Soldato
-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
PowerColor Radeon R9 290 unlocked into R9 290X?
- Thread starter Boomstick777
- Start date
Yes, I believe they can physically cut the shaders out.
Also the R290 has a dual BIOS switch so this is a bit less risky than normal. Now, who on OcUK is feeling brave?
Soldato
Caporegime
You used to be able to do that with the 6950, Flash a 6970 BIOS on it and got a full 6970
It could however be a (very) specific batch of 290x GPU's that have been included on Powercolor 290 boards in error. Kind of like the GTX465 which was unlockable to a GTX470 if you had the right board from a specific manufacturer (I had one, IIRC it was a POV card with a black PCB that was unlockable whereas the blue PCB model (same ID) was not).
Would certainly be worth a look if true.
Caporegime
My Sapphire certainly doesn't unlock, it's been running a 290X BIOS from day one.
Caporegime
Has anyone else been able to unlock it?
Soldato
Funny. Powercolor was my 9500 non pro, that modded to 9700pro, using a pencil 
Deleted member 76686
D
Deleted member 76686
I suspect some people are getting carried away, I reckon AMD have this pretty much covered in any event for it to be impossible.
Soldato
^
How, if the shaders haven't been lasered off and you change the bios to 290x, there is nothing a driver update can do to reverse it as the driver won't know it's really a 290.
How, if the shaders haven't been lasered off and you change the bios to 290x, there is nothing a driver update can do to reverse it as the driver won't know it's really a 290.
I think you are probably spot on, people seem to think that GPU-Z magically detects everything at a hardware level, all it really does is detect the device ID and then fill in most of the details using a database.
Soldato
- Joined
- 26 Aug 2004
- Posts
- 3,276
Soldato
No it doesn't, there will be info read from a predefined table, but memory type, clocks etc are read from the card directly.
Gpu-z reported the unlocked shaders on the modified 6950 shader unlock and still reported it as a 6950 with all the shaders unlocked due to data being read from the card directly.
The 290 unlocking could very well be fake, but it could also be genuine too until otherwise being proven as fake/the real deal.
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Oct 2004
- Posts
- 979
If not fake expect a lock-down with future 290s as was done with the 6950.
Soldato
Funny. Powercolor was my 9500 non pro, that modded to 9700pro, using a pencil
AGP Nvidia 6800LE cards had the potential to unlock from 8 pixel pipelines to 16 pixel pipelines making them nearly as fast as a 6800GT.
Those were the days for the budget hardware owner.
