I'm sorry to ask another question about this topic but after reading as much as i could about it, I am actually more confused now than ever about what needs to be done or if it can even be done..
I'm a nood when it comes to this, but EE is my profession so I feel that we can come to a solid conclusion if this is possible or not.
R480 core on Powercolor PCB.
215rbqaga11f
GF5034.1
0445AA
I've noticed a few differences between the card pictures i have seen and wonder if anyone else has wondered about these also..
looking at the VPU right side up(able to read the etching..) to the right is an array of 10k resistors that are obviously jumper setting of some sort, one side pulling down to ground, the other pulling high.
on my board x800gt/R480, r347(pulling high) is not populated but it's low side counter part R348 is NOT . on another person's card, x800pro/R430? R347 IS populated and r348 is NOT.
on my card, RP213,214,215 are populated with resistor networks but on the pro card they are not.
some have said that the BGAs are locked via cut traces on the backside. Has anyone explored the possibility that they may be more likely to do so on the PCB instead? Here are the arguments for my case..
Almost all of the PCBs I have seen are IDENTICAL to the ATI reference and to each other. I don't see why mass manufacturing would bother with time consuming things such as laser cutting traces when they are buying *better* cores to pass off as lesser parts. we are talking thousands and thousands of boards. each one of these boards has stickers that are placed on the back telling you what it is making me think that it's possible that each one of these boards could be ANY of the related products if configured properly.
I feel that all these boards are the same and are likely locked to a certain configuration via software and hardware combinations. the software will read the hardware codes and configure itself appropriately. However, with any digital hardware these days you usually have more than just the bios code to tell the drivers what the card is. Usually you see some kind of PROM on the PCB that is unrelated to the BIOS IC that supplies device IDs and other information. We need to start looking for those types of situations here.
Can people with the R480 core cards post pictures of the resistor settings in the area mentioned above? i'd like to compare.
I'm a nood when it comes to this, but EE is my profession so I feel that we can come to a solid conclusion if this is possible or not.
R480 core on Powercolor PCB.
215rbqaga11f
GF5034.1
0445AA
I've noticed a few differences between the card pictures i have seen and wonder if anyone else has wondered about these also..
looking at the VPU right side up(able to read the etching..) to the right is an array of 10k resistors that are obviously jumper setting of some sort, one side pulling down to ground, the other pulling high.
on my board x800gt/R480, r347(pulling high) is not populated but it's low side counter part R348 is NOT . on another person's card, x800pro/R430? R347 IS populated and r348 is NOT.
on my card, RP213,214,215 are populated with resistor networks but on the pro card they are not.
some have said that the BGAs are locked via cut traces on the backside. Has anyone explored the possibility that they may be more likely to do so on the PCB instead? Here are the arguments for my case..
Almost all of the PCBs I have seen are IDENTICAL to the ATI reference and to each other. I don't see why mass manufacturing would bother with time consuming things such as laser cutting traces when they are buying *better* cores to pass off as lesser parts. we are talking thousands and thousands of boards. each one of these boards has stickers that are placed on the back telling you what it is making me think that it's possible that each one of these boards could be ANY of the related products if configured properly.
I feel that all these boards are the same and are likely locked to a certain configuration via software and hardware combinations. the software will read the hardware codes and configure itself appropriately. However, with any digital hardware these days you usually have more than just the bios code to tell the drivers what the card is. Usually you see some kind of PROM on the PCB that is unrelated to the BIOS IC that supplies device IDs and other information. We need to start looking for those types of situations here.
Can people with the R480 core cards post pictures of the resistor settings in the area mentioned above? i'd like to compare.