HD6950 Issue after 6970 flash.

[MrPixel]

Hey,

I normally never post pc problems to forums as most can be solved with help from the google machine, but I've been having problems with my 6950 ever since I stupidly tried to flash it to 6970.

The initial flash seemed to work perfectly, GPU-Z showed what you'd expect, however after playing BC2 for 30 mins, my PC crashed and restarted.

Right away I restored the backup bios, GPU-Z recognised it as the original, however the crashes persisted in games.

I ran a number of stress tests (FurTest, Kombuster, 34Mark06, etc.) and all ran fine for over an hour each.

After this I tried to flash a newer version of the 6950 bios from TPU's VGA Bios Database, it was successful, however the crashes persisted. Even after a fresh windows install (all fresh and up to date drivers) on a spare HD it was the same.

I monitor temps and loads on my cpu, gpu etc, even while the GPU is at 99% load, it doesn't exceed 58 degrees at the very most.

I'm at a loss as to what I can try next or what exactly is going wrong.

Has anyone any ideas?

Basic spec:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Mobo: Giga-byte MA78LMT-US2H
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
GPU: Readon HD 6950 Direct CU II 2GB GDDR5
PSU: Corsair TX650w
RAM: Corsair 2 x 4 GB DDR3-1600

DxDiag for the rest.

Thanks.

 

[Kofoed]

Are you sure this only started to happen after you flashed it to a 6970?
Does it only happen in BC2?

Does your card have the double bios switch? Try and switch it back to the original bios.

Also, if you have overclocked it, try without a OC.

 

[MrPixel]

Hey, thank you for the reply.

A friend of mine pointed out something this morning that he had heard before about Punkbuster (BC2's anti-cheat) and system monitors not playing nice. After some more research I found this article.

You can read it for the full details, but basically punkbuster does things it shouldn't (no surprise there) and messes with the likes of MSI Afterburner. Disabling a config in MSI Afterburner apparently resolves the issue.

I've taken these steps and done 2 test runs in BC2 for over an hour each, no crashes.

So it would seem the unlock had nothing to do with it, it was just I only started monitoring during gameplay when I done the unlock. In fact even though it was DirectCUII it would also seem the unlock actually worked ok.

To answer your questions however, there was no overclock, and the card is DirectCUII, so the bios switch has been change to enable the dual link dvi.

Sorry to have wasted your time with this, I'm surprised I didn't find this out sooner. Thanks again for your help.

If things change I'll update.

 

[vnt]

Hey,

I normally never post pc problems to forums as most can be solved with help from the google machine, but I've been having problems with my 6950 ever since I stupidly tried to flash it to 6970.

The initial flash seemed to work perfectly, GPU-Z showed what you'd expect, however after playing BC2 for 30 mins, my PC crashed and restarted.

Right away I restored the backup bios, GPU-Z recognised it as the original, however the crashes persisted in games.

I ran a number of stress tests (FurTest, Kombuster, 34Mark06, etc.) and all ran fine for over an hour each.

After this I tried to flash a newer version of the 6950 bios from TPU's VGA Bios Database, it was successful, however the crashes persisted. Even after a fresh windows install (all fresh and up to date drivers) on a spare HD it was the same.

I monitor temps and loads on my cpu, gpu etc, even while the GPU is at 99% load, it doesn't exceed 58 degrees at the very most.

I'm at a loss as to what I can try next or what exactly is going wrong.

Has anyone any ideas?

Basic spec:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Mobo: Giga-byte MA78LMT-US2H
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
GPU: Readon HD 6950 Direct CU II 2GB GDDR5
PSU: Corsair TX650w
RAM: Corsair 2 x 4 GB DDR3-1600

DxDiag for the rest.

Thanks.

Can I ask you a question that when you flash 6970 bios, did you change the video card to 6970 in RBE? or you leave it as 6950 ? and did you change the vendor ID too?

 

[MrPixel]

Hey vnt, I used atiwinflash, although others had problems, it worked perfect via cmd (following these instructions). I didn't change the vendor.

After I realised the problem was with MSI AFTerburner and Punk Buster not playing nice together, I done the flash again and everything has been perfect since.

My card is the Asus 6950 Direct CUII - Although most of these wouldn't flash, mine took it.