MSI 6800 able to re-open 4 pipelines = 6800GT ?

[madwelshboy]

Hi guys,

I have read countless stories of people flashing their Rad X800 pro to PE's with a new bios etc. But I came along this article which showed Riva Tuner re-opening the closed 4 pipelines on an MSI 6800 to effectively make it a 6800 GT !!
I just wondered how many people have had success with this, with what cards and where they had the cards from (desperate to get a new card now )
Thanks for the help guys.

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?107374#107374

[joely]

doesnt the standard 6800 usually have less ram that runs slower though? Of course this probably doesnt affect the ability to open up the piplines (if possible)

[madwelshboy]

Hi Joely,

Youa are right, one major downside would be that the 6800 has 128mb DDR while the 6800GT has 256mb DDR3, but the good news is that in current games (maybe excluding doom3) the major difference has been the amount of pipelines and vertex shaders etc, but as you quite rightedly pointed out, later on (post Doom3) memory quantity may become an important factor.........but for 220 quid ?!?

[CrapshoT]

get it here cheaper
http://www.savastore.com/products/pr...0276730&pid=44
link taken from this thread..
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=24173
or even cheaper here but its not a msi
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/comp...quicklinx=37XH

[Byatt]

The key thing to remember here is that most of these cards are being distributed as vanilla 6800s because most of the batch they came from showed tendencies of having at least one of the 16 pipelines broken. This isn't going to be a dead cert mod - whereas with the x800 pro vivo -> XT PE it was virtually guaranteed.

[madwelshboy]

RE: Byatt
Ah I see, thanks for your input, just out of interest, is it any of the x800 pro vivo's or specific makes?
Also the only problem here is that in nearly all of the GAMING benchmarks that I have seen the nv40's overpower the r420's (and I mean in alot of gaming tests the 6800GT has beaten the X800XTPE !!)
Thats what makes this interesting for me

[joely]

The key thing to remember here is that most of these cards are being distributed as vanilla 6800s because most of the batch they came from showed tendencies of having at least one of the 16 pipelines broken. This isn't going to be a dead cert mod - whereas with the x800 pro vivo -> XT PE it was virtually guaranteed.

It was the same when i got my old 9500, i got the standard and not the pro (for money reasons) and again the only difference was the pipelines. On certain cards you could open up the extra pipelines ( you had to look at the PCB layout to see if it was possible) but in a lot of cases the pipelines that had been shut off were faulty anyway so you would get lots of problems when trying to run graphics with them open. The cards that you could open the pipelines up on usually were pro cards that had failed pipelines so the re-badged them as standards, shut down the extra pipes and shipped them out.

but the good news is that in current games (maybe excluding doom3) the major difference has been the amount of pipelines and vertex shaders etc, but as you quite rightedly pointed out, later on (post Doom3) memory quantity may become an important factor.........but for 220 quid

I have just UG'ed my machine and stuck in a 300ish quid aopen 6800GT and after playing DOOM 3 last night on ultra detail smooth as a babies arse it was worth every penny!

[Byatt]

RE: Byatt
Ah I see, thanks for your input, just out of interest, is it any of the x800 pro vivo's or specific makes?
Also the only problem here is that in nearly all of the GAMING benchmarks that I have seen the nv40's overpower the r420's (and I mean in alot of gaming tests the 6800GT has beaten the X800XTPE !!)
Thats what makes this interesting for me

Um, as far as I know, all the vivo pros sold up to now have been cut down xt pes. a lot of hexus bods had success with the club3d vivo cards from tekheads tho - a forum search should yield the thread in question, I'll do one as soon as I finish my ice-cream.

As for XT PE performance, well, I don't know whether this is still up to date (with all the filtering scandal that went on, I haven't been keeping up), but, from the hexus review:

R420 is what NV40 brought to the table in terms of performance, amplified, especially at its maximum AA mode. My 'ohmygod fast' exclamation on the second page really doesn't do X800 XT justice, it utterly obliterates anything that's gone before it when maximum respective AA modes are enabled, current 6800 Ultra included.

tbh, both the 6800Gt and the x800pro (be it vivo or not) are both damn good buys at the moment - the GT will get to ultra speeds, and the x800 will usually hit xt pe speeds, albeit with 12 pipes...the vivo similarly, only with 16.

The ideal card would be something between a 6800/6800GT, that had 12 pipelines (flashable to 16)...and 256Mb gddr3.

EDIT: finished my ice-cream, thread is below:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...t=x800pro+vivo

[CrapshoT]

As far as I know all the vivo's have flashed to all 16 pipelines succesfully but they all can't do the XT PE speeds so some people adjust their bios to slower core and ram speeds or just flash back to a pro bios and o/c to XT speeds still with 16 pipes.Unfortuneatly my x800 pro is not the vivo model