Club 3D to use crippled R480 in their x800RX

Sgtshaft

According to bit-tech.net Club 3D is to launch a x800GT variant dubbed x800RX that uses a R480 core with 8 of 16 pipelines enabled. What's interesting is that the remaining 8 pipelines are supposedly disabled in the bios. The core is clocked at 475MHz and the 256MB GDDR3 at 490MHz.

It begs to question why use a more expensive R480 core when you only are using half its pipelines?
Club 3D may be counting on enthusiasts to buy the card with hopes of unlocking the hidden 8 pipelines and having them work correctly.

unklerosco

This happens allot, The cores might be from a faster model but might be unstable at those speeds so they use them at lower speeds.. Tis the same with CPU's, tis the reason some cpus will overclock allot higher than others, some are higher models that just wheren't stable enough at those speeds..

po0k

They're dumping the back-stock of dies in anticipation of the R520.

WizZard

Which according to reports is ready for production!

po0k

Should be in board vendors' hands by August 28th or so, on e-tailer websites a week or 3 later.

stevenmu

It's also possible that they're chips where some of those pipelines failed testing. If they work like the 6800s the pipelines are divided into groups of 4, if one pipeline failed testing, it's quartet would be disabled leaving a 12 pipeline card which could be sold as a vanilla 6800. Unlocking and using damaged pipelines can lead to artifacting and crashes or lock ups, I think I heard somewhere it can even damage the rest of the card but I'm not sure about that.

Nukem

Cant find much on the x800rx but can find a bit on the x800gt,nice link on the HIS x800gt ICE Turbo. Dunno if its a great card at all?