8800GTS with 112 shaders, unlockable by software/drivers?

Dutch Guy · 5 Oct 2007 at 08:21

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20071003223755.html

The world’s leading supplier of graphics chips is said to activate 16 additional unified shader processors in the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB graphics cards, which means that the newer versions of the product will come with 112 stream processors activated. By contrast, current 8800 GTS models feature 96 shader processors, whereas the 8800 GTX comes with 128 shader processors.

What are the chances a program like Rivatuner can unlock these shaders on current cards with 96 shaders?

deuse · 5 Oct 2007 at 08:36

Wel i for one hope some one can.

Wonder what diffrence the extra shaders would make in the gaming world ?

NightSt@lk3r · 5 Oct 2007 at 08:38

just enough to make it worth purchasing over the 8800GT id imagion.

Uriel · 5 Oct 2007 at 08:56

Dutch Guy said:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20071003223755.html

What are the chances a program like Rivatuner can unlock these shaders on current cards with 96 shaders?

Good point, already well made by Cyber-Mav in this thread: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17786168

Talrinys · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:02

I believe they were disabled in the production lines on current cards, so probably not unlockable

Greebo · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:09

Talrinys said:
I believe they were disabled in the production lines on current cards, so probably not unlockable

Hmm but how would you do that? A physical modification of the chip? Unlikely. If it was done electronically it can be undone.

Also notice already that in rivatuner you can list the shaders and disable them. Just at the moment it won't let you re-enable the factory disabled ones. So I live in hope that maybe one day I can.

The boost it will give will make it hal;f way between a 8800 GTS now and a 8800 GTX.

Don't forget a GTX is the same as a GTS except for the number of shaders which is where the extra performance of the GTX comes from.

Talrinys · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:20

Greebo said:
Hmm but how would you do that? A physical modification of the chip? Unlikely. If it was done electronically it can be undone.

Also notice already that in rivatuner you can list the shaders and disable them. Just at the moment it won't let you re-enable the factory disabled ones. So I live in hope that maybe one day I can.

The boost it will give will make it hal;f way between a 8800 GTS now and a 8800 GTX.

Don't forget a GTX is the same as a GTS except for the number of shaders which is where the extra performance of the GTX comes from.

That is extremely interesting then, it's just what i heard about a year ago

My shader clock gave me a nice boost, more of them to play with would rock.

Talrinys · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:21

And the GTX also has more memory and a wider bus, but of course the shaders will make the major difference

Scougar · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:34

I'm surprised no one has been attempting to do it so far, or at least investigated to see how they are disabled. (or have they?)

Matthew

Uriel · 5 Oct 2007 at 09:50

It's been worked on for a while. Rivatuner already recognises the locked stream processors. It just can't unlock them yet.

Dutch Guy · 5 Oct 2007 at 10:03

Uriel said:
It's been worked on for a while. Rivatuner already recognises the locked stream processors. It just can't unlock them yet.

I think that the locked shaders are possibly laser cut making them unusable.

Lets just hope someone is willing to try a BIOS of a 112 shader card on a 96 shader card and see what it does.

deuse · 5 Oct 2007 at 10:42

I dont think changing the bios will do it on its own
But maybe if some one can doa bios that will switch on the shaders

i would give it a go...

Scougar · 5 Oct 2007 at 10:47

I remember fiddling with Rivatuner and turning on shaders that didn't work properly. On one shader in particular (I may be wrong it may have been a vertex shader), the machine wouldn't even boot up when the shader was turned on!!

Matthew

Darkwave · 5 Oct 2007 at 10:55

Greebo said:
Hmm but how would you do that? A physical modification of the chip? Unlikely. If it was done electronically it can be undone.

They physically cut pipelines with a laser most of the time.

Cards which have pipelines locked only in the BIOS software are very rare.

Uriel · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:01

I remember with the 6800LE it was just the first batch or two that had BIOS locked pipes. The later ones couldn't have their pipelines unlocked.

no_1_dave · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:03

Greebo · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:08

Talrinys said:
And the GTX also has more memory and a wider bus, but of course the shaders will make the major difference

Yeah I should have been more specific as in it's a different pcb cause the pcb on the 8800 GTS can't handle the heat/no of shder clocks etc.

And I don't think the extra 128Mb will give hardly any extra speed (look at the difference between the 320Mb and 640Mb GTS cards, mabye 1-2 fps max unless running at ultra res or a very large texture game)

The memory bandwidth isn't an issue either as I'm sure the GTX isn't using it's full bandwidth as it is so very little difference there.

Basically if you look at the whole 8xxx series cards, the key factor to performance is number of shaders. Yeah core speed helps but the 8800 GTS can run at the same core speeds of the GTX cards anyway.

Greebo · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:10

Dutch Guy said:
I think that the locked shaders are possibly laser cut making them unusable.

Lets just hope someone is willing to try a BIOS of a 112 shader card on a 96 shader card and see what it does.

I hope your wrong but you will probably be right

Talrinys · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:32

Greebo said:
Yeah I should have been more specific as in it's a different pcb cause the pcb on the 8800 GTS can't handle the heat/no of shder clocks etc.

And I don't think the extra 128Mb will give hardly any extra speed (look at the difference between the 320Mb and 640Mb GTS cards, mabye 1-2 fps max unless running at ultra res or a very large texture game)

The memory bandwidth isn't an issue either as I'm sure the GTX isn't using it's full bandwidth as it is so very little difference there.

Basically if you look at the whole 8xxx series cards, the key factor to performance is number of shaders. Yeah core speed helps but the 8800 GTS can run at the same core speeds of the GTX cards anyway.

Yeah that i know, just increased the core clock of my GTS and it's incredible

Gonna be building a computer for a mate soon, and i'm sure that he'll appreciate it, 24" monitor, mine's only a 19" so it probably doesn't matter a lot. But the bus width is necessary when clocking, the GTX will reach a much higher bandwidth than the GTS can ever dream of reaching. If that matters or not, real-world, i don't know.

gurusan · 5 Oct 2007 at 11:39

I highly doubt it, but I've just copied this question over in the rivatuner forum to get some feedback from Unwinder...