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Kckazdude
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2002
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- 1,763
If you recently purchased a 6800 card in the hopes of unlocking the pipes and clocking it up for some bonus performance, you might have run into the same problem I recently did. There seems to be a lack of a help file in the RivaTuner. Hopefully, I will be able to answer many of the questions you have in this thread and help you get the the pipes unlocked and the most stable overclock out of your new card. As with any OC, as long as we got what we paid for, a 6800NU with 5 vertex units and 3 pixel units enabled, anything else is bonus. You may or may not be able to get all pipes unlocked and working stable.
*Edit
It has been reported that you can also unlock pixel pipelines on the 6200 AGP version cards. These are the NV43 based cards. Stock, they come with 4 pixel pipelines and 3 vertex shaders. After the mod, you can enable 8 pixel pipelines. Accoring to this post by pxc the steps are the same for both cards. One thing to note is that coming out of hibernation mode resets the pipeline masking, so a reboot is necessary to re-enable all 8 pipelines.
The first order of buisness is to update the drivers and make sure everything is stable enough to move forward. Next download a copy of RivaTuner and install. Once that is done open up RivaTuner, you should see this:
Expand the first context menu and select Low-level system settings
.
Click on the NVStrap dirver tab at the top and make sure the box is checked for 'Allow enabling hardware masked units'. Click yes when the pop-up box comes up.
Then select the 'Customize tab' .
In the columns, you will be able to see which pipes are HW masked and which are not. You can add and remove the checkmarks next to the pies here. Just check the ones that are hardware masked and select 'OK'. Slect 'OK' again to get back to the main window of RivaTuner. At this point you should be prompted to restart. Once restarted, if all was well, you should see in the main RivaTuner window that you have all pipes enabled or not. If so, congratulations. If not, the world hasnt ended, your card just wasnt up to the task.
Now to begin the actual OCing of the card. To the BFG 6800 OC owners, be prepared for a small letdown. It would seem that BFG has already pushed the hardware about as far as it will go. I only managed another 5% over the stock clocks which were already over the 6800 specs. Again YMMV.
You previously noticed the clock sliders in the 'Low-level system settings' window with a box that can be checked and unchecked that states 'Enable Low-level Hardware overclocking'. Dont worry with it. You cant check the box to enable it. nVidia overclocking is done at a software level, not at the hardware level now days. This is only there for support of the older nVidia cards.
Start at the main window and selct the second expanding context menu.
First you must check the 'Enable Driver Level hardware overclocking' box. You will then be prompted to reboot and detect stock clock frequency. It is recommended that you allow this as it will save headaches later on in the process. Once you have rebooted go back to the window and the sliders and options should be enabled.
It is suggested that you move in small increments at a time. Also dont try to move sliders on both core and memory without tests and reboot. Do them one at a time so you know the limits. By default, RivaTuner will test the setting and display a pop-up warning when it has detected that you have gone too far and will not allow you to go further. For the most part I have found this to be accurate. I was able to squeeze a few more MHz out by disabling this feature. To disable, go back to the RivaTuner main window and select the 'Power user' tab. Then scroll down to find the RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.2\NVIDIA\Overclocking string. Click to expand the tree and select DisableInternalClockTest, right click and select the yellow bulb icon form the context menu.
You no longer have the limits of the built in clock tester. You will still have to test the clock as you set them but it will allow you to move on even if it fails. At this point you may or may not come up with artifacts and video stability.
Hope this helps and good luck to all that try it. If I have left anything out, please feel free to correct me.
*Edit
It has been reported that you can also unlock pixel pipelines on the 6200 AGP version cards. These are the NV43 based cards. Stock, they come with 4 pixel pipelines and 3 vertex shaders. After the mod, you can enable 8 pixel pipelines. Accoring to this post by pxc the steps are the same for both cards. One thing to note is that coming out of hibernation mode resets the pipeline masking, so a reboot is necessary to re-enable all 8 pipelines.
The first order of buisness is to update the drivers and make sure everything is stable enough to move forward. Next download a copy of RivaTuner and install. Once that is done open up RivaTuner, you should see this:
Expand the first context menu and select Low-level system settings
.
Click on the NVStrap dirver tab at the top and make sure the box is checked for 'Allow enabling hardware masked units'. Click yes when the pop-up box comes up.
Then select the 'Customize tab' .
In the columns, you will be able to see which pipes are HW masked and which are not. You can add and remove the checkmarks next to the pies here. Just check the ones that are hardware masked and select 'OK'. Slect 'OK' again to get back to the main window of RivaTuner. At this point you should be prompted to restart. Once restarted, if all was well, you should see in the main RivaTuner window that you have all pipes enabled or not. If so, congratulations. If not, the world hasnt ended, your card just wasnt up to the task.
Now to begin the actual OCing of the card. To the BFG 6800 OC owners, be prepared for a small letdown. It would seem that BFG has already pushed the hardware about as far as it will go. I only managed another 5% over the stock clocks which were already over the 6800 specs. Again YMMV.
You previously noticed the clock sliders in the 'Low-level system settings' window with a box that can be checked and unchecked that states 'Enable Low-level Hardware overclocking'. Dont worry with it. You cant check the box to enable it. nVidia overclocking is done at a software level, not at the hardware level now days. This is only there for support of the older nVidia cards.
Start at the main window and selct the second expanding context menu.
First you must check the 'Enable Driver Level hardware overclocking' box. You will then be prompted to reboot and detect stock clock frequency. It is recommended that you allow this as it will save headaches later on in the process. Once you have rebooted go back to the window and the sliders and options should be enabled.
It is suggested that you move in small increments at a time. Also dont try to move sliders on both core and memory without tests and reboot. Do them one at a time so you know the limits. By default, RivaTuner will test the setting and display a pop-up warning when it has detected that you have gone too far and will not allow you to go further. For the most part I have found this to be accurate. I was able to squeeze a few more MHz out by disabling this feature. To disable, go back to the RivaTuner main window and select the 'Power user' tab. Then scroll down to find the RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.2\NVIDIA\Overclocking string. Click to expand the tree and select DisableInternalClockTest, right click and select the yellow bulb icon form the context menu.
You no longer have the limits of the built in clock tester. You will still have to test the clock as you set them but it will allow you to move on even if it fails. At this point you may or may not come up with artifacts and video stability.
Hope this helps and good luck to all that try it. If I have left anything out, please feel free to correct me.
