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

Could it be that something in the bios turns the shaders on/off ?
It could be that simple ?
 
deuse said:
Could it be that something in the bios turns the shaders on/off ?
It could be that simple ?
Click to expand...

Afraid not, 8800GTS were unhackable as they were laser cut, putting a GTX BIOS on them had no effect whatsoever in regard to the dorment shader units.
 
Well that wasn't mentioned, that the fuses were INSIDE the chip lol. I thought he meant they were on the PCB.

Matthew
 
Scougar said:
Well that wasn't mentioned, that the fuses were INSIDE the chip lol. I thought he meant they were on the PCB.

Matthew
Click to expand...

what youre thinking about is like a volt mod. like others have said, the locked shaders are within the chip core itself. just hope you have a steady hand....
 
Scougar said:
So has anyone try wiring it instead? (as mentioned above)

Matthew
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone's answering because it's an insane question. The stuff you're talking about "rewiring" is inside the GPU and is probably thinner than one of your red blood cells.

Edit: Beaten to it.
 
... thanks for the 2 further posts.. soon as someone said the fuses were in the chip I'd already dropped the idea. Upto that point it wasn't mentioned, so no, it wasn't an insane question at all.

Matthew
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
They physically cut pipelines with a laser most of the time.

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

thats some precision cutting going on there, one slip and the entire core is useless, hence why cutting the pipes is not an option, also due to the way these stream processors are laid out cutting is going to be very tricky indeed.
no chip maker would be doing this due to the risks and also the time consumed in cutting the pipes then testing the core again. its far easier to just lock them in bios, or lock them in a different way.

i rekon they are locked in the bios, but the bios is split up into 2 sections, 1 section of the bios holds the info on the number of shaders to be left active and is un-flashable/not written to during a flash, and the other section of the bios which is left flashable holds the vendor ID, clock speeds, fan profile etc.

im just guessing though because the method i described above seems to be a lot safer and easier to do than the cutting approach.

the only reason im guessing this is because they now mention that they will be selling 112 stream processor based gts cards, which either means they alter the cutting process, or the do a simple bios chip replacement.
hence why i rekon its all bios or some other controller chip based.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
thats some precision cutting going on there, one slip and the entire core is useless, hence why cutting the pipes is not an option, also due to the way these stream processors are laid out cutting is going to be very tricky indeed.
no chip maker would be doing this due to the risks and also the time consumed in cutting the pipes then testing the core again. its far easier to just lock them in bios, or lock them in a different way.

i rekon they are locked in the bios, but the bios is split up into 2 sections, 1 section of the bios holds the info on the number of shaders to be left active and is un-flashable/not written to during a flash, and the other section of the bios which is left flashable holds the vendor ID, clock speeds, fan profile etc.

im just guessing though because the method i described above seems to be a lot safer and easier to do than the cutting approach.

the only reason im guessing this is because they now mention that they will be selling 112 stream processor based gts cards, which either means they alter the cutting process, or the do a simple bios chip replacement.
hence why i rekon its all bios or some other controller chip based.
Click to expand...


What?, Do you think they are cut by hand or something, ROFL. :p, the chips will be laser cut by robot (no risk involved what so ever they will be ultra precise). No GPU manufacturer in the right mind would bios lock it so it could easily be hacked, It would make the top end cards useless as every man and his dog would buy the cheaper one and perform a quick bios flash or hack :). Mav's logic wins again!
 
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