Hey i was just wondering if overclocking an nvidia card with rivatuner or coolbits really voids warranty. i mean if it crashes u just return it to its original speeds. can a manufacturer tell if a card has been overclocked? also can a manufacturer tell if u unlock pipelines and then lock them again? thanks for any help.

Zo

Most, if not all manufacturers denounce overclocking, I'm sure they too suspect a lot of the cards that aren't physically defective that gets RMA'ed is a result of an overclock gone bad but they can't really prove it.

So what some of them now do is recycle them right back out to some other person as a replacement for a returned card, which is why I've gotten three defective replacement cards from Leadtek.

Leadtek sucks BIG TIME

Put it this way - if you don't overclock or don't try to unlock pipes, chances are good your card will live a long & productive life. Once you start tampering, all bets are off. If you overclock "responsibly", chances are things will be OK, but if you take it to the extreme, break something, then send it in under warranty, they'll know what you did....

Hellz Yea!

hmm well the card im specifically talking about is a BFG 6800GS, which comes overclocked. and from what ive read unlocking the 4 locked pipes has not damaged anyones card. i just wanted to check if i did decide to mess with the card if i could use its lifetime warranty just in case.

Zo

Suppose the card has 16 pipeline and the manufacture disabled 4 of them, resulting 12 left.. By enable the disabled 4 pipeline to get 16, you just get the card back to it's "original" spec.. Unless the company modified the heatsink like smaller cooler for the 12 compared to the 16 then it may damage the card due to more heat... But most of the time, you will not use the video card for more than 5 years where they are design to run for at least 10 year.. So why worried about breaking it?

TMP-Man

Asus A7V classic rev 1.05
Athlon XP 2100+ @ 129x17 = 2195Mhz 1.81v
768MB PC133 RAM @ 129Mhz 2-2-2
40GB 540RPM + 120GB 7200RPM HD
128MB Radeon 9500 mod 9700 @ stock 275/540

good point. at the same time the 6800GS is made from "leftover" cores for the 6800GT. they just have 12 enabled pipelines and 4 pipelines that were never enabled. rivatuner lets u unlock those pipelines as well as lock them again if they turn out to be faulty(they r faulty for many ppl from what ive read). i just needed to know if the manufacturer could tell if u unlocked them then locked them again. i simply need to know this so that if it breaks i can get it replaced. im not dishing out $200 to destroy it in a month:P and find out its unreplaceable. at the same time ur probably gonna say dont mess with it at all. but i have to mess with it thats just something i enjoy doing:D.

Zo

If you softmod it, then they cannot tell. If you use a 6800GS or 6800GT BIOS in it, then they will see some xXxXx stuff you did on it... Unless the company is smart and put a special chip that monitor and record every second of what you did to the card (like voltage, clockspeed, temperature, agp/pci-e/pci clock... etc) otherwise, they cannot tell.. I also bought a R9500 NP 256bit memory on ebay and mod it into 9700.. It has same PCB as 9700 just they disabled 4 pipeline and I renable them... Now its a fully fledged 9700... I can run all games fine except in diablo II, there is tiny "checkboard" on the main menu. Other than that, everything else works. I think that is the most you should worried about =D

TMP-Man

Asus A7V classic rev 1.05
Athlon XP 2100+ @ 129x17 = 2195Mhz 1.81v
768MB PC133 RAM @ 129Mhz 2-2-2
40GB 540RPM + 120GB 7200RPM HD
128MB Radeon 9500 mod 9700 @ stock 275/540

From what I know, the danger of overclocking is HEAT and voltages. If you overclock badly, you can fry things from an excess of heat, or you can give your hardware a "sudden death" from an excess of voltage. I think voltages can damage your hardware in a different way than heat, but I'm not sure.
However, if you are overclocking, you'll be safe if you MONITOR VERY CAREFULLY the heat and you don't raise any voltages. I don't know about nvidia cards, but for my ati x1800xl I use ATITOOL's artifact scanning that stresses the card more than any game ever will, so after an hour of pure stressing I can see what my real max temps can be. Then, if my temps are low, I push the card a little further. Personally never go pass 75ºc. If you want to make a safer overclock, you could install a bigger cooler for your gpu, however, you'd void the warranty. xD

Free