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Graphics Software Hardware

Unlocking the GeForce 6800 234

Posted by samzenpus from the making-it-better dept.
Timmus writes "Firingsquad is running a story on how to unlock all 16 pipelines in nVidia's GeForce 6800. By default the card only ships with 12 pixel pipelines enabled, but with a tool and a few mouse clicks, the card can be unlocked to run with all 16 pipes. Performance improvements are seen everywhere, so it's a pretty nice free upgrade. These cards are currently selling for $200 online, so a 16-pipe GeForce 6800 delivers great bang for the buck."
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Unlocking the GeForce 6800 More

Unlocking the GeForce 6800

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  • Nice Work! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by coop0030 ( 263345 ) * on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:51PM (#12640104) Homepage
    I'm surprised, this actually showed a significant increase in performance in their charts. This is one of the best mods I have ever seen on a Video Card.

    I wonder if this would actually hurt, or help Nvidia's sales, or have no effect?

    I currently have an ATI card, and am very happy with ATI, but would be willing to switch to Nvidia since the price/performance on this card is so high now.

    • Re:Nice Work! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      price/performance high = price too high for the performance.

  • I hate to trolll but.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by packeteer ( 566398 ) <packeteer@sub d i m e n s i o n . com> on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:53PM (#12640119)
    Thsi is kinda old news. People have been doing this for about a year now ever since the card came out. Either way its a good guide to getting some extra bang for your buck although everyone needs to remember that if the card worked 100% fine with 16 pipelines they would have sold it that way.

    • Re:I hate to trolll but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:55PM (#12640153) Homepage
      although everyone needs to remember that if the card worked 100% fine with 16 pipelines they would have sold it that way.

      Not necessarily. If they need to fill a price point, chip companies will sell the higher grade stuff at a lower price point and intentionally cripple it.

      Intel and AMD have been doing it for years, and they are hardly the only ones.
    • It's easier and cheaper to design one fast chip, and cripple half of the chips to sell to a lower market. Any company who fabs chips does this.
      • They don't always cripple it intentionally. They design for instance cache so that if there is a defect in one half of it they can disable it and still use the other half (ever bought a celeron?). So the majority of it isn't just straight out intentional crippling, but I do admit that has happened a good bit in the past.
    • everyone needs to remember that if the card worked 100% fine with 16 pipelines they would have sold it that way.

      This is not always true. Some cards work fine with all 16 pipelines enabled, and nVidia might be locking 4 pipes on 6800 Ultra GPUs to make a volume target in the 6800 non-Ultra market.

      However, sometimes the cards really don't work. I tried this trick, and it unlocked the extra 4 pipes yielding a significant performance improvement, but it caused lots of visual artifacts. I promptly set it back

  • I turned (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jozer99 ( 693146 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:53PM (#12640124)
    I turned my 6800 into a Radeon 9700 Pro with my 1337 sk1lz!

  • Disabled Hardware?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:53PM (#12640128) Homepage Journal
    In the first place, why would you deliberately lock down 4 of the pipelines to begin with? Wouldn't it make more sense to just go ahead and have all 16 pipelines pumping out the frames in the first place, to give a TRUE impression of what the card can actually do, instead of crippling the card?

    • no, (Score:5, Informative)

      by Run4yourlives ( 716310 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:58PM (#12640181)
      because you want to charge an extra $50 for those cards.

      It's cheaper to do things this way than it is to actually alter your production lines.

      • They manufacture the part with identical pixel pipelines, and if one of them is flawed they can just disble it. This is a common technique in silicon manufacturing. E.g. the celeron is a pentium with the flawed half it's cache disabled.

        Flaws happen, and at say 20% rate per chip that is a lot of your profits. If you your design is redundant and can survive with parts disabled you can recover a lot of that 20%.

        As another example the Cell processor has one SPU disabled in the PS3.

        The flaws may not be

    • Re:Disabled Hardware?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Siergen ( 607001 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:59PM (#12640189)
      MBAs learned long ago that in many businesses you can make more money selling both high-end and low-end products in the same market than you would by selling just high-end. Disabling 4 of the pipelines allows them to do this with one main production line and one product development effort.

    • Re:Disabled Hardware?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:00PM (#12640204)
      Two reasons to turn off some of the pipelines:

      a) They were defective, and this allows you to salvage the part.

      b) People with too much money will gladly pay significantly more money for a slightly higher end version of the same card.

    • Re:Disabled Hardware?? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      For profit reasons, a graphics chip maker wants to cover all possible market segments. For the cheap end of the market, they provide a card with basic functionality ie. four pipelines. For the expensive end of the market, they provide a card with as many pipelines as possible (16, 32, 64). To fill in the space between, they have graphics card with different capabilities - card makers can't really nobble screen resolution or colour depth any more, so they are left with 3D performance. And so they provide car
    • Yes, but then the car performs better for the price. Imagine this: A $249 6800 (I haven't actually check ed the prices today, but don't have a spaz, I am just trying to prove a point) performs about half as well as the $499 6800 Ultra. That makes sense, twice the price, twice the performance. Now, unlock the pipelines, and the 6800 is now the same as the 6800 Ultra, but with a slightly lower clock and slower RAM. Now you have 80% of the performance with 50% of the price, and sales of your top card drop
    • Its a market issue. Basically, the defect rate of the 300m transistor chips ensures that a significant number will have at least some non-operational pipelines. Instead of throwing away those cores (and increasing prices to compensate), they clock them lower, pair them with cheaper RAM, and sell them as cheaper cards. Now, if the manufacturing process gets better, they might not have enough defective cards to sell as cheaper parts. They can't just take all the perfect chips and sell them as expensive cards,

  • I'll wait a while.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    till they unlock 64 pipelines.

  • No one has mentioned this yet, but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by JMan1865 ( 223387 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @07:59PM (#12640198) Homepage
    AGP only, it seems. No love for us PCI-E types.

  • 6800? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:03PM (#12640235) Homepage
    Pff. I'll save my money for the Radeon 6502.

  • is there a centralized list of these hacks? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by schweini ( 607711 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:09PM (#12640292)
    does anybody know whether there's a website where a comprehensive list of these 'free update' hacks is maintained?
    there seem to be an awful lot of them (Sony Clie 710->740, Siemens A55->C55, 720kb-->1,44MB Floppies, etc.) but usually they pop up in rather dubious threads on some weird forum, and having them in one nice place would certainly be nice.

  • Reminiscent of Cannon 300D Hack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:09PM (#12640294)
    This sounds rather like the incident which occurred with the Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel where the entry level model had very similar features to the higher end "professional" model costing hundreds of dollars more. However, it was discovered by some enterprising users that a relatively simple hack, flashing the BIOS with a modified version, could "unlock" the hardware and enable most of the features that were found on the more expensive model. This type of hardware homogeneity protected by software locking is advantageous for the manufacturer because it reduces manufacturing costs, since only one version of the hardware need be produced, but it is also vulnerable to those users who are sophisticated enough to circumvent the software locks. Is it possible that NVIDIA was holding back these pipes as a stop-gap measure so that they could release a new "Ultra" version of an existing card on short notice to counter a new competitor release more quickly? Perhaps, but these two incidents, the camera hack and now the video card hack, may induce corporations to rethink their software locking strategies. In the meantime it appears that savvy consumers can reap the benefits of these companies' mistakes.
    • I think it's more likely to push companies to rethink their legal strategies. I'd expect to see some trivial copy protection, and people getting sued (or at least threatened) for breaking it to upgrade their software. Even an EULA that specifically says, "Thou shalt not flash any model other than X" might be sufficient...
    • It might make manufacturing cheaper, but it's like anti-marketing. If the market finds out you're screwing them over like this it does a lot of damage to your credibility.
      • If the market finds out you're screwing them...
        Who's being screwed? If you don't pay as much, you shouldn't expect to get as much.
        • But if I pay more I should expect to get more.

          If a company produces two products; A and B, product A being product B with a couple of features technically available but disabled you have to ask why product A exists at all. Surely product B should just be sold at product A's price. If a company is selling crippled products at below-cost one can only assume they're trying to manipulate the market. If they're then selling the uncrippled version at a high markup, what exactly are they pulling?

          • No they are not manipulating the market, but rather taking advantage of known properties thereof.
            This has been going on for some time, since before modern pc's I'd bet, in other markets as well. And it's a fact most people learn about same time as they get old enough to vote or drink, so no one is being deliberately fooled.
            It's simular to how you can find two brands of the same product in a store with as much as a 2:1 price difference and yet they are the EXACT same thing.
            For example I once work
      • How are they "screwing you over"? They're selling you the product that you paid for. Futhermore, the price you paid for it is quite a bit less because the "perfect" parts (the ones able to run with all 16 pipelines at higher clockspeeds), are sold at a premium, allowing other parts to be sold more cheaply.
      • The fact is, the manufacturer is doing the consumer a favor by simply disabling parts of the premium product and selling it for a lower price. If the guys shelling out the bucks for the full product weren't subsidizing the lower end models, the manufacturer would be charging more for a different design that still didn't have the features.

        In the case of GPUs on video cards, hardware is usually disabled due to defects and marked down.
    • It didn't turn the plastic on the 300D into the magnesium alloy of the 10D. And it didn't change the color from that lame champagne to cool black. And it didn't move the status LCD from the back up to the top. And it didn't add a wheel for changing settings with your thumb instead of using the lame plastic buttons. The 10D was still a much more durable camera and was more comfortable to use. The 300D was just cheaper. The disabled features were things that the hardware should have been able to support
    • What is wrong with you? I'd rather all this was hushed up and nobody but us geeks in the know knew about it. That this never hits mainstream news and that the companies know as little as possible about all this hacking.

      If companies rethink this software lock out strategy, what exactly do you think is going to happen? I'll tell you what. Our cost of living is going to go up. So if they can't make product A and sell A-1 at $200 and A-2 at $100 then they will just sell product A at $250.

      Companies exist to ma
  • It reminds me a little of when Canon released their sub-$1000 Digital SLR (300D). It had quite a few features disabled by software (such as flash power setting and I think some white balance settings). People promptly wrote a new firmware for it, and you ended up with a camera that wasn't so far off their more expensive model.

    I understand why they do it, but if I'm paying for the hardware, I want to jolly well use it!

  • Be warned though (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:17PM (#12640344)
    This does not work on all GeForce 6800's. If you research this hack, as stated by another poster this has been a known hack for some time now, you will find information on why this is possible and why Nvidia "locks" some of the pipes. I seem to remember something about problems inherent in there manufacturing processes.

    You can unlock all pixel piplines as will as additional vertex shaders. I bought a 6800 last year and tried this. I was able to unlock everything, but it resulted in artifacts and other issues that made games un playable.
    • As time goes on the cards are getting better and better so it's more and more likely to work.

      This trick is real common in the chip industry. If you get something that tends to have problems of partially, but not completely, failing, just disable part of it and sell it as a lower version. CPU makers do a similar thing with binning CPUs.

      All of a given type of CPU come from the same assembly line. What they then do is test each core. Some don't work and get thrown out. The rest and rated as to their maximum

  • Locking down makes sense... Business Sense (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:17PM (#12640345)
    Discluding the cards that might not be up to snuff to be sold to work consistently with 16 pipes on, it still makes sense to sell a "lower-end" card, if your aim is to make money, and not to help people that you don't know, and honestly are not that nice people anyways.

    By selling a "low-end" and a "high-end" card, you can take the most money from everyone- Milk the guys that can afford it for all their worth, but still sell to the poor sods that still need to play Half-Life 2 at some overly-impressive benchmark.

    This made sense before when the low and high end cards were different hardware, and it still makes sense now when the cost of manufacturing 2 different boards is higher than just making one and 'neutering it' to get two.

    And I'm pretty sure it'll hurt sales. Not by any noticable amount, though since, come on, only an uber-nerd would really learn how to and then actually do this.

    -Aylw

  • alas (Score:3, Insightful)

    by atari2600 ( 545988 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:18PM (#12640351)
    Again, a lot of newbies posting on slashdot. VGA card modding is nothing new (ATI released moddable cards 9500-9700pro and other stuff) a while back. Just go google for them. Also, 200$ for a graphics card is not overkill - you get what you pay for.
    • Also, 200$ for a graphics card is not overkill - you get what you pay for.

      No, I get what you paid $200 for, for $40 a year from now...

  • Good Deal? You bet... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Some_Llama ( 763766 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:36PM (#12640481) Homepage Journal
    This is actually one of the best found "upgrades" for video cards in recent past.

    In order to enable the extra pipelines all you have to do is modify the Registry (in Windows) and if all of the pipelines are functional then it "just works". The great side to this is that if there are any problems witht he pipelines then you can just revert back to the original settings.

    Previous mods like changing the Radeon 9800 pro into a 9800 XT required flashing the card with a different firmware to unlock the disabled features, or worse (like the old geforce4 to quatro mod) required soldering contact points on the card.

    The first few batches of this card were pretty hit and miss ( and usually 75% miss) but as Nvidia refined their chipset manufacturing process more of these cards are actually using high quality chips that have fully functioning pipelines that have just been disabled to sell at the lower price point, so your chances of getting this "free upgrade" are pretty good (esp with certain models).

    There is even a free tool http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163 [guru3d.com]
    that gives a GUI interface that shows all of the pipelines, their status, and allows you to change them on the fly (you can change the settings back and forth but a reboot is required to take effect).
    • I got one back in november (day after thanksgiving sale) for $250, back when vanilla 6800s were still over $300. I managed to unlock (with rivatuner) and overclock it (using the overclocking features in every nVidia driver) without any problems. It only took me about 2hr to find the maximum stable overclock.

      Unlocked and with a relatively modest overclock (5 vertex pipes/12 pixel pipes @ 325MHz core/700MHz memory to 6/16@380/820; some cards go over 400/900 on stock cooling) I managed to take myself from 9

  • Test results... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by biode0 ( 887060 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @08:41PM (#12640531)
    Anyone else find their test results to be kind of odd? No ATi cards in the 3dmark05 benches. The lower end cards (9800 and 5900) achived results that are the complete opposite of every other test I've seen in Doom 3 and HL2. The test system was also fairly out of date, meaning the top end cards were probably somewhat limited. I'm not calling them liars, this stuff just seems kind of... iffy. (terribly sorry for the double post, I had problems logging in, not cowardace)
  • A quick look at one online store [auspcmarket.com.au] here in Oz delivers about a dozen different AGP cards with this chipset. Does it work on all of 'em, or do I need to be picky?

  • How long before an enterprising individual buys several hundred of these, tests them to ensure that all of the pipelines work, and resell them as the higher end card?

    Worst case scenario, you sell the 'defective' ones at face value.
    • Probably not that long. I hear nVidia already does that.
      • No, NVIDIA does not do that. The GeForce 6800GT is a different card than the 6800, namely in that it uses more advanced (and more expensive) GDDR-3 memory while the regular 6800 does not.
        • Yes, they do, but they test the GPUs themselves for acceptable clock rate, defective parts, usable pipelines etc. Then they take a look at the chip stock they have, the demand for certain chips and go in and mark some down to meet demand (if necessary). Then they send them off to the manufacturers to get put on whatever cards with whatever memory they need them for. This is pretty standard procedure in the CPU and GPU sector.

  • Did this (Score:4, Informative)

    by Linthos ( 595486 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @09:04PM (#12640700)
    I did this with my AGP GeForce 6800, and the extra piplines didn't work for me. They were damaged. Also you can unlock an extra vertex processor on it, which did work fine for me. I have read that it's about a 50-50 chance that the pipelines will work, as that is one of the reasons they are not sold as ultras. A reason they do work on some cards is that something else was wrong with the card that is also limited on the 6800 model, such as using less memory at slower speeds.
  • they've been doing this for over a year now, but...

    i'd jump on this card if a similar technique could be achieved in linux.

    so has it been done?
    • The method that the Firingsquad article describes is for Windows only, because it relies on the RivaTuner utility.

      RivaTuner is nice because it provides a convenient GUI for playing around with different configurations easily, and I would definitely recommend going that route first of all, to find out which pipelines and/or vertex shaders can be enabled on your particular card.

      After any configuration change one should test it thoroughly with a bunch of shader intensive 3D apps (like HalfLife 2, Doom 3, 3DM

  • Apple (Score:2, Funny)

    by ylon ( 656206 )
    How can this be accomplished on Mac OS X on a Power Mac?
  • Someone's got to come up with Linux code for these cheap supercomputers that runs multiple simultaneous LAME MP3 encoder processes.
  • the broken VPU on the AGP 6800 cores. currently 2 million transistors on every AGP version ofr 6800 GT/Ultra are disabled due to a design failure. Quite annoying when they sold these cards with that feature and one of the reasons i bought it was the hardware decoding of WMVHD streams or so I thought. Now they expect you to buy a software kludge (pure video) to enable some parts of this hardware that you have already paid for.

    NVidia really are testing my patience, I think it will be ATI next time for me.

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