6950 Voltage Problems

[naizarak]

Just another noob coming for help...

So recently I purchased an MSI twin frozr III 6950 card on ebay, the seller said they had already unlocked the shaders. Specifically, they said they used the shader unlock script rather than simply flashing a 6970 bios.

So now that I have the card, I'm having a little problem with voltage. With the latest 11.9 drivers, MSI afterburner simply leaves the voltage field blank; I can't change it at all. I wouldn't care that much but GPUz is reporting my GPU voltage as 1.2, which is unacceptable.

Lastly, atiwinflash doesn't detect my vid card, so I have no way of dumping my BIOS.

Basically I'm wondering if this has happened to anyone else, and of any possible solutions.

The card itself works fine and temps are very cool(55max in BF3 beta), but that 1.2v in gpuz is making me uneasy.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[AsRock]

Don't you have to enable the voltage change in the MSIAfterburner.cfg file ?. And can you not get a 20% increase in voltage by using CCC's overdrive ?.

 

[ExodusMaximus]

first - make sure to enable unoficial overclocking in msiAfterburner.cfg (you have to change exact lines to MSIAfterburner.cfg - just locate and replace.

UnofficialOverclockingEULA = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2

mode 2 means that the power play is going to be disabled and the gpu will not be throttled

then enable voltage tweeks and DISABLE ccc (don't use ccc and ab at the same time)

now you can oc to your haarts content... I would upp my voltage at first to 1.175 at first and do something like 900/1375, - update fan profile, see how it works and how are temps. Then go 920/1400 repet the checks. Up the voltage to 1.2v and try 940/1420 and then 960/1440 (the reason to go +20 is so you can do -10 if you see problems - and thats how you get perfect clocks) - my his is at 960/1440 and I know razor III's have good cooling too, so you should beable to get this card to at least 940/1420 at 1.2v if you do good fan profile

cheers

 

[naizarak]

first - make sure to enable unoficial overclocking in msiAfterburner.cfg (you have to change exact lines to MSIAfterburner.cfg - just locate and replace.

UnofficialOverclockingEULA = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2

mode 2 means that the power play is going to be disabled and the gpu will not be throttled

then enable voltage tweeks and DISABLE ccc (don't use ccc and ab at the same time)

now you can oc to your haarts content... I would upp my voltage at first to 1.175 at first and do something like 900/1375, - update fan profile, see how it works and how are temps. Then go 920/1400 repet the checks. Up the voltage to 1.2v and try 940/1420 and then 960/1440 (the reason to go +20 is so you can do -10 if you see problems - and thats how you get perfect clocks) - my his is at 960/1440 and I know razor III's have good cooling too, so you should beable to get this card to at least 940/1420 at 1.2v if you do good fan profile

cheers

thanks for the help, but it still doesn't seem to work for me. the person i purchased it from assured me they hadn't changed the voltage and that afterburner/gpuz were getting faulty readings because of MSI's non-reference PCB.

 

[Darkleoco]

Can you post a screenshot of your GPU-Z readings?

 

[naizarak]

I see you have a pair of MSI cards, too. Have you experienced anything like this?

 

[ExodusMaximus]

voltage and clocks as well as fan profile have been updated in bios or you have ccc controlling them (from the looks of it I tend to think that it is ccc - are you sure ccc overclocking is not on?). Make sure when you go to ccc the overclocking option is unchecked - MSIAfterburner has issues working with ccc. Also - your MSIAfterburner DOES NOT have EULA or or unoficial overclocking is set to 0 (thats why it will only go to 900/1325) if you add the lines as I told you the gpu slidercould go beyond 1Ghz and the memory past 1500. then you can go to settings and enable core voltage tweaks etc.

 

[ExodusMaximus]

thanks for the help, but it still doesn't seem to work for me. the person i purchased it from assured me they hadn't changed the voltage and that afterburner/gpuz were getting faulty readings because of MSI's non-reference PCB.

The statement above is total bs - if ccc overclocking is disabled then I guarantee you that HE DID update clocks, fan profile, memory clocks and voltage register offset.
and btw - 1.2v isreally fine - people go as much as 1.22v and even 1.25v - I have my card set at 1.2v and 960/1440 - just make sure that you change the unoficialoverclocking mode to 2 - this disables the power play (so when you up the voltage and push the gpu card will not get throttled back once it goes over its rated 200w max specification - equiv to doing +20% power in ccc as 960/1440 at 1.2v will go to about 250w at 99% load

Here - use this .cfg file (cfg from my AB (you may have to get 2.2 beta 7
View attachment MSIAfterburner.zip

 

[naizarak]

Thanks for the help Exodus. Silly me here didn't think he'd have to copy paste the entire disclaimer line into the cfg file, I thought I had to place a 1 or a 2 lol. So now Afteburner is unlocked and I have full overclocking power but the voltage box is still blank. I checked CCC and disabled both CPU and Graphics overdrives, but it didn't affect anything.

EDIT: With unofficial overclocking set to 2, the card always runs at max speeds thus bumping idle temps up by 15C. I just don't think it's worth it IMO, so I've set it back to default. Still can't get it to show voltage though

I also tried lowering power through CCC, even by as much as 20%, but GPUz keeps reporting voltage as 1.2volts.

At this point I'm thinking that gpuz is simply wrong?

 

[basco]

maybe he did flash a 6970 bios and just told you he did not?
from msi-ab changelog:
Added core voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON 6950 graphics cards with VT1556 voltage regulators. Please take a note that voltage control is not supported on AMD RADEON 6950 graphics cards flashed with AMD 6970 BIOS

i would try to get original twin frozr III power ed. bios and flash that and get tripple volt.

sometimes i got probs with volts enable and newest beta drivers. roll back one or two and try again.

ps:i found it:
http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/msi_r6950_twin_froz_iii_power_edition_unlocking,1.html

 

[naizarak]

maybe he did flash a 6970 bios and just told you he did not?
from msi-ab changelog:
Added core voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON 6950 graphics cards with VT1556 voltage regulators. Please take a note that voltage control is not supported on AMD RADEON 6950 graphics cards flashed with AMD 6970 BIOS

i would try to get original twin frozr III power ed. bios and flash that and get tripple volt.

sometimes i got probs with volts enable and newest beta drivers. roll back one or two and try again.

ps:i found it:
http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/msi_r6950_twin_froz_iii_power_edition_unlocking,1.html

Thanks for the link. I dumped my card's BIOS, but RBE recognized it as a patch 6950 file.

I then flashed the default MSI 6950 bios back to the card...but it still wouldn't show voltages lol, even with the original shaders and clocks.

 

[ExodusMaximus]

Thanks for the link. I dumped my card's BIOS, but RBE recognized it as a patch 6950 file.

I then flashed the default MSI 6950 bios back to the card...but it still wouldn't show voltages lol, even with the original shaders and clocks.

Open AB - go to settings and enable voltage tweaks - this will enable voltage controll.

but once again - 1.2v is ok. As far as idle temps - higher performance = higer temps. 50c idle is normal for oc'd card. adjust your fan profile and just leave it. 6950 is max temp rated at over 110c (not that you want it this hight) - mine idles at 50c and max load at furmark (beyond game stress) at 76c with average gameplay temps of 65-68c, but look at compared benchmarks of modestly clocked and nicely clocked card (note that in both cases my oc option was at 2 and the temps only went up about 4c from the first post to the last_ - take a look - http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152038

 

[naizarak]

i'm 99% certain the card isn't running at 1.2volts, which is all i really cared about. thanks again for everyone's help.