How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[W1zzard]

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[dom99]

Cannot wait for results to come flooding in, if true I will definitly be doing this in a couple of weeks! but is it possible that future driver updates will effect stability?

 

[W1zzard]

Cannot wait for results to come flooding in, if true I will definitly be doing this in a couple of weeks! but is it possible that future driver updates will effect stability?

nothing is impossible, but the maximum i would expect from amd is that future cards are properly fused on-die and not using the bios

 

[robmagee]

Emailed W1zzard, my HIS 6950 is now a fully functioning 6970. Massive icrease in performance is some games and ran furmark for an hour. Give it a run guys and you will be beaming like Cheshire cats. Nice little Christmas present from AMD

 

[W1zzard]

Email W1zzard, my HIS 6950 is now a fully functioning 6970. Massive icrease in performance is some games and ran furmark for an hour

thanks. added to the statistics

 

[HTC]

I propose that the "2 BIOS on the card with a switch for easy recovery of the BIOS in case of bad flashing" becomes nominated for the "technological innovation of the year" award!

 

[micropage7]

wow.. Its the fastest way to boost your card

 

[dom99]

Cannot wait to try this out! do you think it would work on a VTX3D 6950? I went for the cheapest one lol but is there a reason it was £10 cheaper than most 6950s that you know of?

Plus the Bios is for a sapphire 6950, I am a bit nervous about using it because o fdifferent brands, both cards are reference design but would it make a difference, should I try and get a VTX3D 6970 Bios and where could I get this form. I would be happy with a Powercolor Bios as VTX3D and Powercolor are essentially the same company, where would I get these bios versions that I can flash my 6950 with?

 

[W1zzard]

I am a bit nervous about using it because o fdifferent brands, both cards are reference design but would it make a difference, should I try and get a VTX3D 6970 Bios and where could I get this form. I would be happy with a Powercolor Bios as VTX3D and Powercolor are essentially the same company, where would I get these bios versions that I can flash my 6950 with?

all cards are the same, you can safely use the sapphire bios (which is actually an AMD bios, which is identical to Gigabyte, HIS and PowerColor HD 6970 as listed in the BIOS collection)

 

[LagunaX]

Very Impressive W1zzard!

This reminds me on how you taught me to unlock my 3DConnect x800GTO from 12 to 16 pipelines!

 

[W1zzard]

This reminds me on how you taught me to unlock my 3DConnect x800GTO from 12 to 16 pipelines!

and the radeon 9500 to 9700 mod before that, which is what got me involved with the whole hardware industry in the first place, which led to tpu and everything i do now

 

[qubit]

This is fantastic news and I doubt very much that this was accidental, or that it will be disabled any time soon.

AMD can't seem to compete with nvidia for the top performance crown, so they sneak in some "unofficial" ways to unlock your card to the top model and give the customer more value.

So, I can buy a 6950 with a massive 2GB RAM for just over £200 and get 6970 performance out of it, now that's amazing value. Perhaps enabling this feature is what delayed the 69xx series a bit?

This is one way to poke nvidia in the eye and I'm thoroughly in favour of it. And I'm an nvidia user (see specs).

and the radeon 9500 to 9700 mod before that, which is what got me involved with the whole hardware industry in the first place, which led to tpu and everything i do now

Yeah, I remember my Hercules 9800 AIW SE with 4 pipelines in 2003. One softmod driver later and it had 8 pipes and double the performance. Awesome. I eventually did the hardmod on it (details on TPU!) and no longer needed the softmod driver. And hey, I still have it.

 

[W1zzard]

BIOS 1 is the "normal" one, BIOS 2 is the backup BIOS.

You must set the switch to 1 to flash the normal BIOS.

It seems you have an ASUS card, so you need to do:
atiflash -unlockrom 0

asus write protects their rom

 

[davetheshrew]

HIS 6950, I was first

 

[Gaul]

TRY.......ASUS 6970 bios

 

[W1zzard]

gaul are you sure you have the switch set to the correct position?
numbers are written on the black surface on the back of the card

edit: just looked at your picture above and you have 1 and 2 mixed

 

[W1zzard]

updated the switch picture with clear numbers for the positions

 

[Gaul]

U'r the BEST W1ZZARD..............always

DONE
POWERCOLOR 6950 with ASUS 6970, but getting HOT there........

 

[W1zzard]

For the people who need to unlockrom and fail at command line:

- Unpack the Winflash download onto your desktop in a folder called "winflash"
- Save the 6970 BIOS in your Winflash folder and name it unlock.bin
- Click Start Button
- Type "cmd"
- Right click the entry and select "Run as Administrator"
- Black command prompt windows opens
- Type "cd %USERPROFILE%\desktop\winflash"
- Type "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" <-- the 0 means first adapter, if you have multiple cards, physically uninstall all but the one you want to flash
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

 

[Risc]

Gaul, I´m going to buy one Powercolor 6950... Do you have any artifacts ???

Thank you Gaul...

 

[B1gD4ddy]

Hey guys,

because of that nice "feature", I'm thinking about buying a 6950 and unlock it to a 6970.

Now my question, can I use a 6970 together with my 5870 in crossfire ?

And finally, do you know where I can find a recent "crossfire yes/no matrix picture" ?

Thanks a lot !

 

[easyrider]

I have the Sapphire and the flashed went well.

I have zero issue in Heaven and 3D mark

Now going to test some games!

 

[tyrael64]

i have 2 shappire to unlock xD

I am going to remove one and try another

 

[easyrider]

Do you think they will be hardware cut in future cards?

 

[bear jesus]

I would really hope they leave the chips as they are just like the unlockable single,dual and triple core cpu's from AMD.

I was unconvinced about getting a 6970 but now i think i shall gather the cash for a 6950 and give it a flash.

Thanks for the great article