so which is thebest 6800 overall?

The best overall unlockable card is the Leadtek, somehow. I heard that they were rather "shady," (no pun intended) when it came to their pipelines, though. My money, on the field of reliability, unlockability, and stability, would have to go to XFX and BFG. Both companies get my kudos as the best 6800nus around, especially when it comes to being great cards.

In the terms of unlocking pipelines, however, I would give that title to BFG and Galaxy. Both had a reasonable amount of unlocked cards, and both are relatively cheap, although I haven't seen a Galaxy Glacier in America. That might just be me.... So, to recap:

Best 6800nus, stock: XFX and BFG
Best 6800nus to softmod and OC: BFG and Galaxy.

Sorry if you're an XFX fan, but the XFX uses the reference board cooler, and we all know that there isn't copper anywhere on it. Neat heatpipe though!

thanx thats all i needed toi know, mothow said that the xfx was the worst 6800nu so i was confused

Add one Evga 6800nu that unlocked to 12x1 and 6vp. Added voltage did nothing, confirmed by enableing HW masked pipes and disabling 4 known functional so that it was still 12x1. I'm taking this back to CC to try my luck again.

Add two more Evga 6800nu's. One with a functioning vp, one without, both with bad shader quads. Actually, one just gave me the same multi-colored sparklies no matter what was unlocked, while the other two cards with bad shader quads had flashing polygons. Anybody know anything about that? What do the different kinds of artifacts mean?

Also I had to use the command line method for unlocking detailed here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=fe971056571e8f2886de...enumber=13

because these are newer cards. Look for unwinder's post about half-way down the page made at 7:56 am (for me CST, -6hrs) on 12/9. The fix for unlockable cards will be out in rivatuner 15.3 around dec29-30.

can you show the performance before unlock and after unlock compare to 6800GT?? any benchmark or percentage??

3DMark03
System:
P4 3.06@3.4(148*23)
IS7-E w/ my custom BIOS
1Gb DDR @ 370Ghz

12sp5vp:8743
12sp6vp:8893
16sp5vp:not tested
16sp6vp:9587
16sp6vp@395/836:10888

Thanks to adam sander for the latest information.

3 eVGA cards opened only one vertex shader, and 2 eVGA cards opened nothing.

Remember people, I really want to keep this chart going as a future reference. If anyone has a 6800nu and has it unlocked and hasn't told me, then please give me the info. Thanks a bunch!

hey there, i hvae the leadteck 6800LE, i can unlock all pipeliens, except the last 4, to make it 16, not 12. When i do i get artifacts and its so anoying, will these artifacts ruin my card, i ould liek to run 3dmark 03 with all pipelines open, so will these artifacts damage ym card if i run 3dmark 03 with them?

Well the cards already 'damaged' using thhose damaged paielines wont give you anymore artefacts than normal, if youre gonna do what i think youre gonna do which is use it in a crippled 16 pipe state to get a high score then use it as a normal and working 12 pipe for gaming then i hope you cannot revert back to 12 and your entire card frys

otherwise no using the 4 damaged pipes shouldnt damage the rest of the card

To be honest, I wouldn't use the card with the bad pipelines enabled. When your image is artifacted like that, that means something is going on with the core, whether it be overheating or bad signals. In the sense that I am going to use it in, the way it gets bad signals and artifacts is if you have bad pipelines. Think of it this way. The information is being sent to-and-from the core to the memory and to the motherboard and such. The information, and some electrical current, is being sent through those broken pipelines. In the PCB lies electrical circuits and such. The information and electrical current leading into the PCB will, eventually, burn out that section and a small area around it. In turn, that has a chance of taking out other pipelines.

In summary, if you're getting artifacts, turn off the pipelines and be happy you unlocked your card at all. If you want a performance boost, then overclock it as much as you can until, obviously, you get artifacts. That's the best way to get the most out of your card.

if it is unlocked it means overclock is it?? within warranty unlock is not permit?
asus v9999 geforce 6800 128mb GDDR3 may be the best to unlock because it is with GDDR3

If you unlock any pipelines on your video card, that is considered "overclocking," by the manufacturer's description of modifying your card in anyway. So if you unlock pipelines, overclock your clock speeds, or even change the heatsink and fan, that voids the warranty of your card...

And actually, while the ASUS you stated DOES have 128MB GDDR3, it's the worst 6800nu to get. Why? Because it's a 6800GT w/ only 12-pipelines and half of the memory of a stock 6800GT, at 6800GT prices... $400 for a 12-pipeline, 128MB 6800GT? I think not. Especially considering that you can get an eVGA 6800GT on special right now for $378.

If you run a card with borken pipes enabled it run normally just the pipes which are broken will produce atrefacts independant to the rest of the core, its not overheating and the rest of the core is just fine just that one or more pipes are inherently faulty.....

Hi

I have a nx6800le and I wanted to mod it I have read you forums and the advice was download the riva tuner so I did and I messed aroound for a whle with it but could not work out how to unlock the pipelines.

I am a true noob at this stuff so could someone please help me I really need a walk through on how to do this.

Cheers darko

What have you tried?I can help u out if you have messsenger

yup my messenger is bloodlust69_@hotmail.com dont be put off i chose it when i was 17 am 28 now lol

Just wanted to say cheers to mothow with his help I have now got 12 pipes 5 verts wicked.
I look forward to turning the clock up .

Cheers Geez

Darko

wow now you have the default number of pipes lol

He had to go to work so we didnt have time to try more but even if thats all he gets thats good.Better than a blank but im betting he gets 16/6 because we just opicked any old pixel unit and vertex to enable havent tried anything else.So he might have 16/6 card .And for some reason the guys that have the 6800le's when they softmod they seem to run faster than a softmodded 6800nu.