How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

I got mine on 24 March 2011 It's a card that was manufactured back in february 2011.I'm in Romania, i think they get some tive to arrive here.The card was specially ordered as i had to wayt 3 days so the Gigabyte representatives could get it in the country- it seems there are not so many high-end purchases it the times of financial crisys.
It seems that until now the succes rate for the gigabyte cards is 100%.Hope will stay that way!

rlweller said:

yes i have followed your steps in flashing the 6950 to 6970, when i am almost completed the procedure and i do the commands in cmd a screen pops up like its flashing however i never receive anything saying vertified or completed and when i open cpuz to check its still same settings.
any help be appreciated

thanks

Click to expand...

Did u restarted your sistem after flashing?The "easy way" is not working for u?I did mine extremely easy...just a few clicks and...done

yeah i restarted i think what it is i dont have this bios switch 1-2 on my card could that be it?

U are saying that near the crossfire connector u don't have that tiny switch?What manufacturer and model of the card u have?Flashing only works on the standard 2Gb videocard.If it has a reworked pcb, than bye-bye flashing.

well right there is the issue my card is 1gb so i cant unlock the shaders from the stock 1408?

Rollin' on 1536 unlocked shaders here

NO!There is no way at this moment to unlock those shaders, at least not by flashing the bios to a 6970. If u are good, and willing to experiment on your card, there are tools wich u can use to edit your bios...but there is no guarantee that u will suceed,and there is a very high risk to brick your card.U have to think that maybe the 1gb parts get to be put in that pcb because thay could not work as full fledged 6970.

Thank you very much for your responses, this is terrible that you cant raise those shaders if there is a safe recomendations i am willing to try it.

Sethm1980 said:

NO!There is no way at this moment to unlock those shaders, at least not by flashing the bios to a 6970. If u are good, and willing to experiment on your card, there are tools wich u can use to edit your bios...but there is no guarantee that u will suceed,and there is a very high risk to brick your card.U have to think that maybe the 1gb parts get to be put in that pcb because thay could not work as full fledged 6970.

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Just because you don't know how to do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.

Stop spreading false info.

There have been success stories of 1Gb 6950 cards being shader unlocked.
Have a look here on this very forum http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141976
The new RBE tool has a shader unlock feature now. And already one or two people with a 1Gb 6950 has unlocked their card.

So yes, it can be done. Go ask Mystifier.

Is the owner of the 1Gb 6950 card taking a big risk? Yes, they are. They need to realize without a dual bios function on their card it IS a very risky mod. But can it be done - YES!

There are other instances of 1Gb 6950's being shader unlocked in other forums. So this is not a once off.

Read my post again, carefully this time.All i said is that u can't unlock shaders by FLASHING a 6970 bios, BUT there are some BIOS EDITING TOOLS that can be used, but with a higher risk (no bios switch) . So...i basically said the same thing as u! Any other comments from some wise guy?

you can add an unlocked (shaders only though) Sapphire to the list

Sethm1980 said:

So...i basically said the same thing as u!

Click to expand...

No you didn't say the same thing as me.

You said "NO!There is no way at this moment to unlock those shaders, ..."

I said "So yes, it can be done. .... But can it be done - YES!"

How is that the same?

Now if you had said "There is A way at this moment to unlock those shaders, BUT not by flashing the bios to a 6970."
Then we would be in agreement.

XFX HD 6950 Unlock Failed

Hey everyone, I thought I'd chime in with how my unlock attempt went. In short, it didn't work . My advice is when attempting to do this unlock make sure you're using an AMD spec card. From what I can see in these posts the successful HD 6950 unlocks are occuring on AMD spec cards, meaning they are effectively direct copies of the AMD specification card. My new XFX card is not an AMD spec card. It looks like XFX has made some changes to the current shipping versions of their cards - like no switch for the recovery BIOS, the fan shroud is different, and who knows what else. DAMN!!!!!

Here are my card specs:

Here was a summary of my attempt, the almost bricking of my card and the recovery steps I performed.

When I got the card installed it everything seemed to flash okay. At the end of the process I needed to reboot, but when I attempted to reboot Windows shut down and then nothing came back. My computer wouldn't even POST anymore. I put my old HD 3870 back in and it POSTed fine this time, thought it complained about a BIOS error and reset all my settings (including my onboard RAID settings ). So I'm thinking - well there's $300.00 gone bye-bye. Being somewhat motivated to try and breath life back into my card I did some pretty crazy things,

• My card doesn’t have the dual BIOS switch so I can't just switch it back to a known good BIOS. It looks like my card has the spot for a switch, just no switch installed. So I soldered some bare wire onto the card where the switch contacts were. I figured the card is f'd by this point anyway and there is no chance of an RMA so what's the harm in trying? I looked up on DigiKey to see what contacts to short for the switch that is installed on the AMD spec cards and shorted the pin locations to simulate switching between the different BIOS locations. No luck, still wouldn't do anything.
• I put my HD 3870 back in, emptied all my other card slots and moved some SATA connections so that I could put my HD 6950 into the second PCI-E slot (it's a big mother of a card and was covering the SATA ports on my M2N32SLI-Deluxe). My theory was, if I could boot with my HD 3870 and still "see" my dead HD 6950 then I might be able to flash it back to the backup I made of the BIOS. Well good thought (in theory). My computer booted and I was able to log into Windows! YEAH!!! Windows immediately saw the dead HD 6950 and started to install drivers for it. As soon as the drivers were installed and Windows attempted to initialize the card then my monitor went black (yes, the one pluged into the HD 3870) and my computer locked up. Sigh….
• Working with the above theory, it tried going into Safe Mode to re-flash the card back to the original HD 6950 BIOS. No luck, ATIWinFlash doesn't allow it. It throws up a error about needing Administrative privileges. DAMN!!!!
• I booted the "Last Known Good Configuration" in Windows 7 and rushed into the Device Manager before the system to could attempt to install the drivers for my dead HD 6950 and quickly disabled the card and it's HDMI audio device. The system was stable and stayed running! YEAH!!!!
• I was finally able to re-flash the dead HD 6950 with the backup of the BIOS I made before this whole process started. YEAH!!!! After the re-flash of the HD 6950 I needed to reboot again. I crossed my fingers and everything worked!! YEAH!!!

So I'm back to square one. But at least my new HD 6950 is back and running. After reading some of the other forum posts a bit more I've seen one other with the same problem I had (manofthem #1930) and XFX support told him,

XFX Support to manofthem said:

the 6970 bios flash isn't supported under warranty (no surprise) and that the later revisions of the 6950 cards will be damaged by trying to flash with a 6970 bios.

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Well if manofthem is still watching, F that! Whomever you were speaking with at XFX support doesn't know their own product very well. Sure the recovery isn't very pretty but I got mine back and running.

Hope this helps anyone else that has the same problem as I did. There is hope to get your card back up and running!

Just got MSI MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB ...

Testing

littlej said:

So I'm back to square one. But at least my new HD 6950 is back and running. After reading some of the other forum posts a bit more I've seen one other with the same problem I had (manofthem #1930) and XFX support told him,

Well if manofthem is still watching, F that! Whomever you were speaking with at XFX support doesn't know their own product very well. Sure the recovery isn't very pretty but I got mine back and running.

Hope this helps anyone else that has the same problem as I did. There is hope to get your card back up and running!

Click to expand...

That sounds like an awful headache, but it's awesome that you got it back running nicely. My XFX card is the original reference card, so I didn't have that problem. I wanted another one to CF, but I just ordered a Gigabyte instead.

If that had happened to my card, I would have been awfully lost as to how to fix it. Superb job

manofthem said:

That sounds like an awful headache, but it's awesome that you got it back running nicely. My XFX card is the original reference card, so I didn't have that problem.

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Man, I tell ya. It was a nightmare. But it's definately nice that it's working again.

manofthem said:

If that had happened to my card, I would have been awfully lost as to how to fix it. So you booted with another card and reflashed the 6950? I thought that to flash with atiwinflash, the card had to be in the primary slot, 0?

Click to expand...

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.

Seems my VTX3D 2GB 6950's won't unlock.

They're the dual fan models, identical to the Powercolor ones but with VTX3D stickers;

PowerColor AX6950 2GBD5-2DH Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256...

They've got the BIOS switch and all, and when flashed simply cause the PC to fail to boot during the restart after completing the flash.

Have tried a few different 6970 BIOS's, including the 6950 clock speed ones.


Anyone else had this problem or can help me out? Or I'm just out of luck with this model?

(Though I ordered the 1GB ones for 220$ AUS each and got these 2GBs due to supplier error, so can't complain either way )

Have you tried it with the shader unlock mod?
It basically uses your card's own bios and unlocks the shaders only.
This avoids the card id issues.

jayc said:

Have you tried it with the shader unlock mod?
It basically uses your card's own bios and unlocks the shaders only.
This avoids the card id issues.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Shaders unlocked with both cards using W1zzards BIOS mod program no worries, without the need for the CMD prompts and the other hassles I had using the 6970 bios's (which were unsuccessful anyway)

Will test stability now

I just used RBE to unlock the shaders on my (non-standard?) Gigabyte GV-R695OC-1GD Video Card.

GPU-Z is now reporting 1536 shaders.

And yes, not having a dual bios switch did make me a wee bit nervous when I ran the Atiflash command!

Hi
Anyhow my modded 6950 doesnt like voltages over 1,16V. Till that Point she runs absolutely fine and overclocks very very good. If i take the voltage to 1,17 or higher i instantly get graphic errors at Tesselation based applications (Unigine, Metro etc.), but only there.
The higher the voltage the more errors. SOmeone can explain this?

@Performer81
Get more powerful PSU.

DOnt think so. I also get these errors @800MHZ and in every app that uses tesselation. I have a strong 675W psu.

littlej said:

Here was a summary of my attempt, the almost bricking of my card and the recovery steps I performed.


~snip~

Hope this helps anyone else that has the same problem as I did. There is hope to get your card back up and running!

Click to expand...

Just an FYI...here is the same card, but 2GB version, modded:




XFX is correct that 6970 bios on these cards will not work, as 6970 uses different PWM, and therefore, needs a different bios. So, I just modded the bios that was on the card to enable the extra shaders, using the script listed in the OP.

The bios wasn't locked, and I didn't even worry about it..in fact, I popped the card in the system, saved the bios and confirmed it was a 2GB card, and went straight to modding hte bios and flashing, before even running any 3D.


So, yes, flashing 6970 bios can brick your card.

but flashing the proper bios, modded, can work out quite well, as I can personally attest to.



P.S. These cards with 6850/6870-style pwn also feature VRM temp monitoring that some of the reference cards do not.

cadaveca said:

Just an FYI...here is the same card, but 2GB version, modded

~snip~

but flashing the proper bios, modded, can work out quite well, as I can personally attest to.

Click to expand...

Sweetness! I have the 2GB version too, so I'll giver a try tonight. Thanks for the info!

cadaveca said:

I just modded the bios that was on the card to enable the extra shaders, using the script listed in the OP.

Click to expand...

Okay, stupid question alert here, but which script did you use?