According to a Chinese site, ChipHell, Asus has developed a software tool that can turn a GTX465 into a GTX470 without necessitating a flash of the board's BIOS.Given the characteristics of the chip (the GTX465 and GTX470 cores are identical in terms of transistors and TDP), this modification seems a logical one to make. However, it is odd that nVidia has not physically laser cut the pipelines on the lesser card, as it did on G8x and G9x cards.
The software thus allows Asus to unlock the disabled pipelines in a GTX465 to turn it into its bigger brother. The advantage of this is that the operation is much more easily reversible than a BIOS flash, if the unlocked pipelines cause the card to become unstable. According to the Romanian site Lab501, the more permanent option of flashing the BIOS to the GTX470 version is still possible.
It is worth noting however that there are two kinds of GTX465: the first uses an identical PCB to the GTX470, whilst the second uses a more simplified design specific to the GTX465. Only the cards identical to the GTX470 can be modified using this trick. It may also be the case that the deactivated pipelines are defective, thus rendering the card unsuitable for folding until they are disabled again.
There are doubts about the authenticity of the information (in the screenshots there are some differences, for example the PCIe bus changes and different versions of Aero are in use) so we would advise caution if attempting this modification. If true however, it could represent a chance to gain more folding performance on the cheap.
Source: ChipHell (in Chinese)
jmn
On: 06/12/10
