6800 and turned on his extra pipelines with a quick install, I'd be a little disappointed to say the least, and prepared to try it myself the next upgrade cycle.

You make it sound like there is no reason to buy a high end card. When you buy a 6800GT, you are GUARENTEED a working 16 pipe card. The reason why they use the same schematics for slightly lower based cards are because of yields. What are they suppose to do with an NV40 chip that can function all its pipes except for one? Throw it away? No, they repackage it as a lower part, you pay less, you GET less.

People who buy X800Pros, 6800NU's, 9800SEs, are acknowleding that getting more is not always 100 percent. They know that it may turn out that they are stuck with a lowly 9800se, because that's all they paid for.

Feel like taking a risk? Wanna roll the dice? Then sure, but most people don't wanna gamble with 300 dollars for something that may or may not work out for them in the end.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: Jim Bancroft
In my travels on Anandtech and elsewhere I've heard alot about rogue graphics drivers that can unlock a card's unused pipelines, so that an X800 can use however many pipelines are on its silicon instead of the eight it "offically" has.

How is this possible? I guess Nvidia and ATI use the same schematics for their 6800/6800GTs and X800/X800XTs and rely on drivers to keep extra pipelines dark on the lesser models? Do they ever produce cards specifically for the low end?

I guess it makes economic sense to do it their way, except that if I owned a 6800GT and learned that joe overclock up the road spent $$ less than I did on a 6800 and turned on his extra pipelines with a quick install, I'd be a little disappointed to say the least, and prepared to try it myself the next upgrade cycle. Do Nvidia and ATI figure most people won't do that and therefore it's not worth the assembly line effort to change the boards?

Unlockable cards and what they unlock to are as follows:

Radeon 9500 (256bit L-shaped memory) -> Radeon 9700 non pro
Radeon X800 pro VIVO -> X800XT with reduced clocks
Geforce 6200 PCI-e or AGP 128/256MB (non turbo cache for PCI-e) -> Geforce 6600
Geforce 6800 non ultra AGP -> 128MB 6800GT with lower memory clock

Usually, ATI or Nvidia will make such cards if there is a high demand for a cheaper model. Rather than designing an entirely new budget chip, they will take a mid-range or high end chip that failed quality control (say a set of pixel pipelines were not working), lock up the part that caused the failure, and brand it off as a lower model. Like I said, if there is higher demand for this model than expected, Nvidia and ATI will use fully functional cards and lock up vertex shaders/pixel pipelines to keep up with demand.

This is where we get our softmoddable cards from.

The Omega Drivers will unlock a Radeon 9500 for you as well as doubling as your primary graphics drivers, while the Rivatuner tweaking program will unlock either of the two Geforce cards for you.

For the X800 pro, you'll have to have the VIVO model, and it helps to have good RAM on it if you want to reach XT speeds. You'll need a BIOS flash to perform this unlocking.

While it's a great way to get an awesome card fairly cheaply, it doesn't always work.
Successful rates of softmodding on a 9500 and 6800 were about 60%. The 6200 seems to fare a bit better at around 70%, and the X800...I'm not too sure about that one. It's the only card I've never unlocked

 

[Greenman]

There is also a hard mod to unlock the 4 unused pipes on an X800pro non-vivo model. It's simple and it?s reversible, so if the pipes are damaged you can lock them again. I'm going to try it in the near future.

 

[ScrewFace]

I soft-modded ny Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro VIVO (12 pipes, core 475Mhz, GDDR3, 450Mhz) to an X850XT PE (16-pipes, core 540, GDDR3 590MHz) using the Gigabyte BIOS and have been running problem-free for 14 months!