Unlocking pixelpipelines 8800gts

[Drinkyoghurt]

hi guys,


when browsing through rivatuner i came across this.

the ones where it says disabled, can you enable them for more pixelpipelines? or are they lazer cut?(yeah it's supposed to be spelled laser)

[Maviryk]

You can no longer unlock pipelines on Nvidia video cards from 7series onwards. They are laser cut from the factory, not bios-disabled. They got tired of people buying lower level cards and unlocking them to upper end cards during the 6 series cards.

[Drinkyoghurt]

it's a shame though because most home users even dont know how, and wouldn't adding a lazer in the manufacturing process up the costs of the total item?...because i dont think those lazers come cheap

[ChinStrap]

i know here, people have posted late model BFG brand 7900gs that they were able to unlock via rivatuner to full 7900gt's -

maybe we will get lucky with the 8 series...


i hope....

[White_Pawn]

i know here, people have posted late model BFG brand 7900gs that they were able to unlock via rivatuner to full 7900gt's -

maybe we will get lucky with the 8 series...


i hope....

Those 7900gs that came with the 7900GT chips at heart came with the worst binned, the rejects of the bunch. Sure you could unlock all the stuf, but it couldn't even overclock to stock 7900GT speeds.

[largon]

Laser cutting my ass...
There's no bridges on G80 package. No bridges - no laser cutting.

[Drinkyoghurt]

so we've come to the conclusion that.....

[rainless]

Well hell... open your bios editor, unlock the pipelines, flash it back, and tell us what happened.

[systemhost]

Haha, yes please do...

[Mr.Guvernment]

it's a shame though because most home users even dont know how, and wouldn't adding a lazer in the manufacturing process up the costs of the total item?...because i dont think those lazers come cheap


but = more money because now people have to buy higher end cards to get the performance instead of lower / mid and unlock.

[Hazaro]

Bump, any more info on this?

[CheaterEater]

I tried doing it, and by unlocking 2 stream units shown and 1 raster unit I gained between 200-300 3dmarks. Not huge, and maybe not an effect of the unlocks (I was expecting more) but it helped a little.

[Mr.Guvernment]

2-300 3dmark, what version if say 2001, that is with in the margin of something... :D

[largon]

CheaterEater,
It's quite safe to say that you actually did nothing to your card. The numbers also point to this. If those 32 stream procs and 4 ROPs were re-enabled you'd definately see ALOT more than 200-300 points.

[CheaterEater]

Yeah, that's what I thought, since I was getting such a low increase from them. Still, I do wonder what the increase came from. I ended up disabling them anyway, since they introduced the occasional artifact when I was running 3dmark06. That really didn't suit me.

[Tweak486Dx2]

how many pipelines does the 8800Gts actually have??

Is it like 24 on the 7900Gtx?

[Drinkyoghurt]

dont know i think it was 96 or something?(alteast it sayss 96sp in rivatuner and thats all i know

[largon]

Tweak486Dx2,
GTS has 20 active ROPs (and 4 disabled) and 96 active stream processors (shaders) with 32 disabled.

[One Bull]

Bump did anyone else try this?

[SuperDave1685]

Interesting... subscribed!....

If they're no bridges, how do you know its not lazer cut underneath? As far as I know, the GTS just has 32 less shader units, a smaller memory bus, and physically less RAM. If you were to somehow just unlock the extra 32 shader units, I'd imagine you'd have a really nice card... Somehow though, 300 3dmarks just doesn't seem like a big enough increase... Maybe its the lack of the increased memory bus holding back the extra shaders you "unlocked"? If there are indeed the same layout physically (meaning they both have 128 shader units) with the GTS just having 32 of them disabled.. I'm sure someone would have figured out by now how to re-enable them... the lack of this "discovery" by now lends me to believe they are indeed lazer cut.... I hope not though! Plz tell us what you did CheaterEater!

-Dave

[benbaked]

Subscribed as well, although I'm not getting my hopes up. If laser cutting was present on the GF 7 series then I'd imagine it's the same with the GF 8, and I would think that the laser cutting process should be more refined or cheaper by now so they wouldn't abandon it for reasons of cost, especially if it forces people to buy more profitable cards for higher performance.

[SuperDave1685]

agreed benbaked.

[One Bull]

It's not possible from rivatuner atleast, because then it would say yes at H/W masked: Yes.
N/A generally means it's hardlocked so it seems like a no go.

But then I'd like to know what cheatereater did? :O

[CheaterEater]

I just changed the bits in the rivatuner, although after more testing I can let you know that it does absolutely nothing to change them. I don't know why I had a higher score before, but it's gone back down and I can't reproduce it. Sorry, looks like this path won't work.

[UglyChild]

But, if it is "lazer" cut, then you can simply use a pencil to make the connection. Right?

But if its just a bios mode, ill do it in a heart beat, but some one needs to tell me what i need to mod and how.

[Mr.Guvernment]

is not likely something on the sruface like an old AMD cpu you can pencil mod, is in the PCB and with cards having many layers anyone want to

1. find out WHERE the join would be needed
2. cut through what ever to get at it...

[UglyChild]

Even if it is a pencil mod, im willing to trash my card in the name of science. But if i have to cut through a layer/s of PCB, i dont have that kind of tools to do so.

[One Bull]

I think that it's not possible for us, simply because we don't have the tools to do it. Would have been nice though.

There is however a recent thread at xtremesystems where one of the members has the ramchips for a 8800 gts and is thinking of soldering them to the empty slots.

Trying to find it, wat just a bit:
Edit: here it is! http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2410610

[MIAHALLEN]

Keep in mind that even if this is possible, you would not increase memory bandwidth (and obviously size), it would still be 5 64bit links. So performance would not be equal to GTX levels. Regardless, if it is possible there would be a significant bennefit. So good luck to all! :beer:

[Enablingwolf]

I might be wrong. On modern pcb. It is like 6 layers. The cut can be anywhere in the layers.

Maybe in the fab process. The connection is not cut, but not there at all. Even so, it would not be easy to find out. Unless you strip the pcb layer by layer.

[One Bull]

Even so, it would not be easy to find out. Unless you strip the pcb layer by layer.

Yeah and that's not very easy either :)

But we can still dream, can't we? :D

[UglyChild]

dang it, freaking ********, excuse my language,. i had few cold once... why do they have to make things so difficult. i knew i should have taken electrical engineering classes and wasted my money on tools instead of booze and strip clubs.

if and/or as soon some one finds out what exactly it takes to get this done, ill murder my card with an edge of a broken beer bottle in the name of science.

[One Bull]

Dude I think you've had enough for today. Go and hit bed.

Believe me when we find out a way the whole world will know, including you. But for now I don't think it's possible

[UglyChild]

I'll gladly go to sleep, but, i cant stop listening to Paris Hiltons CD-Mix. :p.. Shes such a bad bad bad girl, but at the given time i dont care. :)

[One Bull]

Ok now that's a good indication of how much toooo much you've had. Way too much (even though you type still pretty good:))

Before I would even think of listening Paris Hilton my stomach would explode by the quantity of beer (people under 21 in Holland drink the most of whole europe, in holland the people under 21 who drink the most by far are the people who live in the east, guess where I live :D) Ugh but this is way offtopic sorry.

I think we could wait for the guy from xs to do his mod but there's nothing much else we can do.

Yeah maybe tinker with the timings, could someone explain me how you can do such a thing? I know it's possible in some programms but the there appears code for the programming of the bios and i don't understand that :)

[Mpegger]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but seeing as how all this would be in the gpu die itself, not the PCB, there is absolutely no way you can pencil mod the cut lines back. Your talking about a cut microscopic trace somewhere within 600+ million transistors on a silicon die that could fit on your thumb.

GL tracing that...

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^ exactly, no matter where it is, good luck finding it.

[Hardin]

Well it's obvious what we need to do. Bribe an nvidia employee.

[pak]

Well it's obvious what we need to do. Bribe an nvidia employee.

we've got a better chance at finding it by just bumping this post daily.

--pak

[Hazaro]

Did someone say bump? :soda:

I'm sure it can be done. Practicable? Probably not.

[Evilsizer]

im suprised everyone thought they could just pencil mod it or something for extra pipes. if they are using lasers then they are doing what intel does with its cpu's. cpu has bad cache, cut it off with the laser, done, relabel as a different product... its like the difference of the B2 E6400/E6300's to E6600's and higher.

[Drinkyoghurt]

yeah i have had no luck till now....sucky...i'd really love to get the 32 extra shaders :)

[One Bull]

yeah i have had no luck till now....sucky...i'd really love to get the 32 extra shaders :)

Yeah, who wouldn't? :D

[ViperJohn]

Laser cutting my ass...
There's no bridges on G80 package. No bridges - no laser cutting.

Man that is WAY WAY old school. They do not exposed bridges to hard disable pipelines on die anymore.

Viper