yes it is good to have all pipes, that means that more information can travel through it. Think about it this way: The more water pipes you have the more water you will get.
so that they can sell it cheaper, and the clock rates cant go as high because then it would overload the pipes and if you overload pipes in real life, they would blow up, so your games would crash.
So that's why I hear people talking about unlocking pipes. So more data can flow through because pipes are open which allows higher clock rates. That's nice of companies to make overclocking and unlocking pipes available to us.
so that they can sell it cheaper, and the clock rates cant go as high because then it would overload the pipes and if you overload pipes in real life, they would blow up, so your games would crash.
Exactly The X800 Pro is basically the X800 XT (same # of pipes and RAM) except with 4 pipes locked so that they can label it as the Pro version and sell it for cheaper.
^^^OK wait, that doesnt make any sense. It costs them the same amount of moeny to make the card, so the only one who is getting ripped off by selling the card for cheaper after locking the pipes is the actual manufacturer. So please explain the ideology behind this b/c it just doenst make sense in the business world.
Probably has something to do with economics and politics like everything else in the business world. I don't quite understand why they would do that either, but I guess manufacturers want to come out with nice video cards that is capable of such performance but at the same time making it affordable by closing up some of the pipes. Then, it's up to you to do whatever you want to do with it such as unlocking the card or OCing the potential of the video card.