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How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

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Skywalk

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Do you have two PCI-E slots which both are at x16?

My PCI-E slots are x16/x8/x4, which means my GTX 460s operate at x8/x8 :)

Rampage II Extreme: "3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 support at x16, x8, x8, or dual x16 speed"

But seems to me it's the first time showing in GPU-Z :s
 

Skywalk

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For some reason, it's showing dual x16 correctly now.
Wierd. But thanks White.
Forgot to look it up at that angle :)
 

hermalina

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i got one problem, might seem silly to most of you, but I can't flip the switch on my card. I found the thing using the instructions, but when I got to it, the thing won't move...

I bought the entire machine like month and a half ago, with a MSI ATI Radeon HD6950 (2gb).
I am suffering random problems with the card too, like, the screen would randomly move itself so that half of the screen that should be on left side goes to right, and vice versa for the right side...It is usually followed by random lines(like white noise almost) across one part of screen too, if I am in a fullscreen application... That's what made me consider upgrading the card to 6970, hoping the problems would go away...
the funny bit is, the card itself on it's casing has HD6970 inscribed, not HD6950.


any help would be mucho mucho appreciated.

here is a link to machine I got, i know most of you won't be able to read the language, but you will get the idea coz the configuration shows step by step:
http://www.gigatronshop.com/racunari/gigatron_blackbird-10068
 

dxaniz

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if i buy a XFX Radeon HD 6950 2GB now, can it still be unlocked? or have they locked the cards so its not unlockable anymore?
 

polarizeme

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Hey all, not sure if this has been covered at all yet or not, but here goes...

There are currently three different VisonTek cards circulating for sale.
1) reference card w/ fan in the back
2) a revision card w/ reference pcb, two fans and bigger heat pipe configuration
3) full revision card w/ new pcb and fan in the middle

Chances are, you will receive #3 if you're buying now. I know that VisionTek (stated by them on the phone) has limited amounts of #2 in stock and will absolutely allow you to RMA #3 for #2.

1 & 2 are absolutely firmware flashable. 1 is obvious, but 2 is 100% flashable; I know because I just did it. No issues. Took like 5 minutes for unlock, flash, reboot, OC'ing. =]

So, if anyone is curious about the VisionTek 2GB cards specifically, read what I said above and apply it to these images:

1) looks like this:


2) looks like this:


3) looks like this:


Hope this helps, friends.

Cheers!
 

xTr3me

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Hey,
I flashed my Sapphire 6950 with a 6970 bios in January this year, the card was running fine the last 7 month but now I`m getting artifacts when using Tesselation (Crysis 2 , Heaven Benchmark)
I`m wondering if this artifacts are caused by flashing the bios or not? In the meanwhile I decided to use a modified 6950 bios because I heard it`s safer because of the higher vram voltage in the 6970 bios. However I have still artifacts anyway, is there any way to slove this problem?
 

Fapestar

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Sorry if i'm bringing up a super old thread

I'm trying to see if I can Unlock my HIS non-reference 6950 2gb using the method below.

But is there a list of cards which have succesfully unloked shaders usng the method shown in this vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn-6HDuCCsg


PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER YES OR NO IF YOU 1. ARE SPECULATING 2.HAVE NO PROFF OR RECOLECTION 3. ARE ASSUMING.
 

splurgenxs

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i have tried everything ..but nothing seems to work..
The ati winflash (when i used this method atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin) give me a loading screen and then closes down half way then nothing happens... does anyone else have the same prob?
IM using a sapphire 6950 with no bios switch and the fan is in the center .. on windows 7
Can i even mod my card? PLZ help
 

HoundComputers

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Xfx hd 6950

I have tried to flash my XFX HD 6950 using the manual method and the provided package. It seems to go through the whole process, doesnt say verified but looks to be completed and gets to the reboot prompt. After rebooting both times i check GPU-Z and it still shows shaders at 1408 unified. Any idea what i need to do to flash this?
 

manofthem

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I have tried to flash my XFX HD 6950 using the manual method and the provided package. It seems to go through the whole process, doesnt say verified but looks to be completed and gets to the reboot prompt. After rebooting both times i check GPU-Z and it still shows shaders at 1408 unified. Any idea what i need to do to flash this?

Is that a Reference XFX 6950 2gb? My ref xfx flashed fine, but I had to do it through cmd
 

manofthem

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r2edu

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I got the exact same model as yours, 695x-cnfc, no dual-bios -> no switch

I made the bridge mod but no luck neither, doesn´t unlock

BTW, is not a reference model, the reference from XFX is the 695A
 

HoundComputers

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Yea i have tried everything on this forum with no luck. Anyone else have any ideas on how to unlock this?
 
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I got the exact same model as yours, 695x-cnfc, no dual-bios -> no switch

I made the bridge mod but no luck neither, doesn´t unlock

BTW, is not a reference model, the reference from XFX is the 695A

Yea i have tried everything on this forum with no luck. Anyone else have any ideas on how to unlock this?

If your card (hound) is like r2edu's card I really don't think it is possible.
 

Malign

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Hello, I have a HD 6950 Power Collor with 2 BIOS switches. I tried to install the sapphire BIOS to the first switch but it wouldnt boot anymore. I booted from the second switch and followed the recovery steps on this site but somehow i must have messed up and the card cant boot anymore in both switches? :S Does anyone knows how to make my pc work again? I already gave up on adding additional shaders.
 

pivo

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Anybody knows about shader unlocking on a Asus 6950 Direct CU II ? what do you think should i take the risk, so i could have a 6970 like card with better cooling, or should i take the Asus reference 6950 for the same price(!) ?
 

manofthem

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Hello, I have a HD 6950 Power Collor with 2 BIOS switches. I tried to install the sapphire BIOS to the first switch but it wouldnt boot anymore. I booted from the second switch and followed the recovery steps on this site but somehow i must have messed up and the card cant boot anymore in both switches? :S Does anyone knows how to make my pc work again? I already gave up on adding additional shaders.

Try these instructions:


Nope you can flash a card in the second slot (thank goodness!!). I booted up with my original HD 3870 in the primary slot and my dead HD 6950 in the secondary slot. The second PCI-E slot's ID is 1. So the commands with atiwinflash change ever so subtly (I've underlined the changes),
  • Instead of atiwinflash -unlockrom 0 it's atiwinflash -unlockrom 1 to unlock the ROM for the video card in the second PCI-E slot.
  • Instead of atiwinflash -f -p 0 {BIOS BINARY FILE} it's atiwinflash -f -p 1 {BIOS BINARY FILE} to flash the video card in the second PCI-E slot.
And voila, that's all it took.

originally from pg 87, post 2165 of this thread. There's likely more info on that page; take a gander
 
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Such a shame:

I just bought a pair of HD6950's the Sapphire Dirt 3 edition with dual fan, dual bios and 5 heatpipes, to replace a pair of GTX 560Ti's as I am moving to 2560x1440 resolution and wanted the extra 1gb of vram.





I just tried flashing them and was unsuccessful. I wanted to enable the extra shaders only so here is the proceedure I followed.

Used GPU-Z to save original bios as bin file.
Loaded this in to RBE and then enabled extra shaders and saved the bios as a new bin file.

I placed the bin file in my winflash folder, moved the bios switch to position 1, rebooted the computer and booted in to dos where I successfully flashed each card separatly.

After this, I reinstalled the latest cat 11.8's and brought up GPU-Z to look for increased shader numbers and was disappointed to see 1408 still on both cards...

I tried to reflash with the bios using winflash in windows and in a cmd window and I was told that I had already flashed the cards with this bios image.

Can I conclude that my flash was successful but these cards are not able to utilize all shaders or am I missing something here?

Thanks for advice...
 
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Just used Wizz's PHP scrip to try again and Winflash. Sad to say that I still have 1408 shaders on both cards.... This sucks, some reviews have successfully unlocked the shaders on this card. I can't imagine that I am missing something here, I have flashed many cards in my time, mainly Nvidia granted...

Guess my 6950's are not able to be modded.... Shame, at least I can run at 920 x 1375 in CF so all is not lost.....
 
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qbrix

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Just used Wizz's PHP scrip to try again and Winflash. Sad to say that I still have 1408 shaders on both cards.... This sucks, some reviews have successfully unlocked the shaders on this card. I can't imagine that I am missing something here, I have flashed many cards in my time, mainly Nvidia granted...

Guess my 6950's are not able to be modded.... Shame, at least I can run at 920 x 1375 in CF so all is not lost.....

I also have that Sapphire card, bought it here:
SAPPHIRE 100312-1GDP Radeon HD 6950 1GB 256-bit GD...

I've also tried the various methods mentioned out there, but still NOTHING at all. Very disappointed :(
 

Pnorth

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I just bought one of these (sapphire 6950 dirt 3 edition) and tried to unlock it.
Wasn't successful at first but then i tried rbe to unlock shaders and
it worked. I only used the 6950-6970 fix and flashed with atiwinflash.
 
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