How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

During your research did you notice that the 6970 has memory chips with the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C that are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective) and the 6950 has memory chips with the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C that are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

I have no idea of the cost of 2GB of 5ghz GDDR5 vs 6ghz GDDR5 but that alone should show there is a difference between the cards but also law wise all of the AMD and Intel cpu's are binned chips just as these cards are, as in the models within the same range all use the exact same chip just set to run at different speeds so if these cards were to breach any UK consumer law then all the AMD and Intel cpu's and many past ATI/AMD GPU's along with multiple from Nvidia would also, thus i very much doubt there is anything within the law to say all those products are breaking any rule or law.

 

Just unlocked 2x Sapphire 6950s into 6970s.

running at 800mhz/1375mhz atm, 1536 shaders each. beautiful.

was debating whether or not the 6970s were worth it, and decided that a 10% performance gain was not worth +~30% cost (6950 vs 6970). turns out, obviously, that the 6950s were definately the correct choice. i would be kicking myself if i bought 2x 6970s right now. in the face. with ice climbing shoes on (spikey!)

 

So I successfully flashed my Powercolor 6950 to a 6970 bios.
But I am having so pretty horrible idling temps.
I run a i7 920 with corsair h70 in push/pull with two antec tricool fans at medium
In a Antec p183 with 3 noctua PF12 fans.
Cable management is great, pretty much no wires obstructing air flow.
I currently idle at 47 degrees, with fanspeed at 45%
Ambient is around 24-25 degrees.
I also dropped the gpu clock down to 800MHz.
This seems pretty bad, or is it just me?

 

I would say, don't worry about it too much. Unless before the flashing, your temps were different, it is pretty normal for your card. "Idle" temps do not matter, check your LOAD temps.

 

Nice work! Memory works at the exact same voltage. This should be add to the main to W1zzard's post.

 

I have only unlocked the shaders of my 6950 and don't run the stock 6970 bios, so the voltage settings remains the same. My 6950 ist running fine with 880/1375 with 1,1 Volt. It only needs about 20-25 Watts more than a stock 6950 in the Heaven Benchmark. In games like GTA IV there is no rise in power consumption compared to the stock 6950. The temperatures are only 2-3 celcius higher and the fan speed remains at 34%. Powertune remains at 0%. I am very happy with the result.

 

Hello there

i have a Powercolor Radeon HD 6950

While trying to flash up to 6970 ATIWinflash it says "Resources files missing"

I am using Windows 7 64 bit german version

thanks for help

 

The two products are different. 6950 chips did not necessarily make the cut for 6970. They may have had faulty parts that would prevent them being full working chips disabled and used for the lower spec card. The chips may well have different power leakage and may not be capable of running at a 6970's higher speed. The PCBs have different memory and power components that are designed to give different performance. They are priced and made differently to address different market sectors, and the difference in performance and parts reflects that.

 

Ok, I got 5064 in 3Dmark 11 with unlocked asus bios, overclocking to 880, 1375 @1.1volts. That seems about right to me so quite pleased.

I have noticed from pictures the pcb looks very similar to a 5870. I have a Zalman VF3000A that fits the 5870. has anyone tried one on the 6950 or 6970? I will give it a go when some new thermal tape I ordered arrives. I hope it'll fit as it's an awesome cooler.

 

Hey wizard and thanks so much for this Got my HIS 6950 unlocked but I have one small problem - I can't find the "Powertune" feature on CCC anywhere. It's just not on the ATI Overdrive menu, and I do have the latest version installed.

Is there a separate download or something to get the Powertune feature to show up? Thanks in advance.

 

Try rebooting. Worked for me

 

Did I do it correctly?

Hi guys, I have a Powercolor 6950 and I followed the instructions provided on the Techpowerup page to flash the card.

On first glance, I think the flash was successful...no errors. I checked CPU-Z and I saw the shader count at 1536 but the GPU clock and Memory clock is still stock 6950.

Could I ask if there's any intervention required for this? Am I doing this correctly?

Thanks.

 

Still not there

 

Slightly off topic, but...

Does the 6950 have a voltage table like the 4850? I remember by using those you could set voltage for the 4850 by editing your saved the CCC profile. I'm fairly certain the same trick would work for the 6950. Works fine for setting idle clocks for one thing.

 

Encounted a series of problems before I finally got this working. Here's what happened (hopefully this will help other people in same situation):

1. Fitted graphics card
2. Installed Catalyst 10.12 parallel computing edition
3. Run atiwinflash w/GUI (i.e. double click):
Problem #1 - here I got a BSOD which hard-reset my computer (the type where each hard drive has to spin up again individually when it gets to the RAID boot screen). Solution: installed really old catalyst drivers from the XFX install CD.
4. Save my existing BIOS
5. Find "unblock.bin" and try to flash. "System ID mismatch or something"
6. Run cmd and "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" then "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
Problem #2 - Didn't run cmd prompt as administrator. The second command somehow managed to kill the graphics output, whilst the computer was still on... Solution: run as administrator (the first time around I got no progress bar GUI when I ran those commands.
7. Restart computer
8. Run GPU-Z - shows only 768 stream processors
Problem #3 -Need to install some recent drivers, installed 10.12 parallel processing edition.
9. Restart computer, Success!

Thanks to everyone who put this together.

 

after the flash i got 1600 unified shaders....is this what im supposed to get? i thought it was 1536...heres the screeshot....

 

You need GPU-Z 0.5.0.

 

got it, thanks!!

 

How do you unloock the shaders without the 6970 bios? IF you could, some post a link to show how to unlock using the 6950 bios instead of the 6970 because i dont to have the heat problems. I plan on unlocking the shaders and then just ocing to 6970 clocks maybe turn up powertune.

 

Could I get some input on how well my card is performing after the flash?
My 3dmark11 basic performance score is P5117, graphics score is 4957 physics is 6330 and combined is 4903. I am running at 905/1410.
P5239@930/1435
Does my CPU affect the scores at all? (kinda new to benching). I'm running a i7 920 at stock 2.6ghz.
I have my fan running at 45% manually, and it peaked at 65 degrees at one instant. usually it hovered around 62-63 during the test. it idles with fan at 45% at 45 degrees
Are these decent numbers?
edit : i unplugged my second monitor and the temps dropped idle from 45@45% to 33@45%.
can't live without the second monitor tho!

 

ALT-TAB crash

Hi everyone, I have only unlocked the shaders of my sapphire 6950, runs fine (tested with furmark during 30mn, unigine etc, no crash no artefact) but i 've a problem when i Alt-Tab out of a game (for desktop or firefox) and go back in, sometimes i get a grey bar screen and i must reboot .

 

Received my Gigabyte 6950 (the bios switch little lever was there, so no toothpick needed). I downloaded the Gigabyte 6970 bios and successfully flashed to it. Been running AvP benchmark back to back without problems so far. It is at 6970 stock clock with fan speed manually set to 50%, gets to 62C running the AvP bench.

 

I ordered a set of Sapphire HD6950s last night.... lets give it a try

 

I've been having an intermittent problem which I'm unsure is related to the flash or not, but I thought I'd ask. When I'm using 2 monitors, the idle clocks are 500 gpu and 1375 memory. This I expect as I know the 2nd monitor will flicker if the memory drops.

The problem I occationally have, is that the GPU clock sometimes doesn't restore to full 880 Mhz when I enter a game. Once it fails to do so, it won't restore until I reboot.

This hasn't happened with 1 monitor, only with 2.

edit: now it seems it can happen with 1 monitor too.

 

So far, it would appear that everything is back to normal after removing MSI afterburner. As in a full uninstall.