Hi, this is a quick post before I go to bed but I wanted to make sure of something before I break my graphics card (my pc usually "has an accident" when I'm tired )

I have RivaTuner 2.06 and a BFG GeForce 6800GS OC. I know that the 6800 GS has the same core as the GT and that one block of pixel pipelines is disabled and one vertex unit is disabled, leaving you with 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex units (I did lots of research before buying the card).

What I want to know is, if I re-enable the disabled block of pixel pipelines or the extra vertex unit, would it be possible to damage my card/GPU?

I know that sometimes they're disabled because they're damaged so the core isn't up to being a GT model, but sometimes the disabled parts are perfectly fine and just disabled to be a GS model.

Replies from anyone who can give me any insight as to whether enabling these pipelines/vertexes could possibly damage my card would be greatly appreciated Thanks for reading.

I can't see how it could "damage" your card. If it doesn't work or if has "bad pipes" that cause garbled graphics, then restart the computer and it should be back to normal as long as you didn't have riva set to save settings/load on boot. I've noticed that cards I've unlocked run hotter, so make sure you have adequate cooling and check those temperatures! Best wishes.

I have a Zalman hsf on my gpu so I'll turn it up to full

Usually when I'm not doing anything that needs a lot of graphics power, I have the fan on low and it runs about 50C, on full about 48C (but it probably has a bit of dust on it by now), then turn it to full before I put a video on or whatever.

Thanks for the info, I'll try unlocking the pipelines and see if they're damaged or not

Edit: I unlocked the pipelines and vertex unit and restarted, and the graphics seemed fine. The only thing is, the screen flashed a couple of times and came up with a message saying that the nVidia driver had crashed and recovered. I tried out ATITool's 3D view to test it out a bit and the temps were about the same as well.

I just thought of another thing, if I have the same GPU as a GT version, it should be possible to run the GPU at 400MHZ (as opposed to 370) and unlock the pipelines etc again, shouldn't it? Then in theory I'd get GT performance.

If the "driver has recovered" thing is a problem, though, I might as well play it safe. It does it occasionally at start up but it did it 3 times within under a minute this time so I reset the settings and restarted again.

if the gain is not noticable then I wouldn't

I got better FPS on the ATITool 3d test but the driver crashed 3 times. What this is meant to mean, exactly, I'm not sure.