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How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

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Mastroz

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Mastorz, did you unlock one card at a time then crossfire? did you have any problems?


what kind of temps are you getting?

anyone know what max temp is safe?

Yes, did one at a time, take one card out and put in the other one. Max temps in COD:BO is 59-60, and BFBC2 is 67-68. No problems in etiher one. Ran bo yesterday for about 5 hrs no problems and bfbc2 for an hr no problems. Do you have crossfire? i'm wondering If i were to completely uninstall drives for ATI will the drivers reinstall without a problem?
 

W1zzard

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Saphire 6950 BIOS.

I had build a small utility to do this BIOS modification, beta testing stage. You guys can DIY the 6950 BIOS for you own card by using this utility.

rui instead of writing a utility, rather write a batch file. so that people can look inside it, find out what it does and know that it won't hurt their system
 
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Mastroz

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Hey W1zzard, what do you recommend as far as testing for stability and length of time? and programs etc. Please fill me in :-D
 

W1zzard

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Saphire 6950 BIOS.

I had build a small utility to do this BIOS modification, beta testing stage. You guys can DIY the 6950 BIOS for you own card by using this utility.

nice approach changing the conditional jump
 

rui0317

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rui instead of writing a utility, rather write a batch file. so that people can look inside it, find out what it does and know that it won't hurt their system

Thank you very much for the suggestion.

But it is a bit complicated. How to tech the user to calculate and restore the checksums for AMD/ATI bios image? RivaTuner have a good patchscripts system, but it can only mod the BIOS for NV.
 
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Hey guys,

Wondering if somebody can help me out here. I obtained an odd looking "6950", it's probably an engineering sample. It has the 8+6pin out of the 6970 but the sticker on it reads 6950. Anyway, the drivers just will not install! I've tried them over and over again, and even though they seem to install just fine, I'm not prompted that I need to reboot at the end. Even if I reboot manually, when I get back into win7 64 it's still just a standard vga adapter. I've tried the latest drivers off AMD's site. Also, under GPU-Z I noticed the device ID is just 1 digit away from what they say it should be. Could it be that b/c of that ID being off the drivers won't go in? I've tried flashing the card using W1z's guide, hoping that would change the ID, but wasn't successful in that endeavor either.

Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated!

I have expierenced exactly this before, even though I installed catalyst it didnt need a reboot and didnt even seem to pick up the card, I found taking the card out and putting it back in then reinstalling drivers worked.
 

baud

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success!

thanks rui!!

i used your XFX modified rom with my Diamond 6950 and it works now!

all i had to do was uninstall previous drivers, reboot in safe mode, run driver sweeper, then install the latest drivers from ati.amd.com

and now:
success!.gif

yaaaaay!
 
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rui0317: great idea! I'll be getting my powercolor 6950 in a week or less, so I'll be very happy to test your program. Where can I find it?
 

W1zzard

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Thank you very much for the suggestion.

But it is a bit complicated. How to tech the user to calculate and restore the checksums for AMD/ATI bios image? RivaTuner have a good patchscripts system, but it can only mod the BIOS for NV.

shouldnt the checksum delta be always the same ? subtract 6 from the checksum and it should be fine ?

so something like:
find 4A 8D 54 22 FF 0F 49, replace with 4A 8D 54 22 FF 0F 43
byte[33]=byte[33]+6

should work
 
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Could anyone who has used rui`s 6950 shader unlock for 6950 bios please message their findings, ie is it stable, and anyone who found the 6970 bios flash unstable might want to try a 6950 unlocked flash and see if it makes a difference
 
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Could anyone who has used rui`s 6950 shader unlock for 6950 bios please message their findings, ie is it stable, and anyone who found the 6970 bios flash unstable might want to try a 6950 unlocked flash and see if it makes a difference

+1 on this!
 

W1zzard

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Could anyone who has used rui`s 6950 shader unlock for 6950 bios please message their findings, ie is it stable

i didnt test it, but looking at the method i'm sure it will work fine

if you know how to use a hex editor, you can also manually modify your bios as i posted a bit further above
 
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i didnt test it, but looking at the method i'm sure it will work fine

if you know how to use a hex editor, you can also manually modify your bios as i posted a bit further above
no doubt the unlock works, but we'd like to see if the artifacts were caused by the ram timings or the disabled simds were really defective
 

rui0317

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shouldnt the checksum delta be always the same ? subtract 6 from the checksum and it should be fine ?

so something like:
find 4A 8D 54 22 FF 0F 49, replace with 4A 8D 54 22 FF 0F 43
byte[33]=byte[33]-6

should work

Yes it is right step, of course it will work.

But Im not expect all 6950 users have such experience and capability to modify the binary code directly. It is too dangerous for most of them to DIY BIOS code without 100% sure what they are doing. I just want to do the dirty work for them and make it easy and safety.
 

acousticdank

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Could anyone who has used rui`s 6950 shader unlock for 6950 bios please message their findings, ie is it stable, and anyone who found the 6970 bios flash unstable might want to try a 6950 unlocked flash and see if it makes a difference

2 people have posted it works, one worked where 6970 was unstable...
 

Mark22

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Saphire 6950 BIOS.

I had build a small utility to do this BIOS modification, beta testing stage. You guys can DIY the 6950 BIOS for you own card by using this utility.

I have an asus card, bios here, do you think you could mod this one for me and others to try out.

Thankyou.
 

W1zzard

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Yes it is right step, of course it will work.

But Im not expect all 6950 users have such experience and capability to modify the binary code directly. It is too dangerous for most of them to DIY BIOS code without 100% sure what they are doing. I just want to do the dirty work for them and make it easy and safety.

let me see if i can write a vbs script to do it.
 
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I have an asus card, bios here, do you think you could mod this one for me and others to try out.

Thankyou.
I have a Gigabyte but I'd love to flash the Asus bios for some Smart Doctor fun :D

Also, shouldn't we change the device id so that any software and drivers will see it just like a downlclocked 6970?
 

CSCicus

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Unlocked asus 6950

Stock +20% 800/1250
3Dmark 2011 X 1585

New bios +20% 800/1250
3Dmark 2011 X 1637

New bios +20% 890/1375
3Dmark 2011 X 1805

Unigine Score 1335

FurMark 20Min max temp 95 avg 90 no Artifacting
SCORE:7192 points (60000 ms)
FPS: min=103 max=171 avg=120
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9650 @ 4050 MHz
Windows 7 64-bit build 7600 [No Service Pack]
 

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baud

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the modded 6950 bios works well for me; i just played crysis for about 40 minutes with no artifacting
 
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the modded 6950 bios works well for me; i just played crysis for about 40 minutes with no artifacting

i have all 1536 shaders unlocked, but the fill rates are slower than the 6970 BIOS. this may have something to do with the RAM timings, but I honestly don't know for sure.

Really thats interesting, what clocks are you using?
 

baud

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Really thats interesting, what clocks are you using?

derp, stock clocks

the fill rates are faster with faster clocks, i just discovered

original post edited to hide nubcakery
 
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rui, is your unlock also setting the voltage to the 6970's reference voltage?
 
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