• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

Status
Not open for further replies.
possible, but not highly probable. E.g. My 6950 with modded BIOS can reach 865Mhz stable, while at 880Mhz would lock down in Crysis. I'd like to be able to overvolt it to 1.175v and see if this solves, but I don't know how to do that.

Memory is not a big issue, since it doesn't almost affect performance.

What about setting powertune to like 15% or something? what would that do?
 
i flashed 6950 with modded bios only for shaders, and clocks are as default 6950... should i put + 20 power for shaders only or can i stay at 0?
 
i flashed 6950 with modded bios only for shaders, and clocks are as default 6950... should i put + 20 power for shaders only or can i stay at 0?

You can stay at +0% the 2 more pipe unlocked are less than 1/12 of the die surface, for the die structere it means less than 1/12 than the power increase IF the gpu is fully used and i'm not talking about the usage shown on the software tools (very unlickely in any real application/game).

The total power consumption fo the card is mainly splitted between gpu and gddr3 blocks. I would be surprised if it will go over 2-3%.

Anyway, just monitor your card frequency while playing/benchmarking. If it satays at full speed, your power settings are fine. If not try to rise it a bit.
 
That is a good question, but I cannot exactly come out and ask them that...kwim?

I can only speak from personal experience but I have returned 3 or 4 cards after bad flashes by restoring the origional Bios and have never failed to get replacement, therefore I beleive that providing it is the origional there is no way to trace that a flash has occured.
 
by using TriXX I was able to set up my 6950 to 865Mhz stable (at 880Mhz Crysis locked after some minutes, even if the temperature was only at 60°).

Is there a way to increase the voltage to the level of a 6970? in TriXX the option is not enabled...

Besides, I'm no longer able to set the power control in CCC, now...the option has disappeared. How can I do that again?

At what point in Crysis did you have problems? I was having all kinds of issues at the final scene, then ran across some posts talking about DX10 memory leaks. I changed Crysis to run at DX9 and it ran perfectly!
 
Did you run your prompt as administrator?
Try just to unlock the bios form the prompt and flash the card using the gui utility. Is your card in the 1st slot?

Yes.
Tried that & I still get the same ID mismatch error
Yes.
Not sure what to think of this, thanks for your help anyway mate
 
Yes.
Tried that & I still get the same ID mismatch error
Yes.
Not sure what to think of this, thanks for your help anyway mate

The "SubsistemID mismatch" might be related to the bios you are flashing. Did you try W1zzrd script to modify your current bios to enable shaders?
 
The "SubsistemID mismatch" might be related to the bios you are flashing. Did you try W1zzrd script to modify your current bios to enable shaders?

no I didn't, seemed to have missed this mind linking it?
 
What about setting powertune to like 15% or something? what would that do?

I'm currently using triXX and it doesn't feature the possibility of setting powertune (and when triXX operates, the feature disappeares from the CCC). Any way of implementing it at the same time?

anyway I'm looking forward to the possibility of overvolting the GPU
 
Last edited:
XFX 6950

5836.png
 
At what point in Crysis did you have problems? I was having all kinds of issues at the final scene, then ran across some posts talking about DX10 memory leaks. I changed Crysis to run at DX9 and it ran perfectly!

Ya, the end of Crysis is a major issue on memory leaks.

Everywhere else has a minor memory leak I believe. If I play long enough, I always end up with a slow down. Turning off Aero helps prolong the memory leak.
 
W1zzard, you can add another Asus 6950 to the list.

Unlocked absolutely fine using Rui's modded Asus bios. Currently running at stock 6970 clocks at 1.1v. Completely stable and haven't noticed any issues after a couple of days of benching/gaming.

Temp wise it idles 35-40c, however hits 90c in furmark with the fan on auto. Waiting for there to be a decent option for cooling the VRMs then i'll be slapping my T-RAD2 on there to see if that makes a difference.
 
Also, not sure if it will work for people not running Asus cards, however after I enabled "unofficial overclocking" in Asus SmartDoctor, I can now set up to 1620 core and 2500 mem in CCC now - saves fannying around with afterburner and the like. Haven't gone past stock 6970 clocks yet as temps under full load get a bit toasty, but once cooling is sorted will see how high I can go.

Uninstalled SmartDoctor and CCC is still unlocked, so if people can get SmartDoctor to run with their card (flashed with an Asus bios?) it might do the trick for them too.
 
I attempted to use the ASUS bios. That aspect worked, but unfortunately, I couldn't use Smartdoctor. It kept telling me it couldn't find an ASUS card.
 
I attempted to use the ASUS bios. That aspect worked, but unfortunately, I couldn't use Smartdoctor. It kept telling me it couldn't find an ASUS card.

I had the exact same prob!

Further, when i look in ATI overdrive in CCC, the current values is listed as follows

GPU clock : 250mhz
Mem clock : 150mhz

and should be as the default GPU=810/Mem=1275 wich is default, wich also is listed correct
in GPU-z

Is this the power saving thing, that throttles back the card ??
 
I had the exact same prob!

Further, when i look in ATI overdrive in CCC, the current values is listed as follows

GPU clock : 250mhz
Mem clock : 150mhz

and should be as the default GPU=810/Mem=1275 wich is default, wich also is listed correct
in GPU-z

Is this the power saving thing, that throttles back the card ??

yes it is the idle clocks to save power, when u run a 3d ap you will see 810/1275
 
Ok, I just put the 6950 w/ unlocked shaders Asus bios on my Gigabyte 6950. I did this because I want to use smart doctor. All seems fine, shaders are unlocked and I can use SmartDoctor, but I lot the Power Control Option in the ATI Catalyst Control center. I wanted to put that up to 20% as suggested since I will be overclocking, but it's not there. Why is it gone? Do I need the power control option if I am manually upping the voltage via Smart Doctor? Without the Power Control Slider, and without it being at 20%, will my card get throttled back if its not getting enough power??
- Mike
 
I wanted to put that up to 20% as suggested since I will be overclocking, but it's not there. Why is it gone?

My experience is that you can only set the power tune option if you are not using any other overclocking tool.
 
Hi people.
After 2 days of experimenting here are the conclusions:
I have 2 sapphire HD6950 cards - I have Flashed with modded asus HD6950 Bios, which enables only hidden shaders - afterward I installed asus smartdoctor that unlocks higher frequencies in Catalyst.
Without upping VCore I am running both cards stable 915 - 1375.
My Graphics score in 3dmark11: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/369311 -- 9113
Its very important to note that you should only be concerned with Graphics score and not with overall score which is very much CPU Bound(physics and stuff)and is irrelevant for assessing Video cards real muscle.

Hope this helps.
 
Hi people.
After 2 days of experimenting here are the conclusions:
I have 2 sapphire HD6950 cards - I have Flashed with modded asus HD6950 Bios, which enables only hidden shaders - afterward I installed asus smartdoctor that unlocks higher frequencies in Catalyst.
Without upping VCore I am running both cards stable 915 - 1375.
My Graphics score in 3dmark11: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/369311 -- 9113
Its very important to note that you should only be concerned with Graphics score and not with overall score which is very much CPU Bound(physics and stuff)and is irrelevant for assessing Video cards real muscle.

Hope this helps.

I also have 2 sapphire 6950 in crossfire, however they are flashed to 6970 bios. My 3DMark11 graphics score is about 300 points higher than your at the same settings, I wonder if the extra voltage in the 6970 bios is helping me get a higher score with the same card setup?
 
I also have 2 sapphire 6950 in crossfire, however they are flashed to 6970 bios. My 3DMark11 graphics score is about 300 points higher than your at the same settings, I wonder if the extra voltage in the 6970 bios is helping me get a higher score with the same card setup?

***** what are your Core/memory speeds?
if those are same - I guess answer is yes. However I noticed one more thing - when I was using Asus 6970 Bios My scores in Furmark Actually increased when I was down-clocking cards.

May be it's related to stability - despite the fact that I was running furmark with 975/1400.
The problem arises while playing Bad company 2 - I had artifacts at the beginning of the game but not during the game.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top