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AMD Radeon HD 6950 Can be Unlocked to HD 6970

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Wow this is sweet. Didn't think stuff like this happened anymore...

Exactly what I was thinking. I thought ATI / Nvidia started preventing this by doing laser cuts on the card. I remember BIOS flashing my old mighty Sapphire 9800 Pro to 9800 XT - I was a lucky one and got the R360 core.

This article makes me think of this one I read... hey wait, it's here at TPU :D

Interview: Alex 'Unwinder' / RivaTuner

The hobby of soft-modding GPUs turned into an obsession. Alex and his friends had tackled several softmod projects over the years, and in January of 2003 he would make an unlikely friend because of it. At the time, ATI had been working on the 9500-9700 Radeon series and one of their product producing partners, afraid to sell the new 9500 Non-Pro model because it could be unlocked to the 9700 series, contacted Alex about the issue. “I immediately started investigating 9500 modding. So I guess it was a planned leak for them, aimed to boost sales of the 9500 Non-Pro.” Alex and his team announced that they were working on a closed beta for the modded 9500 drives, but it turns out that somebody beat them to it. “I was really mad, thinking that some of my testers ignored the NDA and leaked the script. So I contacted the author of the modded driver and as you can guess, W1z was that man.” W1zzard, who was living in Germany, had completed the mod all by himself, starting a strong professional relationship between the two software developers.

While the modding community has grown, according to Alex it peaked in 2004 with the release of GeForce 6800 series. Then, it was easy to unlock pixel and vertex pipelines with the NVStrap driver, but now ATI and NVIDIA are using advanced locking technologies making soft-mods nearly impossible in modern display adapters. Alex says, “Soft-mods mean lost money for both ATI and NVIDIA, and they are definitely not stupid and never make the same mistake twice.” This could lead to the eventual death of the soft-mod community but there is a bright side. “GPUs have a lot of undocumented areas, which vendors are trying to hide from end users. So we will always have something new to explore.” In the end however, Alex believes that soft-modding benefits both ATI and NVIDIA. “People like a free performance boost and whether ATI and NVIDIA like it or not, the mods help them to promote their products.”
 
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@crazyeyesreaper
I can see what you're thinking, but AMD just killed off the 6970 and I'm sure they won't be happy about this
 

HammerON

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If I didnt't have 2 GTX 470's under water I would buy two 6950's in a heartbeat!!!
This is freak'n awesome:)
 
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Is this not a bit shit? I mean as in shipping units that are 'software' crippled and can be 'fixed'? It's great for the guys with 6950's but it surely must leave a sour taste in the mouth for 6970 owners who paid what, 50-80 quid more? I guess hardware fusing is more expensive so BIOS mod.......

HOLD THE BOAT....

Is this what the delay was all about? CD at S/A had an article about 6970 stocks being higher than expected and 6950 stocks being very low. Was the delay caused by the last minute BIOS fiddlings to make more 6950's out of the 6970 cards?

Plausible?

There were always two ways to look at that (if it was true). One just became less pessimistic, and more realistic.

1. Cayman yields were great, and most dies qualified to have all shaders enabled.
2. Cayman yields were terrible, and units were disabled on both parts. 6950 BECAME 6970 (Or at least shader specs drifted downward; perhaps revisioned more than once) allowing greater allocation to 6970.

The mill, and reality, points to number 2.

Our Chinese/Taiwanese friends supposedly 'in-the-know' mentioned long before the 6900 series release that it had (according to Googlnese) been "melted down" and changes had been made reducing shader count (From 1920 to 1792 IIRC, but I may remember wrong). I don't know exactly what was meant by that, but there was likely something to it. This is on top of reporting from a different source Cayman was taped out at least twice, the last time a pretty short time before launch (late Q3). TechEYE also ran a post (from 'inside-Taiwan sources') on Nov 7th indicating yields were in single digits and AMD was in a scurry to get SOMETHING out to compete because enough fully-functioning dies were not going to make it for a Q4 launch. So there's the hear-say.

Then there's facts. Not only was Cayman delayed, reinforcing yield rumors, but when you start looking at performance for 6950/6970 relative to Barts things get ugly. I don't know how any other conclusion could be reached other than this compromise satiated their need for yield, performance above Barts, if only barely, and the realization these two products were the only two they would be able to harvest dies for. It's hard to believe 6950 was planned to be only 10% faster than 6870, and the two 6900-series products 10% apart. We all know the standard gap between products (~15%), and this ain't that on multiple levels. Also note not only is 6970 the first part in eons from ATi with an unorthodox clockspeed (They HAD to release something comparable to GTX570, yields be damned) but that this core was architected after they knew their direct competition (512sp Fermi, ~750mhz). When a mid-range GTX560 (upclocked, mind you, to unexpectedly compete with 6950) is coming that will destroy not only Cayman's intended MSRP, but put pressure on AMD's whole $200-400 stack when AMD typically prides themselves on efficiency, you know something had to have gone terribly wrong.

If anything, the flashing ability would likely indicate 6950 was not planned to have 1408 shaders from the get-go, or the dies WOULD be locked down from TSMC. What if 6950 was planned to have 1536sp? To me, and I may stand alone, that makes a TON more sense.

The plot thickens...
 
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"The dual BIOS feature is just an added convenience for easier recovery, it is not a requirement for this kind of modding, nor is it evidence that AMD has planned their cards with unlocking in mind" Why I find this a bit funny? :laugh:
 

Over_Lord

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There were always two ways to look at that (if it was true). One just became less pessimistic, and more realistic.

1. Cayman yields were great, and most dies qualified to have all shaders enabled.
2. Cayman yields were terrible, and units were disabled on both parts. 6950 BECAME 6970 (Or at least shader specs drifted downward; perhaps revisioned more than once) allowing greater allocation to 6970.

The mill, and reality, points to number 2.

Our Chinese/Taiwanese friends supposedly 'in-the-know' mentioned long before the 6900 series release that it had (according to Googlnese) been "melted down" and changes had been made reducing shader count (From 1920 to 1792 IIRC, but I may remember wrong). I don't know exactly what was meant by that, but there was likely something to it. This is on top of reporting from a different source Cayman was taped out at least twice, the last time a pretty short time before launch (late Q3). TechEYE also ran a post (from 'inside-Taiwan sources') on Nov 7th indicating yields were in single digits and AMD was in a scurry to get SOMETHING out to compete because enough fully-functioning dies were not going to make it for a Q4 launch. So there's the hear-say.

Then there's facts. Not only was Cayman delayed, reinforcing yield rumors, but when you start looking at performance for 6950/6970 relative to Barts things get ugly. I don't know how any other conclusion could be reached other than this compromise satiated their need for yield, performance above Barts, if only barely, and the realization these two products were the only two they would be able to harvest dies for. It's hard to believe 6950 was planned to be only 10% faster than 6870, and the two 6900-series products 10% apart. We all know the standard gap between products (~15%), and this ain't that on multiple levels. Also note not only is 6970 the first part in eons from ATi with an unorthodox clockspeed (They HAD to release something comparable to GTX570, yields be damned) but that this core was architected after they knew their direct competition (512sp Fermi, ~750mhz). When a mid-range GTX560 (upclocked, mind you, to unexpectedly compete with 6950) is coming that will destroy not only Cayman's intended MSRP, but put pressure on AMD's whole $200-400 stack when AMD typically prides themselves on efficiency, you know something had to have gone terribly wrong.

If anything, the flashing ability would likely indicate 6950 was not planned to have 1408 shaders from the get-go, or the dies WOULD be locked down from TSMC. What if 6950 was planned to have 1536sp? To me, and I may stand alone, that makes a TON more sense.

The plot thickens...


The GTX560 at 300$ price tag would hit AMD in the gut very bad.
 
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The GTX560 at 300$ price tag would hit AMD in the gut very bad.[/QUOTE]

300 $ for 48 more shaders and 1 tess unit vs gtx 460 is quite not worth it in my opinion.The increase in shaders is the same with that of the 9800gtx vs 8800gt (~14%)wich u can easily compensate with overclock.
But 14% moree shaders doesn't mean the performance increase is linear in reality the shaders barely make a difference but the clocks affect performance more.
 
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So i guess and I`m thinking that the 6990 might just be a single gpu based card .Also the 6970`s might flash to them.:roll: The 6990 might be the full blown 1920 shader model that we all thought the 6970 was.

So now here is my problem do i buy 2 6950 or 2 6970 :banghead:
 
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Wow.

Now this changes the bang-for-buck, big time. If I've done my sums correctly, this now puts the 6950 as better bang for buck than a 6870 as well.

(I used this to calculate)
 

Tatty_Two

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ahh thanks, something I overlooked, voltage support will bring yet more interestingness to the table with the 6900's. fantastic time to be interested by gfx cards IMO.

well welcome to TPU Frosty, I hope you stay with us many enjoyable years, TPU has so much to offer you. :toast:

maybe the Asus cards still come with their excellent Volatge tweak software, I am going for the Asus in any case.
 

the54thvoid

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a 6970 is ... far slower then a 580

when it comes to an Intel system

Thank god i've got an i7... :laugh:

I think next year's 28nm shrink will be very 'soap opera'.

Can't wait!
 

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Just checked, the Asus cards do come with their voltage tweak software so no worries on overclocking headroom there!
 

Stavrus

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8 pin doesn't add power.

I'm worried about the power consumption as well from bringing the 6950 up to 6970 speeds. According to the chart in the article, both the 6950+20% and the 6970+20% are achieving the same speeds, but the 6970+20% is drawing an additional 25W from the power supply that (from my understanding) can only come from the extra 75W provided by the 8-pin connection on the 6970. What is this extra 25W being used for? Will the 6950, running at 6970 speeds, hit a bottleneck in power consumption from not having the extra 75W supplied by the 8-pin connection?
 
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Sapphire 6950 unlocked succesefully here.
There was glitch that ended:
At the Physics first test in 3dmark11 i ended up with black screen and the mouse cursor and freezed there.The pc didn't freezed completly so pressing space throw me back to desktop and i got an error from 3dm11 saying something unexpectly occured..
I raised the powertune glider to +20% and after this i run again two times the 3dmark11 bench and everything was fine..
From many bechies i saw that 6970 overclocked further gives very little performance improvement..With this unlocked card i hited the sweetest deal..
 
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Excellent! Was planning on getting a 6950. :D
Does this increase/decrease overclocking potential at all?
 
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wow very nice
 

bear jesus

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Will the 6950, running at 6970 speeds, hit a bottleneck in power consumption from not having the extra 75W supplied by the 8-pin connection?

The 8 pin pci-e power connector just has two more ground wires, a 6 pin pci-e power connector is not limited to 75w, the official spec is 75w but how much can be drawn is down to the PSU and that will almost always be more than the official spec as long as it's within the max output of the PSU on the 12v rail.
 
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That is just great - was going to buy the 6970 instead of my GTX480 "toaster" .... now I can save some bugs and save on my electrical bill as well ..... mann that´s what I call a Christmas gift :)
 

wolf

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Just checked, the Asus cards do come with their voltage tweak software so no worries on overclocking headroom there!

sicknuts, 1ghz+ here we come!
 
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so wiz do you think AMD did this on purpose

. . . . cause it looks that way
 

Charismaman

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just did a 36 step bios upgrade that makes Dos 6.0 into Windows 3.0! PC is super fast now. cannot wait to multi-task and then-------VGA with full 16 colors. Fantastic, thanks for posting the code.
 

Over_Lord

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just did a 36 step bios upgrade that makes Dos 6.0 into Windows 3.0! PC is super fast now. cannot wait to multi-task and then-------VGA with full 16 colors. Fantastic, thanks for posting the code.

hmm, this would pretty much put a halt to sales of HD6970 and GTX570 is every HD6950 is unlockable.
 
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