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Borked 6950 - 6970 upgrade, MSI Twin Frozr II

Darth Mantys

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Hi - long time lurker, first time poster.

Was hoping for a bit of your expertise on this matter. I tried flashing my MSI Twin Frozr II R6950 to a 6970, not doing my research properly, and now the card won't pass the POST.

I jammed a 8400GS in there (I know) and I can still see the crippled card in Windows in my second PCI-E slot.

Thing is, in my idiocy I managed to lose my original BIOS backup. Perhaps I could flash it with one of the BIOSes in the VGA BIOS collection here on this wonderful site? Problem is, I'm not quite clear on which one to use and I don't want to risk making things worse by just picking a random one.

There doesn't seem to be an BIOS for the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II (there's one for a Twin Frozr II OC, but I have the vanialla 800MHz / 5000Gbps one). Do you think there's a chance the BIOS for the OC version will work, or the earlier MSI 6950 BIOSes (for the MSI 2PM2D2GD5) that have the same spec as my card? Has anyone been through the same rigmarole and have the correct BIOS I need perchance?

Thanks in advance,

Dave
 
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Your GPU is a custom made design and therefore you should only try MSI bioses because reference ones won't likely work due to differences in VRM and controllers.
I assume your VGA doesn't have a BIOS switch right?
Which BIOS have you used to flash your VGA?

Also welcome to TPU
 

Tatty_Two

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My instinct says to go with the overclocked one, at worst it will have slightly higher 3D voltages but that should not be a problem for you, I think you would have a decent chance of resurrecting it.
 

Darth Mantys

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Your GPU is a custom made design and therefore you should only try MSI bioses because reference ones won't likely work due to differences in VRM and controllers.
I assume your VGA doesn't have a BIOS switch right?
Which BIOS have you used to flash your VGA?

Also welcome to TPU

No BIOS switch - if I'd bothered to look this up before trying the flash I wouldn't have bothered. Seems all I heard on the internet and magazines before I tried the flash was "Get a free 6970, NO RISK!!!" and then after the flash, "Help! We've all bricked our graphics cards!". Needless to say, this is the last time I'll be so keen to tinker with a £200 slab of electronics.

I tried updating with this one:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/96223/MSI.HD6970.2048.101216.html

I think I'll try the BIOS Tatty suggested and report back. That chip comes in the same box as my pre-OC one, so I can't fail :respect:
 
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Darth Mantys

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Sorry, I meant I used the BIOS I linked to upgrade to the 6970, which failed. I'm going to try re-flash to a 6950 one once I've made a bootable USB stick (ATI WinFlash doesn't seem to work anymore, and I gather it's best doing it from DOS anyway).
 
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Yes you should definitely use the DOS method, it's better.
Anyway my fault, I misread ;)
 

Darth Mantys

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Thanks for the advice guys, it gave me that bit of hope that I could rescue my 6950, without which it may have been long slung in the bin. But I am happily writing this to you now on a monitor connected to a working 6950 card. Flashing with the BIOS I found on this here site (the OC one Tatty recommended) using ATIFlash in DOS seemed to do the trick.

Thanks again!
 
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Good to see you rescued your card, if I were you I would just edit your BIOS to unlock shaders and then set full 6970 clocks, at the Twin Frozr II 6950's stock voltage of 1.21v I have stable clocks of 945/1440 on both of my cards and simply have not seen a reason to try and increase them further, you should easily be able to hit 6970 clocks manually overclocking which is likely to be less of a hassle than BIOS flashing to a 6970 anyway.
 
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