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How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

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JimmyJump said:
Unticking the box in front of "Enable Manual Fan Control" sets the fan to auto-react to heat fluctuations, which is the equivalent of a curve, alas a fix one... Funny enough, with me, neither the auto- or manual fan control in the CCC worked on my second card, nor did I see the temps, fan speed and used resources... In Sapphire TRIXX the curve works fine.
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the auto fan setting in CCC is worthless! My temps got up to 92* in Furmark on auto, and using custom fan curve they never go above 70*.
 
manofthem said:
the auto fan setting in CCC is worthless! My temps got up to 92* in Furmark on auto, and using custom fan curve they never go above 70*.
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Maybe you've got to many tinkering programs installed which conflict with each other... With me, everything works fine with just Sapphire Trixx and the CCC. So, saying CCC is worthless is just an expression of frustration, I presume. There's a huge difference between a worthless program and one not working for you specifically.

Not going to claim CCC is the most magnificent software in the world either, of course, but still...
 
manofthem said:
the auto fan setting in CCC is worthless! My temps got up to 92* in Furmark on auto, and using custom fan curve they never go above 70*.
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That's because both Nvidia and AMD have sacrificed cooling in return for a quiet fan curve. These chips are supposed to be good for 100 degrees centigrade, and that is only a problem if you're overclocking, flashed to higher voltage, etc. Most people would not put up with these fans running over 40 percent even under load, as they are just too noisy.
 
Hello. I am new to this forum and would like to know what the latest information is on the 6950 unlock. Are there many failures with cards after flashing has been done for say 3 to 4 weeks, or are they running fine. I am deciding whether to purchase one of the 6950 HIS cards. HIS also has a card on newegg with a default clock of 840 core with the different memory timings. It costs 30.00 more than the stock card. Is it worth the extra money?
 
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mm540 said:
Hello. I am new to this forum and would like to know what the latest information is on the 6950 unlock. Are there many failures with cards after flashing has been done for say 3 to 4 weeks, or are they running fine. I am deciding whether to purchase one of the 6950 HIS cards. HIS also has a card on newegg with a default clock of 840 core with the same memory timings. It costs 30.00 more than the stock card. Is it worth the extra money?
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Welcome to TPU! Well, my card has not failed or had issue yet, it is a Gigabyte 6950 running ASUS 6970 @ 900 core 1250mhz ram. It is not yet clear what the failure rate is (at least not to me). Keep in mind they are releasing an updated 6950 soon that you cannot unlock. So if you want a flash-able card get it quick.

As for the extra OC on the card I would say no, buy the brand you like/whats affordable and overclock it yourself, it sounds like you want to overclock it anyway. :)
 
mm540 said:
Thanks for your reply. I plan to pick one up at the end of this week. Hopefully the stock levels on flashable cards will still be available. Did you have to make any voltage adjustments or does the flash control that?
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I defiantly did not have to but when I did I got a performance increase. If you look at the first post in this thread W1zz recorded the performance impact that upping the voltage has. The one thing I noticed was at default I can run my card up to around 910 core without issue, if I go higher and I don't increase the voltage +20% my card crash (driver failure in windows, not a hard crash) on extended gaming sessions. I am thrilled that it runs fine @ 900 1250 though. I don't push it farther than that unless I am in 3dmark really. :)
 
GSG-9 said:
I defiantly did not have to but when I did I got a performance increase. If you look at the first post in this thread W1zz recorded the performance impact that upping the voltage has. The one thing I noticed was at default I can run my card up to around 910 core without issue, if I go higher and I don't increase the voltage +20% my card crash (driver failure in windows, not a hard crash) on extended gaming sessions. I am thrilled that it runs fine @ 900 1250 though. I don't push it farther than that unless I am in 3dmark really. :)
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That is good to know. I have been reading for a few days about this and my main concern is overtime what the effects are. From youtube to internet forums there are those who donot like the idea of flashing and those who look at this another way to get more fps for only a few dollars spent. Since these cards are basically all the same I am looking for the one with the best rebate cost, 289.99 or 299.99 does not matter. I am not willing to pay for the 570's. I like the cards but not the price. Thanks for your help.
 
mm540 said:
Hello. I am new to this forum and would like to know what the latest information is on the 6950 unlock. Are there many failures with cards after flashing has been done for say 3 to 4 weeks, or are they running fine. I am deciding whether to purchase one of the 6950 HIS cards. HIS also has a card on newegg with a default clock of 840 core with the different memory timings. It costs 30.00 more than the stock card. Is it worth the extra money?
Click to expand...

Looking around different forums, the "failure" rate is less than 5%. Failure is also a big word, because there's no damage done, as the cards can simply be flashed back to their original BIOS.

I myself have flashed both my Sapphire 6950's witth the Sapphire 6970 BIOS and my cards have been running at 900MHz/1375MHz since.

I have slightly overclocked the cards to 920/1425, and they do fine in MSI Afterburner benchmarks (duration: 1 minute) but the driver crashes in the 4th test in 3DMark11...

Am going to test with upping the voltage slightly, but that's gonna be later this week as I need to rebuild two computers to have a games-only machine...
 
JimmyJump said:
Looking around different forums, the "failure" rate is less than 5%. Failure is also a big word, because there's no damage done, as the cards can simply be flashed back to their original BIOS.
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For some, there are also people whos cards have unrepairable damage now. They have artifacts after flashing back because the 6950 uses T2C memory chips, which are not the same memory chips that the 6970 uses, and the theory is that the 6950 has different resistors and therefore when your giving your card a certain voltage via a bios made for a card with different ram you are not giving it as much power as you think you are.
This thread is over 30 pages long now and it has been mentioned a few times, it just gets lost.
 
GSG-9 said:
For some, there are also people whos cards have unrepairable damage now. They have artifacts after flashing back because the 6950 uses T2C memory chips, which are not the same memory chips that the 6970 uses, and the theory is that the 6950 has different resistors and therefore when your giving your card a certain voltage via a bios made for a card with different ram you are not giving it as much power as you think you are.
This thread is over 30 pages long now and it has been mentioned a few times, it just gets lost.
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That is something which has to be investigated. First of all because the first batch of 6950 cards ARE 6970 ones but with a BIOS which downgrades the card and a 6-pins PCIe connector replacing one of the original 8-pins connectors (which is no issue as the 2 added wires on an 8-pins connector are both groundings).

So, there's a possibility there that the cards who show artifacts after having been flashed, would have croaked anyway, even when keeping the oiginal BIOS. That is of course guesswork, as we'll never know if that was the case...

But seeing the amount of cards on which the flashing works flawlessly, I surmise that the failed ones are just bad luck and had issues even before the flashing...
 
JimmyJump said:
Maybe you've got to many tinkering programs installed which conflict with each other... With me, everything works fine with just Sapphire Trixx and the CCC. So, saying CCC is worthless is just an expression of frustration, I presume. There's a huge difference between a worthless program and one not working for you specifically.

Not going to claim CCC is the most magnificent software in the world either, of course, but still...
Click to expand...

Okay, maybe not completely worthless. It does it's job credibly if your aim is not to OC at all. But it's not just frustration either. I played around with my card in CCC before I decided to OC and definitely before upping voltage. I've had several AMD cards, and I never cared for the auto fan setting even on my 5770's CF. I would definitely sacrifice some noise level for a cooler card, particularly while OCing.
 
manofthem said:
Okay, maybe not completely worthless. It does it's job credibly if your aim is not to OC at all. But it's not just frustration either. I played around with my card in CCC before I decided to OC and definitely before upping voltage. I've had several AMD cards, and I never cared for the auto fan setting even on my 5770's CF. I would definitely sacrifice some noise level for a cooler card, particularly while OCing.
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You are of course correct that the CCC is of little use when wanting to overclock. For example, in the CCC I can hardly get my cards above 900/1400MHz, while in MSI Afterburner, I'm now at 930/1475... Unstable in 3DMark11 though, but that's something I'll have to check later this week...
 
Figured why not, so far so good. Picked up extra shaders and points in benchies and CCC works fine, left clocks at 880/1375 ;) And now it can be confirmed it works for the VisionTek 6950
 
JimmyJump said:
You are of course correct that the CCC is of little use when wanting to overclock. For example, in the CCC I can hardly get my cards above 900/1400MHz, while in MSI Afterburner, I'm now at 930/1475... Unstable in 3DMark11 though, but that's something I'll have to check later this week...
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I've had my shader unlocked 6950 up to 950/1500 (via Trixx) +20% and got a graphics score of 5517 in 3DMark11 :-

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/466903;jses...m11/466903?key=cHJXzV7BuQKxmtW48MAtEzzNNQnFKe

but I have added a little extra voltage thru RBE - I've upped vid 3 and vid 4 to 1150
 
JimmyJump said:
You are of course correct that the CCC is of little use when wanting to overclock. For example, in the CCC I can hardly get my cards above 900/1400MHz, while in MSI Afterburner, I'm now at 930/1475... Unstable in 3DMark11 though, but that's something I'll have to check later this week...
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My card was unstable at 950/1450, and it was because my memory couldn't be clocked that high. Looks like 1435 was my max, 1440 would crash. But my gpu clock is at 950@1.250v and stable in 3DMark 11 and in Crysis for an hour. Try just lowering the memory a little bit, might work.
 
manofthem said:
Edit to make a long story short:
My XFX card was at 950/1450@1.25v and was crashing in all games. After some message around, it looks like my XFX card can't go past 1435 on the memory. 1440 and it crashes on me. So now back up and running without crashes in games again at 930/1435@1.25v. Now I need to see how high I can get the gpu at that voltage.

Any idea why in Furmark my GPU clocks and up and down? I'm at +20% in CCC, and it stays at the OC'd clock in gaming... I'll look at it tomorrow.
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When trying to test stability in furmark/kombuster my card also goes up and down with clocks, regardless of bios or powertune setting.
 
Flak said:
When trying to test stability in furmark/kombuster my card also goes up and down with clocks, regardless of bios or powertune setting.
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Yeah, it's weird. Today I did a test I Furmark, and the gpu was up and down. It looked like the +20% wasn't on so i put it on. Then it stayed stable. I don't get it because it does and sometimes it doesn't.

Edit: after seeing it go up and down and seeing the +20% on, I did a quick run on 3DMark11. When it was over, it was back to 0 on the power control, even though it held steady at 950 on the gpu clock. So after that, I put it back to +20%. I did another Furmark run and it held steady at 950 too. Very strange. Anyone know why it's not working even when it says it's at the +20?
 
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Flashed my XFX 6950 with the XFX 6970 this past Friday night and all is working well. Running stock 6970 clocks and using the +20% with no issues at all. Saw a really nice performance increase going from the 6950 to 6970 as well. Perfect!
 
WhiteNoise said:
Flashed my XFX 6950 with the XFX 6970 this past Friday night and all is working well. Running stock 6970 clocks and using the +20% with no issues at all. Saw a really nice performance increase going from the 6950 to 6970 as well. Perfect!
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Very awesome. I have an XFX too, but am on the modded bios. I never had any problems with the 6970 flash.
 
pls. help me somebody! I can't flash my Gigabyte 6950 to 6970. "It says cannot erase rom" than I do all that mentioned in that post How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 695... I rename the bios file to unlock.bin, and when I run atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin nothing happens. why? :banghead: it's completes in a half and with no messages :banghead:
 
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