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Is this card GF 6200 or 6600? An NV43 with "unlockable" pipelines?

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First post, by dormcat

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Got this hand-me-down N6200GE/TD/128M/A from a friend. Its size, MOLEX power input, BR02 HSI chip (under the rectangular heatsink), all make it very different from a "standard" 6200 card. It even had the exact same PCB (C277 rev. 1.01) of my 7600GS, which was boxed for retail.

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Arrangement of chip resistors and traces are identical to NV43-based 6600 than NV44-based 6200. Could that dot on the 6200 label be an indicator for a "downgraded" 6600 with some of its shaders / TMUs disabled?

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Strangely, this card has very little info in English or Traditional Chinese, but much more info in Russian.

So I assume this card could be "unlocked" by RivaTuner, am I right? Corrections and suggestions welcome.

Reply 1 of 5, by Trashbytes

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Fire up Riva Tuner and see if it can unlock, either its had them disabled via laser cutting which makes it impossible to unlock or they are disabled via Vbios which could be fixed by flashing the card to a 6600.

I have a feeling this is one of them 6200 cards using a defective 6600 core so even if it does unlock YMMV on how well it works.

Reply 3 of 5, by Trashbytes

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giantclam wrote on 2023-11-13, 07:53:

I think wikipedia has the story ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_series#GeForce_6200 ....unfortunately speaking, looks like you've got a revision A2 there

So essentially a modified 6600 core to only have 6200 specs, rather interesting design decision by nVidia there.

Still worth a look with Riva Tuner would be interesting to see if it has anything at all from the 6600 core.

Reply 4 of 5, by dormcat

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Trashbytes wrote on 2023-11-13, 07:58:

Still worth a look with Riva Tuner would be interesting to see if it has anything at all from the 6600 core.

Thanks, will give it a try.

giantclam wrote on 2023-11-13, 07:53:

I think wikipedia has the story ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_series#GeForce_6200 ....unfortunately speaking, looks like you've got a revision A2 there

Thanks, looks like this way. However, I thought Wikipedia meant A2 or earlier could be unlocked, while A4 or later (did A3 exist?) could not:

Wikipedia wrote:

Some users were able to "unlock" early 6200 boards through a software utility (effectively converting the 6200 back into a 6600 with the complete set of eight pixel pipelines total) if they owned boards with an NV43 A2 or earlier revision of the core. Thus, not all NV43-based 6200 boards could successfully be unlocked (specifically those with a core revision of A4 or higher), and as soon as NV44 production silicon became available, Nvidia discontinued shipments of downgraded NV43V cores.

Reply 5 of 5, by giantclam

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dormcat wrote on 2023-11-13, 08:17:

Thanks, looks like this way. However, I thought Wikipedia meant A2 or earlier could be unlocked, while A4 or later (did A3 exist?) could not:

Yeah, my bad... =)

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