ceewi1
VIP Member
I was recently asked for some advice as to how to unlock locked pipelines on a video card, and thought i'd post it as a seperate thread for everyone's benefit.
Before we start:
It's a good idea to run 3D Mark, or any other benchmarking program. This will give you an idea of the performance increase you've gained by unlocking your card.
Keep in mind that this will generally void the warranty on most video cards.
Also be aware that not all video cards can be unlocked. If your card cannot be unlocked, no masked units will appear in step 9 (as is the case with the 6600GT that most of these screenshots have been taken from). You can still overclock the card, though.
You should always keep an eye on the temperature of your video card, even though it's most unusual for a simple unlock to cause dangerously high temperatures on an otherwise normal video card. This information will be displayed in your video card driver under Display Properties -> Advanced as follows:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ceewi1/temp.JPG (sorry about the link, you can't have more than 10 images in a single post)
Temperatures in the high 70s are quite safe for a video card under load.
We will be using RivaTuner, which can be found from http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/.
Download and install the program.
Here's the procedure, illustrated with screenshots: Follow the red circles!
1. Click on the small arrow at the bottom right under 'Target Adapter'
2. Click on the 'Low Level System Settings' icon (picture of a video card)
3. Click on the NVStrap Driver tab
4. Click on Install
5. Tick the 'Allow Enabling Hardware Masked Units' box
6. Select Yes at the warning
7. Under Graphics Processor Configuration, change the 'Active Pixel/Vertex units configuration' option from 'determined by VGA BIOS' to 'Custom'
8. Select Customize
9. You will be presented with the following screen, showing enabled and disabled pixel and vertex units.
Enabled units appear with a tick next to them. Disabled units appear without one as shown:
Place a tick next to each disabled unit by clicking to the left of the bit number:
Click OK, then Apply, and restart when prompted. Your card is now unlocked! If you notice any artefacts (you'll know them if/when you see them), follow the process again back to step 9, and relock the units one by one by removing the tick. Many graphics cards have some physically damaged units which shouldn't be unlocked, however even if you can't unlock all of them, you may be able to unlock some.
Re-run your benchmarking program and compare the results.
For best performance you can also overclock your card by increasing the core and memory clocks. I will post some info on this if anyone expresses interest.
Before we start:
It's a good idea to run 3D Mark, or any other benchmarking program. This will give you an idea of the performance increase you've gained by unlocking your card.
Keep in mind that this will generally void the warranty on most video cards.
Also be aware that not all video cards can be unlocked. If your card cannot be unlocked, no masked units will appear in step 9 (as is the case with the 6600GT that most of these screenshots have been taken from). You can still overclock the card, though.
You should always keep an eye on the temperature of your video card, even though it's most unusual for a simple unlock to cause dangerously high temperatures on an otherwise normal video card. This information will be displayed in your video card driver under Display Properties -> Advanced as follows:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ceewi1/temp.JPG (sorry about the link, you can't have more than 10 images in a single post)
Temperatures in the high 70s are quite safe for a video card under load.
We will be using RivaTuner, which can be found from http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/.
Download and install the program.
Here's the procedure, illustrated with screenshots: Follow the red circles!
1. Click on the small arrow at the bottom right under 'Target Adapter'
2. Click on the 'Low Level System Settings' icon (picture of a video card)
3. Click on the NVStrap Driver tab
4. Click on Install
5. Tick the 'Allow Enabling Hardware Masked Units' box
6. Select Yes at the warning
7. Under Graphics Processor Configuration, change the 'Active Pixel/Vertex units configuration' option from 'determined by VGA BIOS' to 'Custom'
8. Select Customize
9. You will be presented with the following screen, showing enabled and disabled pixel and vertex units.
Enabled units appear with a tick next to them. Disabled units appear without one as shown:
Place a tick next to each disabled unit by clicking to the left of the bit number:
Click OK, then Apply, and restart when prompted. Your card is now unlocked! If you notice any artefacts (you'll know them if/when you see them), follow the process again back to step 9, and relock the units one by one by removing the tick. Many graphics cards have some physically damaged units which shouldn't be unlocked, however even if you can't unlock all of them, you may be able to unlock some.
Re-run your benchmarking program and compare the results.
For best performance you can also overclock your card by increasing the core and memory clocks. I will post some info on this if anyone expresses interest.
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