What's the Geforce 6800 GTO?

[knyghtbyte]

well, the jump in score from unmasking the vertex sounds about right, its a shame its not working on the pixel pipes, those give the bigger result on 3dmark03.....

which driver are you using? 66.81 seems to work just nicely for me.....

its not the driver on the main driver page of Nvidia site, either goto guru3d.com or look around under the Nzone on the nvidia site and it will get you to the driver eventually......

if you are using that driver, then i guess it might be better to ebay it like you said.....lol

i gained around 1,000 more marks on 3dmark 03 unmasking those 4 pipes...

i hope the driver thing helps, if not best of luck anyhow

(oh, just in case you havnt realised, your card is SLI ready, so it might be worth picking up two and oneday popping them on an SLI enabled motherboard
(you can tell its SLI ready thru the forceware drivers, or by looking at the card, u should have some gold connector teeth on the top of the card....)

 

[imported_sfonden]

cool thanks for the advice about SLi. I'll give those drivers a shot, right now I think that I am using 61.78.

edit: scored 10,023 moving to those drivers with just the Vertex pipeline unmasked. When I get home from work I'll see if unmasking that pipeline still shows distortion with the new drivers. I think it's likely that it will, but I suppose it's worth a shot!

 

[imported_sfonden]

I spent some time overclocking this card some tonight, here are my results:

Clock = Clock speed in MHz
Memory = Memory speed in MHz (doubled because of DDR)
VP = Vertex Pipeline enabled (Y=Yes, N=No)
PP = Pixel Pipeline enabled (Y=Yes, N=No)
3dMark03 = 3dMark2003 score using default settings
PeakTemp = Peak temperature as measured while running 3dMark in Celcius.

Clock, Memory, VP, PP, 3dMark03, PeakTemp
350, 900, Y, Y, 10751, ??C
350, 900, Y, N, 10023, 78C
376, 900, Y, N, 10450, ??C
376, 953, Y, N, 10533, 80C
399, 900, Y, N, 10841, 84C
399, 949, Y, N, 10894, 82C
399, 1000, Y, N, 11008, 85C
399, 1050, Y, N, 11113, 84C

Setting the Core to 425 resulted in the drivers saying that there was an error when performing the test.

Setting the Memory to 1100 resulted in the drivers saying that there was an error when performing the test.

I ran Lineage2 all night using the 399/1050 setting, no artifacts. Popping back to the RivaTuner temperature monitor showed a consistent 60C, so obviously the game is not pushing the card all that much. What I need to do is play some Doom3 for an hour to see how stable it really is at this speed.

 

[jeffpriz]

just thought that I'd post my results of tweaking the GTO

I used RivaTuner to un-mask the extra pixel pipes and the vertex shader...

However, with the pixel pipelines opened up i see graphics problems... So I turned it back off. I'm running my card now as 12/6.

I haven't overclocked yet, as i'm waiting to receive a fan that I ordered.. but at stock timings it's running at a temp of 59/45 (at idle) with peaks in the low 80's on the core under heavy use...


ohh well, sure would like to leave the pixel pipes opened up, but the graphics troubles just aren't worth it...

 

[knyghtbyte]

ya know, im sorry to hear that some folks are not able to open the full pipes without some graphics problems, but at least with the extra shader and some oc'ing your still getting more for your money than you thought you were.........

one small thing, have you tried running the extra pipes without the extra vertex shader? personally i found i got a higher score from the pipes than the shader....might be worth trying if you havnt.....

 

[jeffpriz]

Yes, I tried the pixel pipes w/o the Vertex shader (16/5) but still got the graphics problems.. so I'm running it @ 12/6

Here are a few 3dMark03 scores after my first round of o/c'ing

12/6 @ 350/900 (stock speed) : 9684
16/6 @ 350/900 (stock speed) : 10568 -- w/ graphics troubles
12/6 @ 365/1000 (1st O/C attempt) 10,083

This is on a 3.2 Ghz w 1GB ram running the dell install video drivers (v 61.78 i believe?)

so I'm pleased with those results... and I'll play with the overclock speeds, I'll see how far i want to take it.. i'm not sure i'll go too far based on the temp's that i see ...

Tempuratures got pretty toasty.. even with my newly installed slot fan running (works great!) i saw a peak temp on that O/C'd run of 92c during the benchmark run..

I like the card..

thanks guys for all the tips on using RivaTuner to get the overclocking and unmasking going!

jeffpriz

 

[knyghtbyte]

Jeff, glad your getting more out of the card

i reckon you should be ok taking it higher on the clocks, the distortions your seeing when you enable the extra pipes probably means you card has one of the chips that was faulty just on the pipeline so was disabled for Dell (or other vendors) to sell as pared down cards. that shouldnt affect the OC'ing tho, my card hits 100c whether its 350/1000 or 375/1000, so you might as well try and get it up to 375....

if you do and for some reason the card explodes mightily, causing a tornado on the other side of the world to well up and throw massive rocks into the atmosphere which crash to earth triggering groundquakes large enough to swallow all of California while the entire British Royal Family are visiting allowing Arnold Schwarzenneger to heroically save them as he balances his governership accounts books...please dont call me to pay to replace the card......just ask Arnie for Royalties on the movie and merchandise he will no doubt make from the disaster

hehe
(sorry, at work, VERY bored....lol)


EDIT: btw, update your computer, if its a Dell 8400 you got there, goto the dell site first, update your BIOS to version A02 if it isnt already on A02.......then when done, update your graphics card drivers to the 66.81 (i think thats the number of the driver, just goto the rivatuner homepage and you can get them there, or goto the Nzone part of Nvidia website and get them there, labelled as Beta drivers.......it might even fix your graphics corruption with the extra pipes, but if not should still add a few hundred to your 3dmark scores)

 

[imported_sfonden]

Yup the 66.81s showed a slight performance increase over what Dell installed stock. I would advise installing these as well! I think I grabbed mine from Guru3d.com - they had newer ones than this but I took the 66.81s anyway. If you look at the download counts, it appears to be the most popular version also.

I'm satisfied with my card even though I could not enable the Pixel pipeline. I do notice the extra smoothness in games after I overclocked to 400/1050. I've been playing this way for a few nights and haven't had any freezes or errors.

I play a lot of Lineage2, and what I seem to notice the most is that the hard drive is a bottleneck. Lineage2 occasionally lags while it is loading new textures on the fly (I can hear the HDD working), but once they are loaded it's smooth as silk. It's either this or I need more system ram, but I think that 1GB should be sufficient? I am giving serious thought to picking up a single Raptor, as from the reviews I've read about putting a pair of these in RAID-0, the improvements are not worth double the cost. I'll work from there...

 

[imported_sfonden]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to ask you Knight about your suggestion to update the BIOS. Is there any particular reason that you suggest this? I usually don't do something like this unless I have a problem and am at my wit's end... thanks!

 

[jeffpriz]

Yep, I plan on downloading and installing the newer drivers, just haven't done it yet..


The graphics troubles that I see when i turn on the extra pipes shows up mostly on shadowed areas, where i get a static/snow effect. Basically its a random (moving) set of red pixels showing up..

The worst effect I've seen is on the 3dMark03 test that shows the stone elephant sculpture, during that test, the "wood" base flickers red pretty badly...

 

[knyghtbyte]

well, sfonden, on the BIOS matter, i noticed my computer boots up quicker from cold, and things seem to respond ever so slightly faster in general with the A02 BIOS, but please do read the full instruction set that the Dell site recommends, specifically the bit about resetting your BIOS in case it does go wrong....i doubt very much you will have a problem, mine went fine, but its best to be safe rather than sorry.
on the hard drive matter, an upgrade to the raptor will help.....i dont have one, but a friend does, and in some games it does make a difference, dont worry about the raid side of things tho......get the raptor installed as your main system drive and for games, and keep your current drive as a second slave (not raid) for file storage (mp3's, large .exe files, naughty movies etc...lol)

jeff, i hope once u install the new drivers it clears up the problems with the extra pixel pipes opened up.......if not, then im afraid it looks like you'll have to settle for where you are, but hey, your only barely under the scoring for a system with a GT card at GT prices, and you paid less, so its not so bad a thing, and its SLI compatible, so if u ever upgrade to an SLI mobo then you will fare pretty well given the scores i've seen SLI setups getting

and its friday night, im drunk, so happy days and happy gaming

 

[mythol]

I am new to the world of modding video cards so bare with me. My girlfriend bought a Dell with a PCI Express 6800 GTO in it. Following instruction from others on the web I attempted to mod the card. No matter what I do, the card or RivaTuner dose not appear to "process" my changes.

Here is what I did:
1. Loaded the drivers Dell provided (I do not know the version off hand but it is newer than any possible download from NVIDIA)

2. In RivaTuner, I click on the customize button right of the description of the card (256bit NV40 (A1, 12x1, 5vp) with 256MB DDR)

3. Choose "Low Level Tweaks"

4. Choose "NVStap Driver" tab

5. Click "install"

6. Click on the checkbox, "Allow Enabling Hardware Masked Units"

7. Choose Customer out of the drop down

8. Click "Customize"

9. Add checkmark to Bit 03 Pixel Unit 2

10. Add checkmark to Bit 11 Vertex Unit 3, This Sets Mod from Cur: 00003707 to Tgt: 0003f0f

11. Click Ok, OK, and Reboot.

When I reboot, I load up Riva, it still displays my card as: 256bit NV40 (A1, 12x1, 5vp) with 256MB DDR. Checking the customize tab it shows the checkmark in the correct Bits, but they still say disabled.

I followed the same steps, using Forceware 61.77. Same problem.

Doing some reading I found a post stating that Forceware 53.30 protects against NVStrap driver. So I am the nv4_mini.sys antiprotector script on both sets of drivers and follow the same steps above. Again... No Luck.

If anyone has any ideas or can see where I went wrong, please let me know. Thanks

 

[mythol]

Update to the above:
I installed 66.81 drivers. Same result.

 

[cbehnken]

Man you guys cards run hot. I have a BFG 6800 O/C with the twin fan copper cooler(stock) and I'm running 46 degrees full load. 100C is going to destroy your card. No silicon can run at that temp indefinently.

 

[knyghtbyte]

hiya Mythol, couple of questions,

you said 'add checkmark to Bit 03 Pixel Unit 2'

on my Rivatuner it shows Bit 0 is Pixel Unit 0, Bit 1 is Pixel unit 1, Bit 2 is Pixel unit 2, Bit 3 is Pixel unit 3, Bit 4 is Pixel unit 4..........not sure why yours would show Bit 3 is Pixel unit 2......

however Bit 11 is indeed Vertex Unit 3 on my rivatuner, so it should at least have activated that and say (A1, 12x1,6vp).......

i can only recommend you try again, make sure to save/apply/ok all changes and reboot when it suggests....

btw, you also mention that your Dell drivers are newer than any download from Nvidia, im afraid that isnt quite correct, Dell does not use Beta drivers, if you use the normal driver section on nvidia site then yes, you will find the 61.77 driver, thats the one just previous to what Dell ships with atm, if however you go to the nzone section of nvidia, or goto guru3d.com then you can downlod the 66.81 forceware, its currently one of the most used and stable drivers for the 6800 series (well, at the time i modded my card anyhow, that was only a month ago so its possible newer Beta's are out but i'd stick with 66.81 if i was you) then try using Rivatuner to unlock the pipes......
hope it works




----------

cbehnken, the 6800 GTO only has the basic 6800GT fan on it, altho there is a slot in fan snugged to the side of the case blowing down sideways on the card, with more testing since the puters settled in, on normal clocks (350/900) im running at around 80 on full load, but with my clocks as i keep them (375/1000, slightly over what a GT runs at) it peaks at 100, but only when doing the most intensive stuff, the records on it show running doom3 is only around 90, which is more than safe enough to last a while, but im aware it wont last as long as it would if it was down to 75, im happy for the trade off to get a better graphics quality, within the next 4 months im liable to want to get one of the new 512Mb cards to cache games like Doom3 properly

(just out of curiosity tho, 46c at full load? thats cant be possible unless your using an artic system of some kind, even in the morning when my rooms got cold over night, the puters been off all night and i start it up the core temp is 42, ambient 29......just switching on and running Windows for a few minutes pumps it up to around 52 for the core and 40 ambient)

 

[cbehnken]

BFG Dual Fan Cooler is very good. I checked again though and I was a little optimistic. I am runnning about 54 at full load with 29 ambient.

I know nvidia's red line is higher than 100, but that just can't be good for anything to run hotter than the boiling point of water. A P4 or Athlon 64 would burn by then.

Oh, btw enabled the additional pipes and vertex units and 3dmark03 went to 10700

 

[knyghtbyte]

was the 54 at full load before or after u enabled the extra pipes/vertex? i found that enabling them did increaase my heat a bit......

eventually i'll get the guts up to swap the fan on the card for something more serious, but not till untill i've owned it for a while and can afford to get a better card if it all goes wrong..lol

 

[cbehnken]

Before extra pipes/vertex. I'll check max temp tonight with them enabled.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: tphss

Originally posted by: Actaeon

Originally posted by: shabby
If its anything like the pontiac gto then it sucks

Yeah... 400hp sucks.:roll:

As far as I know it's 350HP, and yeah, it's a ture american car.
Focusing mainly on looks and alot of big engine power with old fasion technology and bull.
After looking a bit into the new GTO, atleast by pictures and specs it looks a bit more Europien/Japaniese (for the good side), and not like the regular bulky american car.

1) Pontiac GTO has the option of 400hp starting in 2005
2) Pontiac GTO is essentially a Holden Monaro (Australian car), "enhanced" and repackaged for the American market.

 

[knyghtbyte]

Pontiac GTO?? Get an Aston Martin, stupid amounts of hp, spanktastic looks, total pullling power....need i go on?...(and you only have to be a millionaire to get the top of the range model...lol)

 

[drpootums]

Originally posted by: tphss

Originally posted by: Actaeon

Originally posted by: shabby
If its anything like the pontiac gto then it sucks

Yeah... 400hp sucks.:roll:

As far as I know it's 350HP, and yeah, it's a ture american car.
Focusing mainly on looks and alot of big engine power with old fasion technology and bull.
After looking a bit into the new GTO, atleast by pictures and specs it looks a bit more Europien/Japaniese (for the good side), and not like the regular bulky american car.

Corvette is american, and that kicks ***! I know it's not the fastest available, but there's a company in California that puts a 650hp motor in it. Really nice. And even without that engine, the technology inside it is a lot better than most cars...

 

[brooohaha]

knyghtbyte, first of all, thanks for all the posts. Helped this newb immensely.

Had a couple questions:
1. Followed the instructions for opening the 4 extra pipes. However, in the 'Main' tab of rivatuner, it still says 12x1,5vp. If I go Low-Level system mode->NVStrap driver, the 'allow enabling hardware...' is checked, I've checked the 2 values as instructed. The choice box reads: 'custom (16x1,6vp)'
Does that mean it's truly enabled, even if it has me at 12x1, 5vp on the main tab?
2. Disabled the internal clock test, but couldn't figure out how to open 'driver overclocking'. I've only seen low level hw overclocking (disabled) . Where is this? (Sorry for the dumb Q)

I figure I screwed up opening all the pipes, based on my run on 3dmark03:
Stock- 9627 - 350/900 with 61.78 drivers
Stock- 9732 - 350/900 with 66.81 drivers
16x1, 6v (on the nvstrap driver screen) - 9749 - 350/900

So if I have done it correctly, I certainly didn't see mych improvement.

Thanks for any help you can give... especially if it's painful... (and yes, i've been rebooting on a regular basis.) Not that it should matter, but i'm running dual monitors so I can check temp thru the test.

my system info:
Dell 8400 3.4ghz 1gb 533 6800 GTO

Did another run in the last config with anti virus, etc. off - 9958

 

[knyghtbyte]

broooohaha, your welcome for the help,

in answer to your questions, hmm........so long as you do all the saving/ok'ing and rebooting it should on the 'main' tab of Rivatuner say 16x1, 6vp........lemme list the procedure again just to be on the safe side, i notice over a 1,000 extra points on 3dmark03 when i enable them so im thinking its not enabling properly for you yet...

open rivatuner
click on the arrow on the '256bit NV40 (A1, 12x1, 5vp) with 256mb DDR Customize' line
choose 'low level system settings'
click the 'NVstrap Driver' tab
click 'install'
check the 'Allow enabling hardware masked units'
choose custom from the 'Active pixel/vertex units configuration'
then click 'customize'
then highlight the pixel unit thats disabled and says HW masked
here you have a choice, either click the greyed out tick mark to the left, OR where all the ones and zeros are at the top, when you have your disabled line highlighted just type '1' on your keyboard, that will activate the greyed out tick mark as well.
then repeat for the disabled vertex unit
then just keep Ok'ing yourself back to main bit and reboot if/when prompted.
once you reboot it really should say '256bit NV40 (A1, 16x1, 6vp) with 256mb DDR Customize'

if not, i dunno, its worked for me and a few other people, just double check you've done all i said, if you have and still not working then post again and i'll try and find out whats not working for you. cant promise anything tho, sorry :-(
(i am a newbie to this overclocking myself ya know....lol)

for the overclocking btw, you dont us the low level hw overclocking.....you use the driver level overclocking under the 'Driver Settings' box on the main rivatuner tab, click the arrow on the 'Forceware Detected Customize' line and choose system settings

main tab is overclocking
so long as you disabled internal test then do this
check the enable box first of course...lol
then choose standard 2d in the drop down to the right of that
then set your clocks where you want, for safety just overclocking by 10 on the core and 25 or so on the memory
then click test
then apply
then click the 'save' button on the 'Start up settings' part of this dialogue box
then choose 3d performance from the drop down box near the top
make sure the clocks are the same as those you chose for 2d, if not then alter to the same
then click test
then apply
then the 'save' button on 'Start up settings' part
then go back to 2d from the drop down and confirm its still saying what you set
then back to 3d
then 'ok' yourself back to main rivatuner tab
then reboot your puter

u dont need two monitors
under '256bit NV40 (A1, 12x1, 5vp) with 256mb DDR Customize' line, click the arrow and choose Hardware Monitoring
then stretch the temp guage window so its the width of your screen, doesnt need to be the height as well tho.
then click the little red button to allow background monitoring
then click the disk button which makes a record of it for posterity...lol
then you can close the temp monoriting window BUT you must leave Rivatuner open.
then do your 3dMark03 test
then when its finished you can check your temps and see where you peaked..

anyhow, i gotta go now, supposed to be in the bath as i have a bowling match this morning....lol...

good luck getting it working broooohaha

 

[goaliejerryy]

Hello all,

I have this dell 8400 with the GTO card, and alas, I am one (of the many) for whom the unlocking of pipes does not work. Doing the whole rivatuner thing, I go through the whole process and reboot and......it still says (12x1, 5vp) on the main riva tuner screen. It seems mine is actually hardware disabled. So thats disappointing.

As for overclocking, I don't know how everyone else does it, but my card can be over clocked using an nvidia utility.

Just right-click on desktop, goto properties, then settings, then advanced, and then click the tab that says "GeForce 6800 series GPU." Once in there, there is an option to overclock. Make sure you click "manual overclock" and you select "3d performance."

The nice thing is, this has a utility that can detect ideal settings, and mine is always at about 408/1.02 or so.

So even without 16pipes or that extra vertex shader, I get an improvement of about 1400+ or so on 3dMark03.

3dMark03 - 11311
3dMark05 - 4584

Not shabby, and I could probably tinker and get it higher. I'm only posting because my scores are very similar to other people who say they've unlocked pipes, and since its all with regards to GTO cards, I wonder if people who think they unlocked their pipes in fact didn't. Make sure you all check in Rivatuner, if on that front page it doesn't say "16x1, 6vp" it didn't work, and it may never work, but with Nvidias over clock utility, you can get your scores up significantly.

Oh, and my chip temp is never above 85c, so I don't know how you people are pulling such high temps when your not over clocking higher then mine is. Just be careful is all. Oh and lastly, FYI, at 135c the card will purposely slow down to prevent over heating, and in that Nvidia utility I mentioned you can have it inform you if it ever gets that high.

So all in all, disappointed in the lack of being able to unmask pipes (believe me, I'm sure my card won't work) but very pleased that over clocking makes this card register scores that people who have (supposedly) unlocked pipes are recieving. Over-clocking alone makes this card well worth it.

 

[knyghtbyte]

not bad is it, u pay a lower price and u get a very good card

all the GTO's are hardware masked, mine is, it shows it in rivatuner as being HW Masked.......but as i mentioned before, i think the ones u cant unmask are where the chip on your card is actually faulty on that pipe and that vertex unit (my reason for this is because which pipe and vertex are disabled varies from card to card). So it failed that part of nVidias quality checking, but because everything else on the chip works perfectly they can HW mask it and label it a GTO or normal 6800. I cant remember where i read about that now, but it was a tech site of some description. But to fulfill demand Dell obviously has to acquire some normal chips and HW mask them and hope the end user doesnt realise this and unlock them.

I know mine is unlocked as it says 16/6 in whatever i look, rivatuner, nVidia driver suite etc......and i also get a decent performance boost.
but its also possible the unlocking of pipes is what takes my temps higher to the 100c mark......*shrugs*
and its definitely based on the same stuff as a normal GT/Ultra as it has SLI ability.....


EDIT: speaking to a friend of mine online, he suggested its possible Dell got wind of people working out how to undo the pipes/vp and might now be purposfully crippling them as well as masking them.....so its possible that newer Dimension 8400 owners might not be so lucky, but the cards still more than worth the money if u OC it.