CF Sapphire Toxic 6950 with unlocked bios on both artifacting

[xargon15]

I recently just purchased 2x Sapphire Toxic 6950 2GB video cards. I installed them today, installed most up to date BIOS on my motherboard, Installed most up to date Drivers + Profiles patch, Installed Sapphire Trixx (I don't think i like this tool much but more on that later), and went to look at GPU-Z and they're showing 1408. So i shut down my computer, flip the switch on both cards, and low and behold boot up with GPU-Z showing 1536 shaders on both! *Happy Day!*

My problem however is that after switching bios's back and forth and running multiple tests of Furmark & 3D Mark Vantage I get massive amounts of artifacts on the unlocked shaders bios, and none on the 1408.

I have enabled the 20% boost in AMD Overdrive and that's the only change i've made there.

As for Sapphire Trixx I up'ed the #'s to 925/1425/1.2V on both with a Custom fan setting to keep the cards at around 60c.

Is there anything else i can do to try and get the shaders to work properly for me???

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

test each GPU 1 at a time with unlocked shaders

if they artifact by themselves it means your cards just were plain and simple ment to be 6950s not 6970s

just because they unlock dosent mean its going to be stable or pretty, if they artifact in single gpu mode aka physically remove 1 card reinstall drivers WITH the 1536 shader bios on, as switching bios back and forth with the same drivers but different shaders can cause wacky driver problems

1) uninstall drivers
2) power down remove a gpu
3) make sure bios is set to 1536
4) boot and install drivers
5) check with GPU-Z and test card
6) rinse repeat with the other gpu

if the cards continue to artifact it means there straight up 6950s and youll just have to be happy with that.

 

[xargon15]

Now you bring up an interesting idea, should i be re-installing drivers AFTER the bios is switched physically on the card? Or when i install them the first time is that it for driver install?

 

[ShiBDiB]

Now you bring up an interesting idea, should i be re-installing drivers AFTER the bios is switched physically on the card? Or when i install them the first time is that it for driver install?

It *shouldnt* make a difference.. but a reinstall after the bios switch is worth a try.

My guess is one or both of the cards was not ment to be unlocked. Did you test the cards stock? You could have also just gotten a bad card in general.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

thus why i suggested fresh driver install and testing 1 card physically at a time,

 

[xargon15]

I wouldn't have imagined it to be the drivers either. That installing them prior to the switch would make a difference but it DID.

I just restarted, flipped the switch, re-installed drivers, restarted again, disabled AMD Overdrive because it takes all the updates of Sapphire Trixx and overrides them for some reason, then went back into Furmark and saw absolutely no artifacts.

GPU-Z shows both cards with 1536 shaders now.

Thanks a lot guys! I can't wait to put these two through some benchs and game tests now to REALLY see what they can do.

 

[deftond]

It *shouldnt* make a difference.. but a reinstall after the bios switch is worth a try.

My guess is one or both of the cards was not ment to be unlocked. Did you test the cards stock? You could have also just gotten a bad card in general.

I had two hd4850's..both 512 Sapphire cards. One could overclock one would crash my computer with just 1mhz increase.

Some cards arn't meant to be overclocked at all. I am not sure with 6950's crossfire but sometiems I installed the drivers to the second card as well. Not sure if that helps. Youll have to test one card at a time and try putting the best performing card on top so the second is just the help card. Also is your second pci-e slot a 8x 4x or 16x if your lucky?