Another 6950 question

[Spadje]

I am new here and have been visiting your forums for quite some time now. I have recently crossfired my 6950's and was thinking about unlocking the shaders. My primary 6950 is a FLeX edition card and had a few questions. When using RBE and I load the bios of the FLeX card I get an error stating "Unable to find overdrive settings. Maybe your card simply does not support overdrive". If I log into Catalyst Control Manager I can enable overdrive but can only gain 40MHz. On the second card it is a dual fan Sapphire Dirt 3 edition card stock clocks not the OC version. Its Bios appears newer than the one on the FLeX. My question is can I flash the FLeX to a newer bios that would take care of the initial error message and give me the ability to unlock the shaders? Is there a bios you all would recommend?

Thanks,
Spadje

EDIT: Sorry system specs below
Intel DX50SO
Intel i7 920@ 3.5GHz
16GB DDR3 G.Skill
128GB Crucial M4 SSD
2TB Seagate
Sapphire 6950 FLeX 2GB
Sapphire 6950 2GB
3x Acer H233H monitors in eyefinity

 

[Law-II]

Hi

Welcome to TPU

Unlocking shaders on these card will not get greater fps over, using software to OC

can I flash the FLeX to a newer bios that would take care of the initial error message and give me the ability to unlock the shaders?

NO

Note: DO NOT Flash position #2 on either card

Factors to be built in to the OC process
-Fabrication process of the GPU [differs from one to another some OC well and other not so well]
-the cards are different [General Rule of Thumb; find out the max OC for each card individually and then use the lowest OC for both cards, increase 5~10Mhz on core in stages test at each stage, if the system freezes you have gone to far, lower the OC by 40Mhz and then start the same process with the MEM increase 5~10Mhz once you get artifacts back the OC down by 40Mhz; Use GPU-Z to keep an eye on VRM Temps these can rise quickly when OC's are applied Keep these between 70~80c : 85c Max]
-Adjust vga card fan speed manualy
-Be aware that some games do not like OC's and testing with each game as well as benchmarks is nessasary
-Coolers differ [while one card may cope well with heat the other may not; Place the cooler card at the bottom when in crossfireX]
-Make sure the OC is synchronised, most third party OC software will allow for this
-Make sure the drivers are stable; if they are unstable they will crash the OC
-Check that the motherboard is setup and chipset drivers are up to date [Run CPU and MEM at default speeds while testing vga card OC]

Note: use afterburner, sapphire Trixx or other software to OC

atb (all the best)

Law-II

 

[Spadje]

Thank you for your help, all bios's will be left alone. I do have the cooler card on the bottom and it is roughly 10F cooler than the top. The hottest they have gotten so far is 66C during 3dmark 11,so I should be good to go there. Sapphire Trixx allows me to go higher than the locked 840 on the core where as afterburner only allows me to hit 840 core and 1325 mem which is probably good enough in my situation. The thing I hate about Trixx is that I have to change my resolution to something other than default and then back again to get the flickering to go away. Thanks again for the help

 

[Law-II]

Hi

about Trixx is that I have to change my resolution to something other than default and then back again to get the flickering to go away

Dose this issue still persist when ULPS is disabled in [Trixx *Settings]; flickering may be caused by second card in crossfirex kicking in from 0 core [Ulps disabled will stop 0 core after windows restart and set the second card to default core and memory clocks] *If No; untick the box in settings to re-enable the Ulps option for 0 core

Edit: enable vsync in ccc when Ulps is disabled

atb

Law-II

 

[Spadje]

Yeah it happened even before I went crossfire. The only fix I found on their support page was to change the resolution then change it back to default. Thanks again

 

[Spadje]

Found a nifty "fix" for MSI Afterburner to unlock more overclocking ranges.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=327291