How can I see how many pipelines and vertex shaders I have?

[Vallybally]

Over a year ago, there was a famous long thread that showed how to update certain eVGA 6800NUs BIOS to the Ultra pretty easily and I believe also unlock extra pipelines and vertex shaders.

I did that successfully and ran tests and all seems ok (never saw any artifacts. I don't believe I'm overclocking, just unlocked things). Question is I want to check for sure if indeed I unlocked things, is there a free program that does that? I'd rather not use anything too complicated and tempting like Riva Tuner. Would prefer just some simple diagnosis tool/app. Does Sandra Sisoft show pipes/shaders?

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: Vallybally
Over a year ago, there was a famous long thread that showed how to update certain eVGA 6800NUs BIOS to the Ultra pretty easily and I believe also unlock extra pipelines and vertex shaders.

I did that successfully and ran tests and all seems ok (never saw any artifacts. I don't believe I'm overclocking, just unlocked things). Question is I want to check for sure if indeed I unlocked things, is there a free program that does that? I'd rather not use anything too complicated and tempting like Riva Tuner. Would prefer just some simple diagnosis tool/app. Does Sandra Sisoft show pipes/shaders?

Unlocking that card is software based. I had one and remember performance changing wheneven I made a fresh windows install.

I believe the drivers get modified so if you do it 1nce, then so long as you don't change drivers or reinstall windows, it will keep. Been about a year and a half so I may be missing some points.

 

[Navid]

Download the free Everest utility from here.
http://www.oldversion.com/download.php?idlong=b0e1140fe6e5a7bda6688b67229e3da2

Install and run. Under Display and GPU, you can see it.

 

[Farmer]

They dont update Everest anymore?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Farmer
They dont update Everest anymore?

I never said they did! The free version in the link however, recognizes 6800 and can do what the OP needs.

 

[Lord Banshee]

rivatuner does this , all you have to do is open it up and right there it says how many... nothing to do.

 

[evilharp]

Originally posted by: Vallybally
Over a year ago, there was a famous long thread that showed how to update certain eVGA 6800NUs BIOS to the Ultra pretty easily and I believe also unlock extra pipelines and vertex shaders.

I did that successfully and ran tests and all seems ok (never saw any artifacts. I don't believe I'm overclocking, just unlocked things). Question is I want to check for sure if indeed I unlocked things, is there a free program that does that? I'd rather not use anything too complicated and tempting like Riva Tuner. Would prefer just some simple diagnosis tool/app. Does Sandra Sisoft show pipes/shaders?

Sorry, Rivatuner is the original and only option for unlocking 6800nu/le pipelines. Is is tricky to use, but once you set it, it works from that point on. You need to have the driver (bootstrap?) loaded for the unlock to work, no driver = no extra pipelines.

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

I had a Leadtek 6800nu a while back, and it unlocked nicely. You should be able to see the difference by running a few benchmarks. You will never get "ultra" performance though, as the NU/LE's had half the memory.

Also, not all 6800 nu/le could be "unlocked". A chip revision and hard locks prevented unlocking on later versions. The good cards had "masked" pipes.

 

[Vallybally]

Thanks Navid. It is showing as successfully unlocked. So my eVGA 6800nu actually shows up as a 6800 Ultra, 16 Pipelines (up from 12), 6 Vertex Shaders (up from 5). I'd imagine it's somewhere in between the original NU and real Ultras in terms of performance...

Interestingly it shows 1 Pixel Shader...is that normal according to online specs it should be 12 (or 16). Does the ATI X1900 XT trounce it with 48 Pixel Shaders lol?

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Vallybally
Thanks Navid. It is showing as successfully unlocked. So my eVGA 6800nu actually shows up as a 6800 Ultra, 16 Pipelines (up from 12), 6 Vertex Shaders (up from 5). I'd imagine it's somewhere in between the original NU and real Ultras in terms of performance...

Interestingly it shows 1 Pixel Shader...is that normal according to online specs it should be 12 (or 16). Does the ATI X1900 XT trounce it with 48 Pixel Shaders lol?

No, it's somewhere between the NU and the GT. The GT has the full 16 pipes, 350Mhz core instead of your 325Mhz, faster RAM and 256MB of it. The Ultra is similar to the GT with even higher mem and core clocks. Still, it's a big performance boost over a stock NU.

 

[Vallybally]

Actually other details shown were 256mb RAM and 400mhz core. I guess I had a 256 variety nu card and the BIOS flashed on it upped the core speed to 400...