How to unlock Pipelines and Vertex Shader on a 6800 (nu/le/gs)

[pf100]

I was able to unlock my pipelines with these drivers and got even more performance, but had quite a few flickering textures. Nvidia must have disabled unlocking in the new drivers or something. Oh well, it was fun tinkering, but I can live with 4fps less

Hi, Kogan. If you get flickering textures, it may be the vertex unit you unlocked that's causing that. Try leaving the extra vertex unit locked and just unlock the extra pixel unit. If you still have flickering textures, try it the other way around. In other words, leave the extra pixel unit locked and just unlock the extra vertex unit. If you're getting slower performance by unlocking anything, then you're most likely not doing it right.

If your "custom graphics processor configuration" rivatuner screen looks like this
http://img91.echo.cx/img91/3081/rivatunerpic39sm.png
before doing anything, you would put a check mark beside bit 2 and 11, save settings, and reboot . You probably already know that but I want to make sure. Then if you still have texture corruption then do what I said earlier about unlocking just one locked bit and then swapping the unlocked bits. Important: You have to reboot every time you make a change.

nVidia didn't disable unlocking in the new drivers. Try unlocking your card again. If you do it right, and you can unlock one or hopefully both locked units, you WILL get a performance increase. And it may be a very noticeable performance increase like I got.

 

[MegaWorks]

Interesting mod. :beer:

 

[Ronin13]

Leadtek makes 2 different AGP 6800nu cards. One with 128MB RAM (this is the one with the big copper cooler) and one with 256MB RAM (which has a smaller cooler).

Here are 2 links to a Danish shop that has them both:

256MB one

128MB one

Is the amount of RAM and the cooler the only difference between these two cards?

Do you expect both of them to have the same chance of softmodding?

 

[cmitchell17]

I unlocked them and got them to work sorry i didnt get your directions at first. But when I ran BF2 i got a bunch of wierd stuff popping up every where real fast. And the performance of it seemed about the same what should i try doing.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Ronin13, the 256MB one should be able to softmod.

cmitchell17, those are artifacts. Bad pipes, sorry.

 

[pf100]

I tried several different drivers over the weekend and one driver was far faster than any other for me - the Xtreme G 77.62 HD Type 1. Games play smoother with obviously higher framerates.
The instructions and information in this thread have helped me a lot and made my unlocked and overclocked 6800nu card perform great. Thanks.

Update:
According to this chart http://techreport.com/etc/2004q3/3dmark05/index.x?pg=5
I just beat a 6800GT! I got 4660 in 3dmark05 vs the 6800GT's 4559. Yay! Of course, I have everything pushed to the absolute limit. 370/940 clock speeds and my mobile athlon running at 2.4ghz @ 1.825 volts. Good thing I have a huge copper cpu heat sink to keep it cool. I'll see how long I can run it like this.

 

[Diogenes2]

I picked up the PNY 6800 OEM from Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133148


A really nice package for the price..

Unlocking the pipes caused artifacts, so, no go in that department..

Card overclocks to 360 / 790, and is a definite upgrade from my 9800 PRO..

 

[CHfan4ever]

Does that work with my 6800gt?

 

[2Xtreme21]

ifesfor, what are you planning on unlocking? The 6800gt doesn't have anything TO unlock.

 

[CHfan4ever]

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
ifesfor, what are you planning on unlocking? The 6800gt doesn't have anything TO unlock.

The secret of the caramilk !!

 

[conlan]

Thanks for the guide, sadly our PNY 6800 artifacts. Still an upgrade over the 9800Pro

 

[majmera]

Cool, just unlocked my eVGA. No problems so far.
Thanks for the guide.

 

[2Xtreme21]

*bump*

15.6 RELEASED! This build will allow 64-bit users to utilize the NVStrap driver.

 

[Verity]

I know this was previously directed to page 3 of the forums on voided warranty discussions. However after rereading the forum thread for a second time I still can not find an answer to my question. I am clearly aware that everywhere I have looked (ie firingsquad) it distinctly states that unlocking my eVGA 6800 will void my warranty. But if this is just softmodding and putting this card in any other computer will relock anything I have unlocked, if I return this to the manufacturer after using RivaTuner on it will they be able to tell? I realize there is a very slim risk involved in messing the card up but I'd rather wait till my warranty is over to take it if I am not going to get the card replaced.

Also, is there is a recommend manufacturer for unlocking, or have any cards by any manufacturer resulted in more successful mods than others?

Thanks.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Verity, yes it will void your warranty. Anything you do to the card that was not designed to do by the manufacturer will void the warranty. Chances are if you return it, no, they will not be able to tell that the pipes were unmasked; though, I always live by the adage that if you do screw up your card doing something to it that it wasn't supposed to have done to it, then you live with the concequences and shouldn't RMA it.

As far as manufacturer, nope. All cores have an equal chance of unlocking regardless of who makes 'em.

 

[Xyclone]

I tried it with my BFG6800OC and recieved insane artifacts in 3DMark03, so i had to lock them again. :thumbsdown:

 

[belly]

OK guys and really appreciate any help u can give

Ive got a pair of 6800s GTO. I know there is some dispute as to whether or not you can unlock these. Someone mentioned by flashing the bios, could you please provide further details, thanks

Also when I run a single card (either) its fine but when in SLi mode i get artifacts in the sky - which is weird as theres not much detail there (medal of honor, bf2)

Im trying the 80.40 tweak drivers now.

IF i can get the pipes to unlock do i do this per card in single mode before re-enabling Sli mode

HELP!!!

 

[belly]

OK this is where is start to get a little complex

If I check each of the cards in single mode rivatuner tells me that all pipes are enabled (even the2 hardware masked ones). All good so far

However when in SLi mode rivatuner has bits 01 Pixel unit 1 and 11 vertex unit 3 disabled even though they are ticked to be enabled

Any ideas?

 

[HFC]

Just got a Chaintech 6800LE and it seemed to unlock fine to 16p,6v with RivaTunner. However, after running benchmark programs like 3DMark2001 and 3DMark2005 a while, the computer shutted down and the Northbridge chip seemed hot. I had to restart after the board cooled down. Did anybody see or experience this before?

I couldn't be sure if it was the card. The same MB, CPU, and memory had shutted down once before after being on for twenty some hours. I thought it was the power supply at the time and replaced the power supply.

I need to do more troubleshooting by swapping parts. Wish I was could just buy the real thing without having to mess with this.

 

[2Xtreme21]

With SLI it's probably very tricky. For SLI to work you need to have 2 identical cards. If one card works with everything unlocked and one card artifacts with everything unlocked, chances are, SLI'd, it would produce artifacts when unlocked.

Plus, I don't think RivaTuner was designed to work with cards based on the PCI-e bus. To tell you the truth, I only heard speculation that you could unlock GTO's with RivaTuner. I'm not 100% sure if it will work or not.

 

[imhungry]

http://www.ocia.net/articles/6800/page4.shtml

Another way to unlock the extra pipelines even if there IS artifacting with extra pipelines. Increases your chances I guess.

<- Still can't decide what to get.
Anyone know what kind of CPU you need for NO bottleneck whatsoever with the Radeon X850xt PE or 6800 GT?
I'm begining to think an AMD 3000+ Venice core OC won't handle the x850.

I thought about getting a 7800gtx, but saw no CPUs within a REASONABLE price range would let it run at full performance.

 

[imhungry]

Also...
I saw a benchmarking result that showed that PCI-E cards do indeed have noticable performance better than AGP cards.

This means 6800 AGP < 6800 PCI-E?

Add twice the memory to the 6800 PCI-E = AGP pwnt?

Not trying to troll, just trying to understand so I can decide what card to get...

 

[2Xtreme21]

imhungry, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I will add it to the first post.

Also, yes a 256mb 6800 will perform better than a 128mb card. But you take what you get based on your motherboard. Plus, the 6800nu pci-e is way overpriced, and you can get better performance from an x800xl for about the same price.

 

[imhungry]

BUT, the 6800 Unlocked will perform better than a stock 6800 PCI-E correct? But would the PCI-E have a better overclocking capability because of it's PCI-E functions?

 

[2Xtreme21]

I'm not sure. No one ever does comparison PCI-e to AGP benchmarks for obvious reasons. I'd say they perform pretty close and the difference wouldn't be noticible if you somehow could benchmark the two on the exact same system. But as I said, the 6800 PCI-e probably shouldn't even be considered if you were going to upgrade your system to compliment a video card.