How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[obsoletepower]

I tried lowering my memory clocks back to 6950 stock (1250MHz). That didn't help my artifacting unfortunately. Keep the suggestions coming.

Yep, I'm having the same issue.

 

[tcool93]

You have the sawed off switch too?

Do the Gigabyte cards have a problem with the bios switch? Just wondering by your post and the person you replied to.

 

[matteh]

has anyone got a VTX3D Card to flash properly? Looking at getting one because its $40 cheaper than the other 6950's in Australia.

 

[easyrider]

I can't make them any lower than 1375. The slider in the ATI Overdrive doesn't go any lower.

install Msi afterburner

 

[baud]

howdy everyone

i've tried with an xfx 6950 to no avail. just a black screen at startup, system doesn't boot.

tried with the GUI; card was locked. so i tried with the cmd prompt and it booted to a black screen. then i tried with the xfx 6970 rom and still a black screen.

i even tried with the batch file, but the results were the same.

is it really just the luck of the draw? my part no. is HD-695A-CNFC version no 1.1
did anyone else with an XFX card have success with this part no? what were the various XFX part no. that worked?

 

[Super XP]

Good job AMD, Dual-Bios to reduce the amount of RMA's. This should have been done long ago.

 

[bystander]

howdy everyone

i've tried with an xfx 6950 to no avail. just a black screen at startup, system doesn't boot.

tried with the GUI; card was locked. so i tried with the cmd prompt and it booted to a black screen. then i tried with the xfx 6970 rom and still a black screen.

i even tried with the batch file, but the results were the same.

is it really just the luck of the draw? my part no. is HD-695A-CNFC version no 1.1
did anyone else with an XFX card have success with this part no? what were the various XFX part no. that worked?

I'm not sure I had the same exact part number, but my XFX 6950 was able to be flashed to a 6970. It works up to 890 GPU clocks, and at least 1375 memory clocks.

 

[baud]

I'm not sure I had the same exact part number, but my XFX 6950 was able to be flashed to a 6970. It works up to 890 GPU clocks, and at least 1375 memory clocks.

right on; thanks for the reply

i'll try a couple of other roms; maybe they'll work.

EDIT:
i tried with all the other 6970 roms in the vga bios section... same deal.

man, i was really hoping they'd wait a few days to fabricate the on-die limitations. :/

 

[zpaf]

2xhd6950 sapphire flashed to hd6970
No problems at all

 

[bobbavet]

has anyone got a VTX3D Card to flash properly? Looking at getting one because its $40 cheaper than the other 6950's in Australia.

Mate, Umart have the Sapphire for just $6 more than the VTX3D.

I got 2.

 

[vvulture]

2xhd6950 sapphire flashed to hd6970
No problems at all

Hey zpaf, are you running your card @ 950/1450 ? If so, how ?

 

[vvulture]

Still waiting for an answer... Have any of you noticed that even after the cards are flashed, 3DMARK11 still sees them as 6950's ???
How can that be ??
EDIT:

Got my answer... seems as tho the device ID does not change when flashing the card.
This has me worried and has possibly got us all fooled.
Think for a minute... the drivers think that you are still using a 6950 purely because of the device ID and installs drivers for it respectively.
Now, this would mean that the drivers are infact still using the 1408 shaders and not the 1536 we are lead to believe...
The performance increase could be purely from the extra core speed.
I found it weird that when i downclocked my flashed cards to 6950 speed i saw next to no gain...

Anyone care to speculate ?

 

[Torello]

Someone worried about voltages on 6950:

In the power-saving mode the GPU frequency is lowered to 250 MHz and the GPU voltage is reduced from 1.1 to 0.9 volts on the HD 6950 and from 1.175 to 0.9 volts on the HD 6970.

Each card comes with 2048 megabytes of GDDR5 memory in eight FBGA chips from Hynix Semiconductor. The Radeon HD 6950 carries H5GQ2H24MFR T2C chips which work at 1.5 volts voltage and 5000 MHz rated frequency. The Radeon HD 6970 is equipped with H5GQ2H24MFR R0C chips 1.5 volts, 6000 MHz.

(from http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd6970-hd6950_4.html)

 

[zpaf]

Hey zpaf, are you running your card @ 950/1450 ? If so, how ?

How ??
This is my new ccc limits.
My cards runs fine without any symptom.

 

[Robbaz]

This works with crossfire right?

Should i also just run the system with one graphics card each time i flash?

 

[Tuvok]

Still waiting for an answer... Have any of you noticed that even after the cards are flashed, 3DMARK11 still sees them as 6950's ???
How can that be ??
EDIT:

Got my answer... seems as tho the device ID does not change when flashing the card.
This has me worried and has possibly got us all fooled.
Think for a minute... the drivers think that you are still using a 6950 purely because of the device ID and installs drivers for it respectively.
Now, this would mean that the drivers are infact still using the 1408 shaders and not the 1536 we are lead to believe...
The performance increase could be purely from the extra core speed.
I found it weird that when i downclocked my flashed cards to 6950 speed i saw next to no gain...

Anyone care to speculate ?

Just look at the graph in the article:

and I don't think that the installed drivers are different from 6950 to 6970, nor the driver tells the gpu how many shaders to use

 

[rui0317]

The best way to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950 is modify the original HD6950 BIOS directly , clean the software mask of shaders which been mark as inactived SIMD. It is prety safe because the any other settings in the BIOS will keep the same and no need to worry about.

 

[vvulture]

How ??
This is my new ccc limits.
My cards runs fine without any symptom.

Seriously ?? With no additional voltage ??
Your a lucky bugger..

 

[Tuvok]

The best way to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950 is modify the original HD6950 BIOS directly , clean the software mask of shaders which been mark as inactived SIMD. It is prety safe because the any other settings in the BIOS will keep the same and no need to worry about.

that's true, the artifacting that many people have could just be caused by the memory having problems with the 6970's memory timings

 

[vvulture]

Just look at the graph in the article:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/159/images/perf.gif

and I don't think that the installed drivers are different from 6950 to 6970, nor the driver tells the gpu how many shaders to use

Yeah i saw that graph already... thx for the comment tho.. puts me at ease somewhat.

 

[rui0317]

that's true, the artifacting that many people have could just be caused by the memory having problems with the 6970's memory timings

Modify the HD6950 BIOS is no a problem , I did it for some HD6950 users and the shaders are unlocked as expect.

Flash 6970 bios to those up comming unreference designed 6950 for unlocking shaders will cause more problem.

 

[vvulture]

Modify the HD6950 BIOS is no a problem , I did it for some HD6950 users and the shaders are unlocked as expect.

Flash 6970 bios to those up comming unreference designed 6950 for unlocking shaders will cause more problem.

So, let me get this straight.
You have personally modified a 6950 bios manually to unlock the extra shaders ?
Or are you saying you flashed the bios like everyone else here ?

cheers

 

[easyrider]

^^^^ want to share that Bios?

 

[rui0317]

So, let me get this straight.
You have personally modified a 6950 bios manually to unlock the extra shaders ?
Or are you saying you flashed the bios like everyone else here ?

cheers

I modify the original HD6950 BIOS manually to unlock the extra shaders.

I dont have 6950 or 6970, I did the modification for some 6950 users.

Would you like to try?

 

[ranom]

I think I've seen a review of a 6950 with R0C 6000MHz chips, but that could have been an engineering sample that was lent to the media. Since I dont wanna take my cooler off I dont know which chips I have under my XFX HD6950 (HD-695A-CNFC Ver 1.1), but mine seems to take 6000MHz(1375x4) fine, though I wouldnt want to use it regularly at this clock without checking what chips are used first.

About the shader unlocking, if the yield on the Cayman's arent super high, wouldnt some of the 6950 cards be using Caymans that failed as 6970s but passed as 6950s? Would those cards be getting artifacts once they try to unlock, or would they not be able to unlock at all?