Great article and the upcoming change in the PC board that will likely end this means we need to get one of these cards soon. I plan on this being my next upgrade. Now where did I put that Piggy Bank...

can someone post their idle and load temps while using auto fan control?
right now my card is idling at 60C with 30% fan speed...yesterday the max it went to while running furmark was 90C while the fan was around 47%....am i safe or should i have the fan set manually 24/7?

Your card is too hot.
Max temp i have see is 80c after an hour playing metro 2033

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/4359/tempsm.jpg

i think it was because my lil brother was watching some youtube videos on it....right now its idling at 42C...this is my first time using an ATI card so im not familiar with the limits....thanks

Well it depends on ambient temps. It's winter here and cool in my house so the card isn't running too hot now. I still use a moddified fan profile with MSI Afterburner and will probably end up throwing an aftermarket cooler on this card.

Accelerating Flash video on the graphics card with the latest Flash and AMD drivers will put more power and heat though the graphics card when it would otherwise be in full power saving mode.

Nobody has this problem ? any clues ? :confused:

I would start by reinstalling your display drivers and video card utilities such as afterburner.

I only unlocked the shaders on my XFX 6950 and have had no problems whatsoever, even with the maximum overclock available in Ati Overdrive. I had to unlock the Bios first before I could flash it, but other than that, everything has been smooth so far.
Thanks to everyone for the good work that has made this all possible for us.

Oh noes get your 6950's quick!!!
http://www.techpowerup.com/137448/AM...eries-PCB.html

Windows Experience Index
 

Probably meaningless but interesting. I have the XFX 6950 card. I tested the graphics with the Windows Experience Index. The index is supposed to run from 1.0 to 7.9. The stock 6950 posted the top 7.9 score in the Graphics and Gaming graphics categories.

After flashing and maxing the ATI Overdrive, the Windows Experience Index rating for Graphics fell to 5.9 and the index for Gaming Graphics fell to 2.0.

Hey Wizard and guys, i did some testing for Powertune and based on my results and setup i think there is more to Powertune and flashed 6950.

AFAIK

1. Powertune is working for Asus 6970 bios. The translated site is wrong, at least with -20% i got a big drop in perf.

2. Powertune +20%/0% does nothing for overclocking stability. Though my OC is a modest 930/1375 with Asus 6970 bios, both settings allow me to loop 30mins of FF14 benchmark with zero issue.

3. Powertune +20%/0% does little for performance too. I do not have COD as TPU, but with several runs of Metro2033 benchmark, i see the following
> +20% returns max fps of around 125-140, average fps of about 40fps, min fps of around 9fps
> 0% returns max fps of around 96-120, average fps of about 40fps, min fps of around 12fps

Sure the min fps is indeed lower, as i can also see during the live run, it dips lower with 0%, but i also got 5fps once with +20%. IMHO, yes PT affects fps, not just Metro, but 3dmark11(about 10points lower) and FF14(about 50points lower) but it is very small to be concern about, and +20% is not a must setting if you flashed the bios.

4. Powertune does however impact temp spikes. I noticed at +20%, my max temps while looping FF14 can hit 3-4dC higher than 0%. Though that itself is small when temps are already nearing 80s. I do not have a watt-meter to test power consumption.


In conclusion, IMHO, I will be leaving PT at 0% with a flashed 6950. :D

Crash crash crash... and some more crash. Runs very instable. Any ideas?

Here's my results with two Sapphire 6950.

Summary: My second card is nearly dead, either due to the shader unlocking or memory overclocking. Read the rest and draw your own conclusion.

The first one flashes without problems. I have tried with the 6970 BIOS and a modified 6950 Asus BIOS, both BIOS works brilliantly. I can run the same speed as before the flash + a little extra on the core. All according to expectations.

The second one flashes without problems too. I have tried with just the 6970 BIOS on this card. Now here's when it gets interesting. Before the flash I had stable 900/1480. To make sure I still have these speeds after the mod I isolate the core and mem and test separately. First the memory, so I lower the core to 800 and set the mem to 1480. I load a test replay in Starcraft II (which I have found to stress both core and mem more than Furmark and alike) and after 15 min my screen is divided in two, no artifacts, but two screens. Weird, and nothing I have seen while testing on my two cards so far. So I lower the clocks to 800/1250 just to try and isolate the cause. Could be the unlocked shaders, but it could also be the memory clock. With the stock clocks I run some replays without any errors. So I try to up the mem freq to 1450, no errors. 1470 then, 1 short replay playes fine, but a longer one blue screens (0x00000116) at the 15 minute mark.

Last time I had this 116 bluescreen was when I unlocked my other card, upped the mem freq to 1550 and stability tested in Starcraft II.

So, no biggie I think, I'll just reboot and lower the memory frequency a little. Terror and horror! At the boot screen (where CPU and memory speed, etc. is shown) I notice some white dots a boxes spread all over the screen. The windows load screen looks normal, but upon entering Windows I get the same bluescreen. Switching BIOS using the jumper made no difference at all. Now, booting in safe mode gave me no trouble. But flashing back to 6950 was a no go in safe mode, so I uninstalled ATI-drivers, rebooted and this time I could enter Windows without using safe mode. But the screen was tearing all over the place and 80% of the screen was green. Flashing back to my original BIOS caused me no trouble. It didn't help anything though, from the first POST screen everything was tearing and artifacts all over the place. I couldn't confirm the shader count had reversed to the original state, so I tried to install the ATI-driver again, but ofc it caused a bluescreen upon entering Windows.

So I installed both graphics cards, the working one in the primary PCI lane ofc. With the crossfire bridge installed I would get different bluescreens entering Windows. First a 0x000007E, then on the next boot a 0x00000116 again. Uninstalling the crossfire bridge I could enter Windows and using GPU-Z confirm that the secondary card only had 1408 shaders and thus should be completely restored to it's original BIOS state.

Now, as I see it, this could be caused by one of the three: overclocking the memory, unlocking the shaders or unlocking the shaders and overclocking the memory.

Anyway, just posted this to keep you updated. Keep up the good work. :nutkick:

I know very little about this, but to me it sounds more like the memory would be the cause... or something else. I can't see how unlocking shaders would ruin all the shaders. But I can be wrong.

Maybe that 2nd card was defective to begin with (before it was even flashed)?

Thanks for your response, i run with the cd drivers and TRIXX beta (i suspect a jump of frequency or voltage when i alt tab to desktop :ohwell:), so i ll go test with the 12a and i'll see if the issue persist.

Just built a new rig based on a i7 950 over xmas. Just flashed my 6950's from sapphire and updated to 12a drivers. My 3d Mark 11 P score came in just over 9000 which is great and the CPU is running on stock speeds........

Feels good to have bagged a double freebie :-)))

warm card
 

with me two.

I have a sapphire HD6950 , modded to a HD6970 with the batchmod pack ( thanks for that, because the ROM was locked, and I'm a noob :rolleyes: )

i have ATI drivers from Asus ( and my pc says it's a Asus HD6950 :p )
standard clock speeds, and power control settings at 10%

I can't use Powertune because my motherboard is a M2N32 SLI Deluxe.
powersupply is a Zalmann ZM600HP ( hope it has enough power for my card )

I didn't yet test it with Furmark.

which settings do people use in Furmark ?
resolution, extreme, etc....


I control my fan with Trixx so my temp keeps around the 53° now.

a bytheway. I have a 1680x1050 monitor on it, and a Plasma TV 1368x768

and soon, eyefinity with 3xHD resolution + my plasma TV ( that's why I modded my HD6950 :cool: )

Thanks for the Biosmod guys !! :D

there is an 8 pin on the 6970 and the 6950 doesnt have one, they are different, your argument is invalid when it concens legal stuff thrown at AMD, you wouldnt win

Agree they have done nothing wrong legally as the products as sold are clearly not the same. What Amd have done is to maximise their scale by basing the cards on very similar hardware and using the software to control performance. If the end user decides to mod it's up to them and at their risk... This goes on in the car industry all the time where power outputs are controled by software depending on the model....

I do understand how this is frustrating for 6970 buyers who would willingly mod the card...

I have a Sapphire 6950 and am currently using the modded 6950 BIOS (unlocked shaders) and so far it's running perfectly at 880/1365 :)
The memory on these 6950's simply won't clock that high. Have any of you running 1400MHz or more on the memory tried lower frequencies and comparing the scores on Unigine or 3DMark? I'm getting higher scores till about 1365, after that the framerates seem to decrease instead of increase. The same happened with the 6970 BIOS so the timings or voltages don't seem to matter.

I haven't checked for decrease in performance, but my first card runs 1545 MHz and the second ~1450 until it crapped out (read #590). I will try to look for any negative impacts.

Add your clocks to 6950/6970 stable OC results thread. :toast:

I have some questions for my next purchase : 6950 or 6970
I see the 6950@flash and becomes 6970
1. After you add flash card can be OC ? , and go to the normal parameters
2.What problems would it be?
3. What do you advise me to choose?


Soory for my bad english, and please help me :banghead::banghead:

1. Yes you can OC it after flashing, probably even higher than before if you flash it to a 6970 BIOS.
2. Higher temps or more fan noise are likely caused by higher volts. Some have reported artifacts, though there's still uncertainty to the cause of these. It could potentially brick your card (#590).
3. Get the 6950 and flash it. :rockout:

Other companies have been doing this for years. AMD and Intel to name some familiar ones. Physically the same chip, just with certain features "locked" (locked cache, lowered multiplier, etc.)
It keeps things cheaper for the manufacturer, which, in turn, (hopefully) keeps things cheaper for us.
Sorry for the off-topic-ness