8800 GT has 128 shaders

Just read this, it's kind of interesting that the 8800GT has 128 shaders just like the GTXhowever 16 of them have been disabled. This reminds me of what they did with the vanilla 6800's, what i'm thinking now is maybe there's a way to reenable them like with hardware masks in rivatuner and get even more performance from the card :D

Just read this, it's kind of interesting that the 8800GT has 128 shaders just like the GTXhowever 16 of them have been disabled. This reminds me of what they did with the vanilla 6800's, what i'm thinking now is maybe there's a way to reenable them like with hardware masks in rivatuner and get even more performance from the card :D

EnemyPoet

i think someone else actually looked into that. i dont think its a software thing to unlock the processors, it means doing stuff to the board itself. so unless you know how to manufacture a GPU board, i dont think its gonna happen.

Because making your top of the line card into a mid-range card (New GTS into new GT) means cutting a few wires.

Having your low range card have 112 and then making a whole new design for the one with 128 means hundreds of thousands in development costs.
Graedien

It does have 128 shaders, maybe more.
G80 also has 128 shaders.
Disabling shader clusters/pipelines have been done for quite awhile.
With the new way they are disabling the units, you can't unlock them.

BTW- this has nothing to do with cutting wires(unless you are over simplifying it...) nor does it have anything to do with the PCB, this is about the actual GPU silicon.

Nvidia has stated that they laser cut the pipelines on lower-than-top-end cards.

They are still there, as people have unlocked them by re-soldering their video cards.

Do these disabled SPs cost less to produce at all? If not, then why do it? No sense in saturating the market with different cards if you can just put out one great product...phan1

No, they probably cost more for that extra step of disabling a few items.

They do it so they can offer a wide range of products @ different prices. They'll make a lot more money and appeal to a lot more people by having many different cards at different performance and prices levels.

They'll always be someone who only wants to spend $100 (8500GT) and someone who wants to spend thousands (2x 8800Ultras). They want to have something to sell to both people.

[QUOTE="phan1"]Do these disabled SPs cost less to produce at all? If not, then why do it? No sense in saturating the market with different cards if you can just put out one great product...Fignewton50

No, they probably cost more for that extra step of disabling a few items.

They do it so they can offer a wide range of products and different prices. They'll make a lot more money and appeal to a lot more people by having many different cards at different performance and prices levels.

They'll always be someone who only wants to spend $100 (8500GT) and someone who wants to spend thousands (2x 8800Ultras). They want to have something to sell to both people.

[QUOTE="Fignewton50"]

[QUOTE="phan1"]Do these disabled SPs cost less to produce at all? If not, then why do it? No sense in saturating the market with different cards if you can just put out one great product...WuTangG

No, they probably cost more for that extra step of disabling a few items.

They do it so they can offer a wide range of products and different prices. They'll make a lot more money and appeal to a lot more people by having many different cards at different performance and prices levels.

They'll always be someone who only wants to spend $100 (8500GT) and someone who wants to spend thousands (2x 8800Ultras). They want to have something to sell to both people.

It's a loss compared to what they make on the GTX, because of the slightly higher manufacturing costs and higher retail price of the GTX. But I'm sure by this point it costs less than $250 to manufacture an 8800GT and GTX.

They are basically modifying a year-old graphics board. I'm sure the costs to manufacture both the GT and GTX have come down a lot since the GTX was launched a year ago, hence the reason they offer such an awesome card at half the price.

it would be marginally more expensive, and this way they can appeal to a much larger market share, if they only offerd a 8800gtx for 200, the "extreme" gamers would probably be upset that they only have a mainstream card, and likwise if they only had it for 500 bucks, the average person would not purchase them at all.

so the slight cost that it takes to cut some shadders out is easilly benifited from.

Shame if it's true that they genuinely are cut off on a hardware level. Would have been nice to be flashing them with the GTS bios like people did years ago with the 9500 to 9700 pro bios flash.

For those with less familiarity with the GFX market, this is rather normal to just disable features on lower end cards.

Not every produced videocard is 100% working. If a card fails quality tests, it's a lot cheaper to disable the defective parts and sell them as midrange cards than to throw them away.

That's where those cards come from. It's not like the manufacturer is puposely making more costly cards and cutting them down to sell them for cheaper. They will only do so if they have too many top-end cards in stock that can't be sold. That's why you always see top-end cards out first every new generation, followed by midrange and lower end cards several months later.

Not every produced videocard is 100% working. If a card fails quality tests, it's a lot cheaper to disable the defective parts and sell them as midrange cards than to throw them away.

That's where those cards come from. It's not like the manufacturer is puposely making more costly cards and cutting them down to sell them for cheaper. They will only do so if they have too many top-end cards in stock that can't be sold. That's why you always see top-end cards out first every new generation, followed by midrange and lower end cards several months later.

Gog

Are you saying every 8800GT is a 8800GTX that failed quality tests? I find that hard to believe.

the "New" GTS is already out. It's called the evga 8800GTS SSC, it has 112shaders and is stillbased on G80.

It is a bitbetter than the GT at higher resolutions, and at lower resolutions, it is a bit behind.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3173-evga-8800gts-640mb-w-112sps-ssc-edition-review.html

Nvidia has stated that they laser cut the pipelines on lower-than-top-end cards.

They are still there, as people have unlocked them by re-soldering their video cards.Graedien

Do these disabled SPs cost less to produce at all? If not, then why do it? No sense in saturating the market with different cards if you can just put out one great product...phan1

They are disabled because they are either defective or they cannot operate at the same speed as the binning they need.

Are you saying every 8800GT is a 8800GTX that failed quality tests? I find that hard to believe.Fignewton50

No. What he is saying is the ever GTS is a G80 that failed their quality/speed tests.
Don't know why that is so hard to believe, this is the way things have been done in the GPU world for quite awhile now.

[QUOTE="Fignewton50"]Are you saying every 8800GT is a 8800GTX that failed quality tests? I find that hard to believe.LordEC911

No. What he is saying is the ever GTS is a G80 that failed their quality/speed tests.
Don't know why that is so hard to believe, this is the way things have been done in the GPU world for quite awhile now.

I guess I'm surprised they have so many issues with manufacturing. I would have thought they could make a reliable product that didn't fail quality/speed tests so often that they can make whole lines of GPUs based of the failures.

I guess I'm surprised they have so many issues with manufacturing. I would have thought they could make a reliable product that didn't fail quality/speed tests so often that they can make whole lines of GPUs based of the failures. Fignewton50

You do realize that recent GPUs, G80/R600 are made up of about 700million transistors...