is there hope for my....

[Slik]

bfg 6800 nu, I softmoded it to 16x1, 6vp using rivatuner and I got

about 10K in 3d mark 03.. but I got some artifacts, they were not

really noticible but really annoying. what is causing this? is it broken

pipes or something? I ran the benchmark again with 12X1, 6vp and

got about 9k, its about a 1k points difference. I have no problems

with the vertex pipe.Can I fix this somehow?

I need enlightenment.

oh and I have 67.03 drivers.

EDIT: or maybe its my 250 watt Stock PSU?

 

[blahblahblah]

Modern ATI and Nvidia cards group their pixel pipelines in groups of 4. That means if there is one bad pixel pipeline in the group, the entire group gets shut off. Based upon your performance increase, it is a safe bet that multiple pipelines in that 4th group where damaged.

Damaged pipelines is a subjective term used by Nvidia and ATI. According to them a damaged pipelines can mean multiple things, for instance, the pipeline maybe just outside of its thermal spec. Some times the damaged pipelines causes problems that are unnoticeable to the human eye, however the majority of the time the damage pipelines cause visable display corruption. Anyways, if a pipeline doesn't meet certain requirements it gets shut off. It gets shut off because their is no way to repair the damage part of the pipelines.

Relating this to your card. Your card originally started out to be a 6800 Ultra (as you probably know), but got rejected because one of the pixel pipelines in a group where malfunctioning. Nvidia disabled it and shipped it as a 6800 NU. If you are lucky, you may receive a 6800 NU, and its one disabled pipeline group only has a thermal spec problem or a problem that is unnoticeable to the human eye and can be re-enabled quite easily.

However, you are not lucky as one of your disabled pipelines (that you re-enabled) has a serious problem to it. It cannot be fixed. Based upon your performance numbers given, I would have to believe that 1, 2, or 3, of those pipelines in that last group are malfunctioning. A 1000 point jump in 3D Mark 03 is almost nothing. I've seen driver releases that make bigger jumps than that to be honest.

What can you do? Disable those extra pixel pipelines. However, it is not a complete loss. Pixel shading performance (the reason you wanted those pipelines enabled) is determine by 2 factors - the number of pipelines you have and the clock speed of your core. Multiplying those two numbers will give you its maximum, raw peak efficency (it will never achieve anything close to that number). So to increase that number, you can either increase the number of pixel pipelines or increase your core clock speed. This is how a X800 Pro that has 12 pipelines can stay competitive with a 6800 GT, even though the 6800 GT has 4 additional pipelines. The X800 Pro makes it up by pure clockspeed.

Basically I wrote a whole bunch of garbage to basically say, overclock your card the traditional way!

 

[Slik]

ok thanx for the info, I guess ill just stop trying to make them work.

Now to not make another thread I want to now if something is wrong with my card...

When I play hl2 or CS:S i get high FPS in indoor areas and just when I look at an open area, my FPS drops down to 20-25. is this normal? I get about 85 FPS in strees test at high textures + 1024 by 10280 res with 2AA and 8AF. I use the same settings ingame.

I also get low FPS in huge fire fights, I get to about 18-19 FPS

Edit: I need some advice quick, I bought this card 2 days ago. And I am thinking of exchanging it for a new one.