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PowerColor Radeon R9 290 unlocked into R9 290X?

Boomstick777

Boomstick777

Boomstick777

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A member of PC Games Hardware (Speedy1612) forums has shared a very interesting information. His PowerColor Radeon R9 290 OC was supposedly unlocked into full 290X by simply replacing a GPU BIOS. This way he unlocked all 2816 Stream Processors and 176 Texture Units. The R9 290 has 2560 and 160 respectively. The same user posted many screenshots with his benchmarks, and even a video. So far everything seems to confirm what he said. However ss far as I know, there is no way to change Device ID, while his screenshots confirm it’s actually possible.
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http://videocardz.com/47971/powercolor-radeon-r9-290-unlocked-r9-290x
 
Ah, this brings back fond memories of the 9800Pro. I do so hope this turns out to be true, however unlikely.
 
Litmoose said:
If it does turn out to be true can they lock it on any future batches?
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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?
 
Couldn't this just be GPU-Z seeing the X bios and reporting the corresponding shader count from its database? How does it query these stats?

Plenty of people have already tried this already so I guess not, otherwise we would've heard by now.
 
Orangey said:
Couldn't this just be GPU-Z seeing the X bios and reporting the corresponding shader count from its database? How does it query these stats?

Plenty of people have already tried this already so I guess not, otherwise we would've heard by now.
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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.
 
Maybe all cards with Hynix memory are able to unlock shader...?
In our German Forum Powercolor with Hynix and on oc.net its xfx with hynix...
 
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I suspect some people are getting carried away, I reckon AMD have this pretty much covered in any event for it to be impossible.
 
^
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.
 
Orangey said:
Couldn't this just be GPU-Z seeing the X bios and reporting the corresponding shader count from its database? How does it query these stats?
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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.
 
mmj_uk said:
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.
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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.
 
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