How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[Aliaus]

Would better cooling for the gpu, mem, and vrm lower the risk of killing your card from running a 6970 bios or is that completely irrelevant?

 

[cadaveca]

Would better cooling for the gpu, mem, and vrm lower the risk of killing your card from running a 6970 bios or is that completely irrelevant?

Irrelevant, IMHO, due to the PCB differences.I'd mod bios for shaders, volts, and overdrive limits, if wanting 6970 speeds fully. If the mem is capable of reaching those speeds, it should do it under those conditions.

 

[Hexblade6950]

if I would always run it at 100% fan speed all the time, what would the lifespam of the card be ?

 

[cadaveca]

I think only AMD can answer that at this point.

 

[Rebelstar]

Hey guys. So no good overclock for this moment for 6950 patched to 6970? I can't raise my voltage and get more than 920 mhz on GPU via MSIAF.

 

[mingsoup]

Guys&Gals.

Made some progress. After putting in place a more aggresive fan profile...I am now down to 1165mv/880/1375 stable!!!

I was also wanted to comment that 11.4's CCC.EXE was giving me some serious hitching in both World of Warcraft and Portal 2.
I uninstalled it....and the hitching it gone. It seems CCC.EXE I/O (to hard drive?) was spiking every 3-5 seconds causing gaming and desktop movements to hitch at that time. Uninstalling Catalyst Control Center seems to have gotten rid of it.
Also of note.....for people using MSI AB 2.2 Beta 2, make sure that the crossfire settings are syncing up. Sometimes I would get instability, cause the settings wouldn't sync even though I checked the sync GPU option. Trying unchecking/checking it to just make sure.
Also!~ Disable all! instances of "EnableUlps" in the registry to avoid immediate or very quick BSOD after setting OC.
Great cards! Shader unlock only is 100% stable. I'm gonna keep bringing down my core voltage....so I can further reduced my fans.
Unfortunately I can't space out my Crossfire setup with a long bridge. On my mobo (Asus P7P55D Deluxe) when 2/3 of the PCI-E lanes are in use....the third *always* goes to x4, while the top closer two go to x8. bummer really.

 

[NameonPrime]

Really?

Yeah i live in east africa so im not sure if i can get a hold of sapphire and ask them
for their flashing tool, plus i did remove the display driver, no luck , my card wont unlock its bios for some reason,

what else could i try?

also, cadaveca and manofthem, dont go quiet on me now please.

 

[NameonPrime]

Overclock

so,
how far you reckon i can oc this non-ref card to @ 1175mV?

so that i can some how get better performance without the shaders (obviously cant oc to
6970 performance without those shaders but still.)

im thinkin i'll leave the memory clock at 1375Mhz but core will try at 900-930Mhz.(@1175mV)

p.s sorry, cant buy your card even of i wanted to, by the time it gets here,(in 10years)
it'll probably be damaged and i'll have a mountain of a shipping bill.

 

[NameonPrime]

nice

cool oc but what are the temps, i hope your using stock cooling on it. if you do i'll try that.

 

[NameonPrime]

with that oc how does that card compare to a stock hd 6970?

 

[NameonPrime]

yes the clocks beat a 6970 but does the performance beat a 6970?

so your using the stock cooling that came with the card?

could you please post a pic of YOUR custom fan curve in msi ab,

and could you post a pic of an "ideal/best/coolest/efficient" custom fan curve in msi ab,

i really dont care about noise.

thanx

 

[heliox]

Sooo, guys, having problems with my unlock with my 2gb card with no BIOS switch
Primarily, I CANT even unlock the card, when i use that .bat file to unlock the shaders and then flash that resulting BIOS onto my card using ATI Winflash , i get a message saying "Cannot erase rom". So i tried using the command prompt which im sure i followed correctly,

- 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"
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

the ati winflash progress bar pops up but only reaches half-way before exiting itself and i dont get a message saying something verified.

Please cadaveca and manotfthem help me, what elso could i try. I know this has been probably answered many times over. Please HELP!!!

Hi all (my first post here),
I have the same card with 1 GB only and having the same issue. I did everything you did but under DOS with a bootable USB key to no avail.
I'm getting this error message:
Programed = 0 Rom Size 20000
Rom Not Erased
ERROR 0FL01
It seems they have made the bios unerasable. As we don't have the dual bios switch, we can't flip to a modifiable chip like people do when they actually have that switch, to position 1 or 2.
So I'm wondering myself if they have just left out the switch or removed the modifiable chip. In the first case, as there's a place holder, we could solder a spare switch to enable that function. Am I assuming too much?

 

[Hexblade6950]

Guys to my understanding the mod will not work on 1GB versions of the 6950, you have to use a "REFERENCE" card, the R6950 are all the same card the only thing that changes is the sticker that ASUS,MSI,Sapphire, HIS stick to the front of the card to say it theirs, but all R6950 are made by AMD and distributed to the other companys so they can start making their own models of the 6950, if you check of previous pages of this post you will find some more people with the same card as you guys and I believe they have been told the same thing, sorry to break the news to ya but your card will not be able to be modded

 

[Makaveli]

No bios switch only 1 GB of Vram = Good luck!

 

[manofthem]

Guys to my understanding the mod will not work on 1GB versions of the 6950, you have to use a "REFERENCE" card, the R6950 are all the same card the only thing that changes is the sticker that ASUS,MSI,Sapphire, HIS stick to the front of the card to say it theirs, but all R6950 are made by AMD and distributed to the other companys so they can start making their own models of the 6950, if you check of previous pages of this post you will find some more people with the same card as you guys and I believe they have been told the same thing, sorry to break the news to ya but your card will not be able to be modded

There were people with non ref 2GB cards and 1GB cards that were able to unlock the shaders, like this guy:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144537

But now it seems that many cannot unlock their shaders with a flash, so the bioses/bios's(?) must be protected. Unfortunately I don't have access to one to try anything.

 

[NameonPrime]

Artifacts

soo

i just oc'd my sapphire hd 6950 2gb

all seems well and stable @ 910/1375 on 1174mV with MSI AB (whenever i put 1175 it goes down to that)
catalyst 11.3 drivers,
win7 64

but i see artifacts in two benchmarks the littlest artifacting occurs in unigine heaven
2.5 benchmark (very little artifact - small green flash-point when crossing bridge at sun-down)

the heavier artifacting occurs in 3dmark vantage especially in the jane nash scene, cant really notice artifacting in other scenes.I put it in high preset but an 1280x1024 resolution (my moniters supported resolution)

question is should i be alarmed about the artifacting and maybe tone down my oc?

 

[Super XP]

Down the GPU clock by 10MHz, that should help remove the aritfacts I believe.

 

[fullinfusion]

Id lower the clocks down a bit so not to screw the card from artifacting...

Your going to kill that poor gpu :shadedshu

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

soo

i just oc'd my sapphire hd 6950 2gb
http://images.izideal.com/img/produ...ogy-radeon-hd-6950-1-g-gddr5-pci-express.jpeg

all seems well and stable @ 910/1375 on 1174mV with MSI AB (whenever i put 1175 it goes down to that)
catalyst 11.3 drivers,
win7 64

but i see artifacts in two benchmarks the littlest artifacting occurs in unigine heaven
2.5 benchmark (very little artifact - small green flash-point when crossing bridge at sun-down)

the heavier artifacting occurs in 3dmark vantage especially in the jane nash scene, cant really notice artifacting in other scenes.I put it in high preset but an 1280x1024 resolution (my moniters supported resolution)

question is should i be alarmed about the artifacting and maybe tone down my oc?

The artifacting during Jane Nash is a long time ATI problem. I've seen it with three different cards across different generations on different hardware. I also saw heavy artifacting with Heaven the last time that I ran it which was with 10.10e IIRC apparently that was a common problem too.

If you aren't seeing these artifacts with GPUtool, OCCT, and actual games I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[datfreak]

I'm having problems unlocking my
VTX3D Radeon HD6950 2GB.
See pic, its a twin fan one.
Flashing it with a 6970 bios fails to boot and unlocking with RBE actually does not unlock it(but when i read the bios after, it say its modded by rbe and the unlock box is ticked)

anyone have any experience with this card?

any thoughts to unlock this would be great

thanks
scott

 

[asciutto]

I hope this hasn't already been answered before, but I looked through the last 20 pages and couldn't find anything on it. (Roughly the time it was announced) but is the 6950 Flex edition flash-able? I see no reason why it shouldn't, but I did read somewhere that because it has a custom "something" from Sapphire it may not work.

That's probably a load of bull, but it never hurts to know before I pull the trigger on buying this thing.

I mean, the cards are essentially identical aren't they?

Any way, thanks for the help! And again, I'm sorry if it's been asked before, I promise I searched and couldn't find anything!

 

[manofthem]

I hope this hasn't already been answered before, but I looked through the last 20 pages and couldn't find anything on it. (Roughly the time it was announced) but is the 6950 Flex edition flash-able? I see no reason why it shouldn't, but I did read somewhere that because it has a custom "something" from Sapphire it may not work.

That's probably a load of bull, but it never hurts to know before I pull the trigger on buying this thing.

I mean, the cards are essentially identical aren't they?

Any way, thanks for the help! And again, I'm sorry if it's been asked before, I promise I searched and couldn't find anything!

http://tech-news-buzz.blogspot.com/2011/03/sapphire-hd-6950-flex-edition.html
That site says it's a resounding yes to flashable, and I read that it does have a dual bios switch

 

[arroyo]

It is stupid what companies do with the HD6950. On every Polish website that reviews HD6950 all non-reference cards are unlocking well. But the shop non-reference versions does not unlock at all.

We had few weeks ago review sample of XFX Radeon 6950 Dual Heatpipe XXX 1GB HD-695X-ZDDC. Nice card with ability to unlock extra shaders. We ordered a whole box of them to our shop ang guess what... none of them was able to unlock extra shaders.

If you want to be 100% sure about unlocking potential... buy 2GB reference model.

 

[JeanH]

Please can I use this bios to unlock the shaders. the details tell that the shaders are unlock http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/95881/MSI.HD6950.2048.110126.html

to flash my MSI R6950 twin frozr II to an 6970.

I am an newby. perhaps the anwser is somewere. but I did not find it yet.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Arktic]

UPDATE: Just an update on my bios modding experience.

After flashing the bios with a 6950 bios with unlocked shaders and stock settings the card was running fine. OC'd to bench and ran fine. Games I got some artifacts but backed the clocks down to stock settings again.

Currently running the card in stock standard 6950 form, no shaders and stock clocks etc.

Almost every time I play COD4 online while im on the black screen waiting for the map to load I get green flashing speckle artifacts for a few seconds then they disappear for the whole time im playing.
This only happens on some games loading screens but never in game. Also happens in NFS Hot Pursuit 2. It only happens once every few hours or after I havent played any games for a while.

It doesnt effect the games in anyway but is really annoying. Is the VRAM stuffed? Have I bricked the card? I've gone back to complete stock settings and it still happens.



EDIT: I know some people have success with this mod but I generally DONT advise it as it doesnt seem to do the card any good. Rather OC the standard clocks and get results that way.