Help!! Locked NVidia 7800 GTX

[blashyrkh]

Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to view my problem. Any kind of input will be highly appreciated.

The thing is, I own an NVidia 7800GTX made for DELL computers. It's the gdd3 256Mb 256bit card. It runs on 430Mhz core. Through the NVidia control panel, it won't let me mess with the clock frequencies. Since I owned a DELL a while back (not making the same mistake again!) I immediately knew that the card was locked.
Is there a way to unlock the frequencies of the GPU and RAM via a custom BIOS upgrade or some software?? Maybe any of you know of a way to hot-wire the hardware itself (like back in the old day, make bridges on the circuit board)???

Thank you very much

 

[maximiza]

my guess is they locked it because of the dell power supoply. It might cause problems if you go above dell specs and the delll power supply may not be able to handle it.

 

[Ananan]

If you're running XP did you try coolbits?

I'm assuming you probably did; just wanted to make sure.

 

[Hawkeye22]

There are plenty of BIOS out there for the 7800gtx. Just google for them. Know that if a bios flash goes bad it will render your vid card useless.

 

[blashyrkh]

Guys, my PC is NOT DELL. It's custom built by myself, only the GFX is a dell. As a matter of fact, I haven't tried coolbits yet. To do so, as I understand it, I must uninstall the NVidia drivers and install the forceware drivers and then coolbits, right? Are the forceware drivers better than the NVidia drivers? is it worth the hustle?

 

[Ananan]

As far as I understand Coolbits just makes a registry change to unlock the overclocking tab.

I don't think you have to uninstall NVidia drivers; I guess I could be wrong.

 

[IcY18]

nVidia Drivers are the Forceware Drivers.

 

[blashyrkh]

OK guys thanks for all the help. My card is officially unlocked!! now my problem is, that the nTune utility which is cool, won't allow me to mess with system fan speed or voltages or anything else! I know that it doesnt support all Mboards but mine is nForce4-sli!!!! I guess chipset drivers must be installed but the ones I dled would give error message so i have to try different ones. ahh... it seems problems never end!
Thanks again everyone.