X800-X850 AGP/PCIx POSSIBLE EXTRA PIPE UNLOCKING

[4g0ny]

fresko, can you check in atitool, if there is a setting where you can enable the pipe by software? i remember atitool having an option but i couldnt change it cause i didnt do the mods ..

(edit) or maybe update videocard drivers cause the pipes are also a registry entry in windows (and do tell me if im completely off)

 

[W1zzard]

atitool cant enable pipelines

nor does the video card driver change pipeline configuration on the x800 series

 

[4g0ny]

hmm i thought it could, on the geforce 6X00 series its possible to unlock pipes trough rivatuner/registry so i was kinda lead by that


though i am still puzzled on why fresko didnt succeed in doing the mod.. he did it according to dolfs ideas, so why shouldnt it work?

 

[klootzakje]

yeah it's weird, though i doubt the theory of ati making seperate 12 and 16 pipeline cards so that there's nothing to unlock...
let's wait 'n listen what dolf has to say about this

 

[dolf]

Welcome back Fresko995. Sorry to here that you still have only 12 pipes after conducting resistor position mod .
Are you absolutely sure that the laser cut was connected before the resistor moveing and reg.994 changes after moveing of the resistor 576 to 577? Alexey Nikolaychuk (creator of RivaTuner) presumes that laser cut should affect reg. 994 .

If the card works normally I thing that it isn't necessary to move the resistor back.

There are 2 more differences in the resistor positions of the back side of the PCB but they are connected to GND on XT and on the second position on PRO cards . If you still have nerves to play with this card I will observe my X800XT again and will see whether is possible to do something more.

But in order to justify our efforts PLEASE CONFIRM once again that reg. 994 changes after moveing the resistor not after connecting the bridge!?

Please if you have copys of the BIOS before and after resistor move send them to me.

Finally - yes I have to admit ( ) that the core can have fused quad which is one-way unfortunatelly but let think optimistic. It was only one battle WE have war to win

 

[fresko995]

Dolf, unfortunately I can't say for sure what action DID change the register 994 - simply because my first "mod", i.e. the lasercut-reconnect was probably done not very carefully and that it actually was done properly not until the second time when I had the binocular available (this helped us a LOT in order to do the soldering work with the very tiny resistors....). and the second time we have scraped the surface between the laser-dots better before reapplying the conductive pen.
That simply means: the last digit of reg. 994 might have changed because of the "bridgeing" the laser dots and that the resistor-move did affect the registers in no way.

BTW, I have re-checked the resistor-resoldering using a multimeter. link is ok.
I wish we had a documentation by ATI covering the "PCB layout secrets of X800 series graphic cards" - still hoping that the disabled pipes are not "hard-fused" on the GPU itself!!

 

[dolf]

Fresko so do I still hope. I have also other idea to check whether and how BIOS reacts on the PCB differences (I also want to have full electric drawings of all ATI PCB's and cores but....... ).

I will flash my X800XT PE with your XT BIOS dump but with VIVO features enabled (you have to flash once again your card with XT BIOS but with VIVO enabled) and to send me "after"-BIOS dump. I will need the original source BIOS also.

(Just for your information I am currently useing ATI X800XT PE BIOS (Jun 9th 2004 6:28 PM) from http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/).

Please also to send me your current XT BIOS dump (probably you have disabled VIVO) and the source XT BIOS with already disabled VIVO.

Later probably w1zzard can and will help us to define the pipe information in the BIOS and how it looks like

The fight continues

 

[W1zzard]

if you hold the shift key while clicking on "settings" in atitool, the info window where pipelines are listed, will have the fuses information on the bottom.. unfortunately no details are known about the encoding of the two values

 

[klootzakje]

Klootzakje, look your last picture of the back side. There are 6 chips and two empty places (top-right).
1. What is writen on the chips?
2. Please if you can measure whether these chips are electriaclly connected in parallel or are separate and are connected to the core?
They all can be connected also to GND or power supplay also!

on the chips it's written:
59n03s
ak 511

and i/we think theyre parralel but not sure...


anything more?

 

[dolf]

I think that is enough but what you have done with your card? Did you flash it with modified flashrom?
And what is the result?

Please look the previous post from w1zzard and post the result from ATITool in order to collect data.

Thanks preliminary

 

[klootzakje]

i think i used the normal flashrom and flashed a x850 pro 2.0ns bios onto my card... the only bios of several i tried that accually flashed onto it...
it didnt change my 8 pipelines offcourse, it only changed the hardware name of my card to x850 pro, and made my default speed as high as a x850 pro (507/520) i'll brb and stick my x800 in again make the atitool settings screenshot

edit :
here y'are

want me to flash back to my original bios? or is this info also good?

 

[fresko995]

BIOS dumps

Hi Dolf,
as requested, enclosed are the files you wish to analyze.
the first one is the dump of the X800XT-PE BIOS by ATI that you're using on your own card (DL'ed from techpowerup's BIOS collection) after having flashed onto card (w/VIVO enabled).
second one is the same as the first one, but before flash.
third one is a modified X800XT-PE-BIOS dump without VIVO-features (no yellow exclamation marks in device manager).
the fourth is the same as the third but not "dumped" --> source BIOS before flash.
and last but not least the fifth is the dump of my ORIGINAL X800Pro-BIOS by Sapphire, BEFORE having done ANY modification to the card.

hopefully you'll be able to spot any important differences among those firmwares which might give you some more idea how the disabling of the pipelines is done on X800-series graphic cards.

thanx for all the brain work and efforts you've made so far!

 

[klootzakje]

thanx for all the brain work and efforts you've made so far!

i to-ta-lly agree with you

 

[dolf]

Fresko, klootzakje THANKS to you guys and to all other that wants to help with something for our common interest.

I will keep you informed for all that I discover (good or bad).

Klootzakje, please use the modified flashrom to flash your card with PRO BIOS useing -f -p command and report whether the number of pipelines changes?
More you can find here: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/100

I will attach the modified flashrom (I am recommending it because it is more familiar to me, win flash could also be used)

Success

 

[klootzakje]

oke i will,when i get back from work thnx

 

[W1zzard]

i suggest you only use the modified flashrom (not winflash or any other dos flashing utils from ati) for such experiments, because those tools may not overwrite the whole bios. as you can see in the x800 pro vivo article, ati's tool preserves the pipeline settings area.

 

[dolf]

W1zzard thanks a lot for the ATITool information (I think that the results in ATITool repeats the RivaTuner results). But have you any idea from where it takes the information?
From BIOS or from somewhere else?

Thanks preliminary

 

[W1zzard]

its the same information rivatuner shows .. it's just that i didnt not want to reveal this feature to the public in the past

the information is read directly from the gpu chip .. the rom fuses are stored inside the bios and can be changed but they have no effect if die/substrate fuses are present

 

[SPHERE]

you should make this public dude

 

[F!reF0X]

Here's some extra gb_pipe_select info. Its from a stock sapphire x800 pro (NON VIVO).

 

[klootzakje]

dolf? which kinda extension should your zipped file have? it hasn't got any ??

 

[Don__1]

dolf? which kinda extension should your zipped file have? it hasn't got any ??

If your on about the "flashrom16" file from an earlier post then it has the standard .zip extension. It downloads here just fine.

 

[ChAce]

Why oh why is it that nVidia cards can simply be unlocked through software (RivaTurner), while ATi cards have to be either bios modded (in a lucky case) or hardmodded? Surely there must be some way to unlock them through software aswell? But well, I guess we'd have seen that program had it been possible. Bios flashing is not the slightest problem but hardmodding can always be dangerous.

 

[klootzakje]

If your on about the "flashrom16" file from an earlier post then it has the standard .zip extension. It downloads here just fine.

lol but when i unzip it it doesnot have an extension ;o

edit :
tried changing it to .com and .exe but it didnt work

 

[Don__1]

Oh yeah.