How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[Tuvok]

hi,

i didnt get an answer over at guru3d.. so maybe someone here knows

if u get the 6950 now and unlock it to 6970 and now somewhere down the road its not possible to do this anymore since amd changed the design, will u be able to run it in a crossfire if you then buy a "real" 6970 ?

And does it have to be the same brand, or can u get the 6950 from asuals and then the 6970 from his for example? Tnx

yes you can xfire it, in fact, you could even crossfire 6970 with a plain 6950 if I'm not mistaken

 

[dom99]

he didnt discover it, I did

Lol ok dave you eagar beaver I think ul find I discovered it

6950 using 6970 Bios?

 

[Yidaki]

Oh come on guys who cares? I discovered, that the AsRock 880G board runs with a 890GX BIOS

 

[davetheshrew]

dom sorry bud but you didnt post results, no where do I see ' by god Jeeves I think Ive cracked it!', no 3dmark, no gpuz, I saw that the other day btw

quote: No I wont be trying it, was just wondering. But I am right in saying that one of the two bios can be changed.

we were all thinking it, it was me that actually went through with it, congratz on your card btw

 

[dom99]

dom sorry bud but you didnt post results, no where do I see ' by god Jeeves I think Ive cracked it!', no 3dmark, no gpuz, I saw that the other day btw

quote: No I wont be trying it, was just wondering. But I am right in saying that one of the two bios can be changed.

we were all thinking it, it was me that actually went through with it, congratz on your card btw

Yeh fair enough lol im too chicken to be the first, on a budget

 

[Anosh]

What about future driver updates!?!
Even if AMD decides not to do some sort of a fix in future drivers there are no guaranties that the correct drivers will be installed, or am I wrong?

 

[BudyCZ]

Do you can statistics include me. My three Sapphire HD 6950 work on unlocking the HD6970 properly .. So great increase in performance

 

[Yidaki]

What about future driver updates!?!
Even if AMD decides not to do some sort of a fix in future drivers there are no guaranties that the correct drivers will be installed, or am I wrong?

I guess they could do some kind of that for the CPUs as well, but they don't do it. Anyways, if there would be a new driver that disables this function, you could flash your card again. Don't see any Problem here. Or during installation switch to position 1, then back to 2 again. Or the other way round.

Do you can statistics include me. My three Sapphire HD 6950 work on unlocking the HD6970 properly .. So great increase in performance

Nice WINs, dude

 

[jpierce55]

The price of the 6950 is not much more than a 6870, so now it seems the 6950 is packing killer value vs. any other card out there. Oh, I hope they don't fix it so this can't be done, if I don't get shipped to Colombia I am going to have to have one .

 

[Anosh]

I guess they could do some kind of that for the CPUs as well, but they don't do it. Anyways, if there would be a new driver that disables this function, you could flash your card again. Don't see any Problem here. Or during installation switch to position 1, then back to 2 again. Or the other way round. :

That doesn't make any sense.
If you change the bios to 6950 then install updated drivers wouldn't it be the drivers for 6950?
And then you switch back to the bios for 6970 and use the installed drivers for 6950?

 

[vvulture]

I have an XFX card, and it failed.

GPU-Z shows 1440 shaders, rather than 1408.

When I attempted to Load the new image. I get the error: SubsystemIDs mismatch.

Thats just a glitch in GPU-Z.. You need to use 0.5.0 which is linked in the instuctions..

 

[LagunaX]

Frack the Sapphire 6950's went up to $340+ on Amazon...

No will power, grabbed the $282 HIS 6950...

Will be flashing within a week =)

 

[Andypro]

I hate to be the first one in the grid with artifacts / graphical issues after the flash, but I may be. If you can suggest things to test to see if it's something other than the extra shaders I unlocked that would be good.

I have a Sapphire 6950 and after flashing the 6970 bios as instructed, I'm having artifacts - flickering textures in Super Meat Boy. It seems like it's a shaders thing because that game doesn't stress the GPU at all. Running GPU-Z in the background showed that the GPU load never went about about 11% and the temp never went above 69C. Core was 500MHz although I have it set at 800MHz in the driver. I tried +20% Power Control and 0% - no differences. I ran Heaven at default settings, and that seemed to run without problems that I could see.

 

[vvulture]

Here's something strange...
After running 3DMark11 with my flashed cards, the results are still showing them as 6950's...

Anyone here care to speculate ? or even test it for themselves ?

 

[obsoletepower]

Okay so I have an update about where things stand with my Sapphire HD6950. I tried the BIOS images from all manufacturers and they all cause the same problems. Every time I launch something 3D like a game (even GPU-Z) the driver malfunctions and crashes with artifacts all over despite messing with the PowerTune settings between 0% and 20%. I think I may be one of those with a non-moddable 6950. If anybody has more suggestions that would be great.

 

[Tuvok]

some guys on other forum fixed the artifact uninstalling and reinstalling drivers

 

[obsoletepower]

Yeah I tried that too. It didn't work for me.

 

[easyrider]

Change your ram clocks to 1350 and see if this fixes things

 

[obsoletepower]

I can't make them any lower than 1375. The slider in the ATI Overdrive doesn't go any lower.

 

[remb]

You can add another Gigabyte 6950 to the tally! Had to do some extra work but the onlock went smoothly otherwise. Thank you guys so much!

 

[drteming]

Just flashed my XFX 6950. Works great. Thanks W1zzard!

 

[sa seba]

I can confirm another XFX 6950 unlock working, using XFX 6970 bios and running on 6970 clock speeds. Furmark and Unigine Heaven stable.

Maybe I should pick up another one, before the hardware locked batches come out....

 

[Tuvok]

You can add another Gigabyte 6950 to the tally! Had to do some extra work but the onlock went smoothly otherwise. Thank you guys so much!

You have the sawed off switch too?

 

[Mastroz]

so if i turn off my computer and switch the switch to 2, it's back to normal then? 6950 settings

 

[Whilhelm]

Just flashed my Sapphire 6950 to the 6970 and it worked flawlessly.

I went out and bought one today after reading this article. I was on the fence between the 70 and the 50, thanks for saving me money W1zzard!!