6800 unlock = dead card?

F

Flak Monkey

Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
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I have heard that unlocking the extra pipelines on a 6800nu can cause the card to die randomly a little while later even if i get no artifacting. Is this true? I dont want the cards life to be shortened if this is the case. Thanks.
 
I sure hope not.

I've had my card unlocked and overclocked for quite some time now, without issue. It will actually go higher than what i have it set to, but i really cant tell a difference so i leave it at what i have it at.
 
Shouldnt at all. My 6800nu has been unlocked and OC'd for awhile now with no issues.
 
Computers aren't voodoo. You probably got wind of one horror story involving a crappy PSU and a novice computer techie.
 
I've been running mine unlocked since the riva tuner tweak was discovered. Not a problem here. It's a software mod, so there is no risk.
 
Alright, good, I'm trying to prove to my friend that it's not that risky and if the pipes dont work you can just shut them off but another guy keeps telling him it will be the end of his cards life if he trys it and that he's heard of this happening plenty of times. Thanks for the reassurance.
 
in that case, you friendly is silly, and should be tortured with a spork.
 
Well, peeps, the friend in question is me, and to those of you who have done the unlock, are you on stock cooling? and how long have you been gaming with these settings?
 
Chiliman said:
Well, peeps, the friend in question is me, and to those of you who have done the unlock, are you on stock cooling? and how long have you been gaming with these settings?
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Stock cooling fully unlocked at 402Mhz core and 800Mhz memory. I'm betting it'll last for years this way too.

The pipelines are simply hidden by software, they can be unlocked and the core and cards BIOS have full knownledge of them. Simply uncovering them with Rivatuner does nothing at all to shorten the life of the video card. Yes, OCing them will of course will help reduce life, but simply unlocking will not have a negative effect.
 
Ive been running my PNY6800 unlokced at 370 & 800 for about a month with no problems. ITs on stock cooling but I have an air conditioner about 6 feet from it. You will be pretty darn safe if you make sure your games and benchmarks don't start looking different after you unlock. My 6th vertex shader made 3dmark05 look kinda funny so I turned it off and all is well again.
 
As long as you don't unlock using a Bios flash, you should just be able to relock the same pipes. The problems come when people unlock via Bios flash and then flash back but the wrong pipes are locked. Use RivaTuner and you'll be fine.
 
BigFuzzyArchon said:
So what does the unlocking do? Make 6800nu reach 6800gt speeds?
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Well not quite

the 6800NU has 12 pipes and the 6800GT has 16 pipes. Unlocking the pipes only gets you half way to the GT. Overclocking does the rest. My core is halfway between GT and Ultra speeds, but the memory is a couple hundred MHz lower which is what impaires it.

Great card for a little over $200 though!! My friend spent $350 on a GT a couple weeks before i got my card and his 3Dmark05 score is about 300 more than mine. That's NOT worth the extra $150.
 
I got my BFG 6800OC for $135 plus my old LAN rigs 9700 Pro. Pretty good trade I'd say.

With unlocking you unlike 4 pipelines and 1 vertex shader. Then I'm at Ultra core speeds and only shy of the GT's memory speed by 200Mhz, but my core helps make up for that. So, I'm only around 10% short of the GT's speed in games.
 
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