Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 1GB sneak peak!

[djisas]

Got me one of these, silent in idle noisy running benchies...

 

[Iceni]

I don't know why you'd want a non referance design model.

referance 2gb version

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-256-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752


non referance 1GB version

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-028-HS

yes you save £20. But you loose the 6970 shaders and the extra ram for multiple displays. IMO the 2GB model is still a no brainer till these cards start to see a significant price deviation. I have a sneaking suspision that what were seeing now as non referance boards with single bios and locked chips is actually a new AMD referance spec. Done to keep the 6950/70 seperate once prices start to fall. ATM you'd have to be a real skinflint to actually want the non referance design.

 

[djisas]

I bought mine cheaper then some 6870's and a lot cheaper than any other 6950 and i dont care about unlocking potential either, thats why...

 

[heliox]

unlocking is not possible, new 6950s with 6870 PCB are not unlockable ... HIS, MSI, Sapphire ...

Sadly, it seems you're right mate. I have the exact same card and the bios isn't even flashable.
Here's what makes me think so, after issuing these 2 commands under pure DOS with a bootable USB key:
atiflash -unlockrom 0
--> OK
atiflash -f -p 0 modded.bin
--> ....
Programed = 0 Rom Size 20000
Rom Not Erased
ERROR 0FL01

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, either 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?

 

[heliox]

Padrino -

The BIOS chip must have pins 3 and 8 bridged to enabled writes. This can be done by soldering a jumper in place, or more easily by using a circuit writer pen sold at radio shack.

On the ZNFC model the BIOS chip is located on the front face of the PCB to the lower left of the GPU under the heatsink. See the red arrow in the picture. Pin 1 is the pin located closest to the dot on the top of the chip and the pins are numbered counterclockwise thereafter.

I performed this mod earlier this week and have since flashed sucessfully many times. Still have not been able to unlock the shaders though - not sure if the BIOSs are edited correctly or if i have a hardware limitation. If anyone has a BIOS that has worked on a ZNFC model, then the help is appreciated!

Enjoy!

Some breakthrough there but I don't know if we can do the same to our cards

 

[LordJummy]

Well, according to http://techpowerup.com/139121/AMD-Slashes-Prices-of-Radeon-HD-6800-and-HD-6900-Series-Products.html :
# Radeon HD 6870 1 GB: $219
# Radeon HD 6950 1 GB: $259
# Radeon HD 6950 2 GB: $269~289
With this, the 6950 2GB will probably see eol pretty soon as it doesn't make much sense, except if you play at 2560 x 1600. But then the 6970 costs about $370, which is $100 more that a 6950 1GB.

I think I just confused myself

I don't think that the 6950 2GB is obsolete or pointless at all. The 2GB version is a sweet spot card, and continues to sell (even though most don't unlock anymore) just based on it's price/performance ratio. A lot of people are going hi-res, multi monitor, and multi card, and the 2GB version is a GREAT solution. I think it's actually pointless now to make the 1GB version. Why go with 1GB less memory for $10 savings, when you could actually use it later. You would feel pretty stupid if you had to upgrade to a 69502GB down the line because you wanted a bigger monitor.