BFG 7900GS OC 24pp unlock

Slawek

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Messages
186
Well I used Riva Tuner to unlock bits 5 and 15 and change my BFG 7900GS OC from 20 pp/7vp to 24pp/8vp.

This is the article on how to do it:

http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?t=293587&page=1&pp=15


This is my result:

riva.jpg


Very interesting!
 
Pretty awesome. You have to get a lucky BFG 7900GS, though...looks like they just slapped G71 cores onto the board and software-modded them to 20/7.
 
Here is another shot:

riva2.jpg


When I went to Customize, I had to actually double click on the 0 value to change it to a 1 for both bit 5 and bit 15. But after I double clicked the bits, they changed from DISABLED to ENABLED
 
Tried running 3DMark06 with it on? Basiclly, are you sure it's stable. And how fast is it running?
 
20pp/7vp
3DMark Score 4399 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 1980
HDR/SM3.0 Score 1952
CPU Score 1103

24pp/8vp:
3DMark Score 4630 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 2132
HDR/SM3.0 Score 2077
CPU Score 1102

Speeds: 550/1370
 
Tried running 3DMark06 with it on? Basiclly, are you sure it's stable. And how fast is it running?

When you unlock pipelines it either succeeds or it fails. There is no stability factor involved: it is not like overclocking your GPU or graphics memory. If the thing unlocks to 24 pipes at all then it will be stable.
 
You lucked out apparently the BFG card is the only one that does it. This reminds me of the X800 GTO2 cards. Sometimes they just slap a higher end chip on a lower end card.
 
Whats the trick to using rivatuner. I dont see these options anywhere.

I have a nvidia 7300GS (I know, its lame but I'm not made of money... Bills > Video card) and using RivaTuner 2.

TIA
 
mkay you start RivaTuner, it does it's registry check...

Then you click on CUSTOMIZE in the Target Adapter section under the MAIN tab.

Then you click on the VIDEO CARD icon. If you hold your mouse over it it'll say LOW-LEVEL SYSTEM SETTINGS.

You then have to click INSTALL to install the NVStrap Driver.

Then under Graphics Processor Configuration, hit the drop down arrow and pick Customize.

Now put a check in Allow Enabling Hardware Masked Bits.

Then click the CUSTOMIZE button. This will bring up a new window showing bits.

You then have to put a check under bit 05 and bit 15. I think if you double click the bits it'll put a check. Then it'll still say DISABLED, so when you click on bit 05, it will highlight a 0 in the top section of 1's and 0's. Double click the 0 that is highlighted, and it'll change to a 1 and will say ENABLED. Do the same for bit 15. It will say 24pp and 8vp if it worked. Reboot when it tells you to and double check again if it held the settings.
 
Thanks for the walkthrogh Slawek... Unfortunately as I suspected, I don't have that option.

Under Target Adapter -> Customize I have the following options...
* Low level refresh rate settings
* Low level desktop color schemes
* Graphic subsystem diagnostic report
* Hardware monitoring
* Reload display

So, I guess I'm pretty much screwed. :(

Thanks for the help. :)
 
Going to try this out with my evga. I'm guessing it won't work though. I remember in the past people said they tried gt bioses but it didn't unlock. If it is true in your case that it's just the gt gpu but flashed down, maybe you could try flashing a gt bios and it'd have them permanently unlocked for you?


update: damn, no dice on my evga. I didn't remember to check what was written on the core when I last had it exposed. I'm assuming it wasn't "gt" though since that would have stuck out and prompted me to do some more research.

I enabled both pixel and vertex unit (iirc, had to uncheck, then recheck pixel. vertex was just unchecked). It said to reboot. Did so and still showing 20/7 with target 24/8. Oh well maybe next time...

Still kind of makes me wonder about the bios on your card. Have you tried flashing to a bfg 7900gt to see if it comes naturally unlocked?
 
Sweet!

Now if you could figure a way to bludgeon this 8800GTS into thinking it's a GTX...

:D
 
Just curious, but after formatting my system and installing WinXP fresh again, does this setting still remain the same? Or do I have to do this unlock again?
 
nvstrap is loaded on boottime, so if you format, you'll have to do it again. if you want to make it permanent, flash the bios
 
is it safe to try ? i mean if it doesn't work will it fry my card.

secondly will it work with an Evga 7900 GS ko ?
 
won't fry if it fails
doesnt hurt to try but i haven't heard of any evga's using the gt chip
 
When you unlock pipelines it either succeeds or it fails. There is no stability factor involved: it is not like overclocking your GPU or graphics memory. If the thing unlocks to 24 pipes at all then it will be stable.

That's not true. The pipelines may be disabled for a reason (ie it doesn't work as intended.)

Congrats to those that have got it working though :)
 
I did this with my 6800GS...I didn't see much of an improvement IMO :confused:

I did it with mine, and found about 20% improvement (bench tested carefully) before the overclock. Seeing as its physically able to process 1/3 more pixel shader operations and 1/4 more vertex shader operations per cycle...
 
I guess it can't hurt to cross my fingers and see if my eVGA card has a GT core which I doubt. If it works, I'll post back, if not well theres no reason to post back ;) hehehe
 
Going to try this out with my evga. I'm guessing it won't work though. I remember in the past people said they tried gt bioses but it didn't unlock. If it is true in your case that it's just the gt gpu but flashed down, maybe you could try flashing a gt bios and it'd have them permanently unlocked for you?


update: damn, no dice on my evga. I didn't remember to check what was written on the core when I last had it exposed. I'm assuming it wasn't "gt" though since that would have stuck out and prompted me to do some more research.

I enabled both pixel and vertex unit (iirc, had to uncheck, then recheck pixel. vertex was just unchecked). It said to reboot. Did so and still showing 20/7 with target 24/8. Oh well maybe next time...

Still kind of makes me wonder about the bios on your card. Have you tried flashing to a bfg 7900gt to see if it comes naturally unlocked?

I actually took a look at my 7900gs GPU core and it turned out to be one of the GT cores (G71-GT-N-A2). So I used NVFlash to try and flash it with a BFG 7900GT bios. To make a long story short, it didn't end up working. I couldn't figure out why, because it was the same core and I could unlock the extra four Pixel Pipelines with Rivatuner, meaning they weren't laser cut. It didn't make sense, so... I just kept trying some other bioses.

Eventually, I came across an EVGA 7900GT bios... I believe it was their Revision 01 Bios. I flashed my BFG 7900gs with it and, well, it ended up working. It still reads as a 7900gs, but the extra pipelines and the extra vertex shader are both unlocked without any tweaking tools. And also, believe it or not, it runs even more stable than it did before. Maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know. Maybe somebody else could try this out to verify if this works or not? Hope this helps shed some light on the situation!
 
When you unlock pipelines it either succeeds or it fails. There is no stability factor involved: it is not like overclocking your GPU or graphics memory. If the thing unlocks to 24 pipes at all then it will be stable.

Wrong, completely, and utterly wrong.

Unlocked my 6800, and it worked. the performance went way up (as a benchmark to check performance, 3dmark05 went from 3ksomething to 4.4k )

it was unstable as fucking hell... it wasnt even funny how corrupted a lot of games got...

[edit] nevermind, read the other thread... theyre software disabled, not hardware disabled... thats shockingly lazy :eek:
 
can you give me the steps to do that with mine ?

I downloaded an EVGA bios from http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,0/func,selectfolder/cat,4/

Sorry, I'm not sure which bios revision it was; I think it's rev01, but I could be wrong.

Now keep in mind, that I have an BFG 7900gs OC with a GT bios(as I noted in an earlier post), so then...

I loaded the Bios onto a boot CD with NVFlash. I used NVFlash to first compare the bioses (nvflash -k [biosname].rom) (where biosname is the name of your bios). This made me see whether it'd find a "GPU core mismatch" which, in my case, it didn't. So then I just typed NVFlash -5 -6 [biosname].rom and typed yes when it asked if I wanted to continue. When the flashing process was completed, I just restarted, and it worked fine from there.

But please, take precaution when doing this. If you're not sure what I'm talking about or what you're doing, then I urge you not to do it. If you're not careful, you could end up really messing up your nice expensive 7900gs, and we wouldn't want that now, would we? ;)
 
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