How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[Eluder]

Same driver package, so no difference it'll just be the ID type probably that's different.
Either way, the Catalyst driver will detect the right card and install the appropriate driver.

 

[manofthem]

Same driver package, so no difference it'll just be the ID type probably that's different.
Either way, the Catalyst driver will detect the right card and install the appropriate driver.

Thanks man. I wasn't sure but I went ahead and did it. Now it's all working the way it should with the right clocks!

 

[crislink]

my sapphire 6950 will come in a bunch of days
do you reccomend to

1) Flash it with only shader bios and eventually OC it with some tools
2) Flash it with a HD6970 bios and let it go
3) Flash it with a Hd6970 bios and lower a bit the frequencies, expecially the ram (with CCC)

 

[yonef]

my sapphire 6950 will come in a bunch of days
do you reccomend to

1) Flash it with only shader bios and eventually OC it with some tools
2) Flash it with a HD6970 bios and let it go
3) Flash it with a Hd6970 bios and lower a bit the frequencies, expecially the ram (with CCC)

2) 99.9% of all cards are running well with 6970 bios. Do not bother lower anything.

 

[Qed]

my sapphire 6950 will come in a bunch of days
do you reccomend to

1) Flash it with only shader bios and eventually OC it with some tools
2) Flash it with a HD6970 bios and let it go
3) Flash it with a Hd6970 bios and lower a bit the frequencies, expecially the ram (with CCC)

The 1st all the way. PBCs have 3 different resistors near the VRM, imo isnt that smart to flash the card with the 6970 when you can just unlock the 2 SIMD (shaders) of your card bios.

 

[Ph3n0m]

It works!

My XFX 6950 now has all 1536 shaders unlocked, I have it clocked at 880 Mhz core and 1375 Mhz memory, with the power bumped up 20%. No problems so far, and I have much better performance in Fallout 3 than I did with the 6950 BIOS. I'm getting well over 60 FPS now on Ultra settings, instead of the ~50 that I got before, and the framerate drops I experienced are gone. Thanks for posting this, I heard of this in the product reviews on Newegg after I'd had my 6950 for two weeks and tryed it as soon as I got home from school. I'm really glad now that I bought the 6950 instead of the 6970 and saved myself $80.

 

[manofthem]

My XFX 6950/70 works great. I did the +20% vs the +10% in the 3DMark 11, and I got a better result with the +10%. Anyone else get similar results?

And is AMD going to fix this option with their new batch of cards? I really want to get one ASAP, but I heard that they are going to fix this flash option...

 

[f0d]

my sapphire 6950 will come in a bunch of days
do you reccomend to

1) Flash it with only shader bios and eventually OC it with some tools
2) Flash it with a HD6970 bios and let it go
3) Flash it with a Hd6970 bios and lower a bit the frequencies, expecially the ram (with CCC)

number 2
just use a 6970 bios - thats what i did and i overclocked to 940mhz aswell
most people are just using a 6970 bios
3dmark tested for 6+ hours with max aa to test as much memory as possible, i play battlefield bad company 2 each day for about 4-6 hours at a time with no troubles also
i even ordered a 2ND 6950 because its such an awesome deal

 

[manofthem]

number 2
just use a 6970 bios - thats what i did and i overclocked to 940mhz aswell
most people are just using a 6970 bios
3dmark tested for 6+ hours with max aa to test as much memory as possible, i play battlefield bad company 2 each day for about 4-6 hours at a time with no troubles also
i even ordered a 2ND 6950 because its such an awesome deal

Did you have to up the voltage for the GPU? I would like to try to OC to 940.

 

[bobbavet]

Guys Im still having the problem of the cards giving 1/2 scores in Unigine both in single and xfire. ie My xfire now perform the same as a single card

Now Ive done everything. Uninstall drivers, safe mode clean, reinstall drivers, use default bios, reflash bios to original Saph6950.

I consistently see 1/2 what the performances should be on the cards separate and xfire.

I've been thinking about this today at work. Comments on my logic welcome.

1. Id did my benches upon recieving the cards, every thing was as it should be and reflecting the Unigine scores of others. Using stock and mod bios'

2. Last Friday after some BFBC2, I exited the game and disengaged Xfire. I got a BSOD and registry dump.

3. Investigated this BSOD and appeared to happen when disengaing xfire, not all the time but mostly when the card fans were at 50+%.

4. On Sat I installed Crysis Warhead to give the cards a workout, I thought the 6950 by all reports could give enthusiast a good nudge.
The game ran like it was on my old GTX260, crap frame rate even on gamer settings. Was a bit disappointing, shrugged it of at the time.

5. Thought I would do another unigine bench to check that the cards.

6. Benches were 1/2 scores, the panic sets in.:shock: All the while still the odd BSOD reg dump, when going in or out of xfire.

My deduction atm:

1. This is not a driver or bios issue. The results are consistently half. Reg drriver/hotfix driver, 6950/6950mod bios.

2. This is not a physical problem with the cards. It occurs when each card is separate or in xfire. Afterburner show gpu's working well, the gpu and memory clocks are as they should be as per the bios that is in use.

3. When I think of half performance, I think of 32/64bit. Could my Win 7 registry be now corrupted after the BSOD's. Could Win7 now be defaulting to a 32bit mode when using the cards(device)? Would this result in half performance?

Any thought appreciated.

In the mean time I will get my 5850's back in and compare their bench scores.

Cheers Guys.


Update: I put in the 5850 and windows installed a new ATI device driver. The 5850 was only 4 fps and 90 score lower than my original 5850 test. But I may have used the other 5850 for the original test.. Definitely not a 50% drop. Def not the mobo.

I am hoping when I put in the 6950, Windows will again install a device driver. This is what could have been damaged in the registry.

 

[abirdie4me]

Guys Im still having the problem of the cards giving 1/2 scores in Unigine both in single and xfire. ie My xfire now perform the same as a single card

Now Ive done everything. Uninstall drivers, safe mode clean, reinstall drivers, use default bios, reflash bios to original Saph6950.

I consistently see 1/2 what the performances should be on the cards separate and xfire.

I've been thinking about this today at work. Comments on my logic welcome.

1. Id did my benches upon recieving the cards, every thing was as it should be and reflecting the Unigine scores of others. Using stock and mod bios'

2. Last Friday after some BFBC2, I exited the game and disengaged Xfire. I got a BSOD and registry dump.

3. Investigated this BSOD and appeared to happen when disengaing xfire, not all the time but mostly when the card fans were at 50+%.

4. On Sat I installed Crysis Warhead to give the cards a workout, I thought the 6950 by all reports could give enthusiast a good nudge.
The game ran like it was on my old GTX260, crap frame rate even on gamer settings. Was a bit disappointing, shrugged it of at the time.

5. Thought I would do another unigine bench to check that the cards.

6. Benches were 1/2 scores, the panic sets in.:shock: All the while still the odd BSOD reg dump, when going in or out of xfire.

My deduction atm:

1. This is not a driver or bios issue. The results are consistently half. Reg drriver/hotfix driver, 6950/6950mod bios.

2. This is not a physical problem with the cards. It occurs when each card is separate or in xfire. Afterburner show gpu's working well, the gpu and memory clocks are as they should be as per the bios that is in use.

3. When I think of half performance, I think of 32/64bit. Could my Win 7 registry be now corrupted after the BSOD's. Could Win7 now be defaulting to a 32bit mode when using the cards(device)? Would this result in half performance?

Any thought appreciated.

In the mean time I will get my 5850's back in and compare their bench scores.

Cheers Guys.


Update: I put in the 5850 and windows installed a new ATI device driver. The 5850 was only 4 fps and 90 score lower than my original 5850 test. But I may have used the other 5850 for the original test.. Definitely not a 50% drop. Def not the mobo.

I am hoping when I put in the 6950, Windows will again install a device driver. This is what could have been damaged in the registry.

That sucks, hope you get it resolved soon. Do you have a system restore point that you can revert to, preferably before you installed the 6950s? Do you have access to another machine to put the cards in?

 

[bystander]

Did you happen to install any of the ASUS software? I've had similar results in Crysis with Smartdoctor installed and it was resolved when I uninstalled it.

 

[f0d]

Did you have to up the voltage for the GPU? I would like to try to OC to 940.

nope standard 6970 voltage
i wish i could up the gpu voltage - but i keep getting this error when trying to use asus smartdoctor

 

[bobbavet]

I put the 6950's back in, still no go. Windows didn't detect and install a drive like the 5850 test. I'm resigned to do a full reinstall of windows. About time I did anyway. Busy backing up me stuff now.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

I managed to successfully flash the 6970 XFX BIOS to my 6950.

 

[Ricow]

heey guys i have buyed a new system

Moederbord AMD Asus Crosshair IV Formula AM3
SSD crusual 64GB
Processor AMD Phenom II X6 1090T AM3 Black Box
2x VGA Sapphire Radeon HD6950 2GB
1x Corsair 2x2048MB DDR3 2133 CMT4GX3M2A2133C9

with this system i have a 3Dmark06 score of 20860 with 2 crosfired cards and with 3Dmark11 pP5269 if i do a single card than i have in 3Dmark06 20215 and in 3Dmark11 4313 but i can get a higher score than this where can i find that problem is it a driver isue or somting else?

 

[bobbavet]

I FIXED IT!

Reinstalled windows and Catalyst. I haven't installed the hot fix as my probs occurred after installing them. I will wait for next set of drivers.

So am putting it down to corrupt window registry.

Single card now back up to 42FPS/1044.

Thanks for the help guys. :thumbup:

One for the memory bank.

The second card will have to go back in tomorrow after work.

 

[calvinbui]

tried the 6950 shader unlock and 6970 bios and i keep getting rendoring errors. Please tell me this is another problem like dx11 or driver issue, i really want this shader unlock to work

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSrwcjtLC4I/AAAAAAAAANk/cFkgQXwhqkA/s576/00000.jpg

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSrwfP9CuSI/AAAAAAAAANo/NwS4MgzieeE/s576/00001.jpg

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryCmUvFDI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/6ppZO6I8DfM/s576/00008.jpg

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryDreQ9II/AAAAAAAAAOU/_XrLmF7fgJQ/s576/00002.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryEBdw10I/AAAAAAAAAOg/cup0-0kFA_c/s576/00005.jpg

 

[whippoorwill]

After 2 days of having an unlocked bios I already have a glitchy mouse cursor... go AMD

EDIT:

Reboot doesn't help.. guess I'll be going to the 6950 bios

 

[Orbi]

I just got my Sapphire 6950 and want to flash the BIOS, but whenever I run ATIWinflash (as administrator on Win7 x64) and load the BIOS and click program, I get a full system lock up, mouse won't move, nothing. I have to kill the computer at the wall, which probably isn't good. I have the switch in the 1 position, so I have no clue what I'm doing wrong. Any help?

 

[honestabe]

I just got my Sapphire 6950 and want to flash the BIOS, but whenever I run ATIWinflash (as administrator on Win7 x64) and load the BIOS and click program, I get a full system lock up, mouse won't move, nothing. I have to kill the computer at the wall, which probably isn't good. I have the switch in the 1 position, so I have no clue what I'm doing wrong. Any help?

For the people who need to unlockrom and fail at command line:

- Unpack the Winflash download onto your desktop in a folder called "winflash"
- Save the 6970 BIOS in your Winflash folder and name it unlock.bin
- Click Start Button
- 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" <-- the 0 means first adapter, if you have multiple cards, physically uninstall all but the one you want to flash
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

 

[MaxMax]

tried the 6950 shader unlock and 6970 bios and i keep getting rendoring errors. Please tell me this is another problem like dx11 or driver issue, i really want this shader unlock to work

the screens look like to me if the card is to much overclocked (especially RAM overclock)? if not, than i would say sorry, but your unlocked shaders are defective, i really doubt that these artefacts like you show in the screens come from corrupt dx11/any other software...usually if software/dlls or so are missing or corrupted than most games/benchmarks will instantly crash or make BSOD...sorry to say this thus....
did you try to bench with 6970er bios but at stock 6950 frequency e.g. 800/1250 ?

 

[calvinbui]

the screens look like to me if the card is to much overclocked (especially RAM overclock)? if not, than i would say sorry, but your unlocked shaders are defective, i really doubt that these artefacts like you show in the screens come from corrupt dx11/any other software...usually if software/dlls or so are missing or corrupted than most games/benchmarks will instantly crash or make BSOD...sorry to say this thus....
did you try to bench with 6970er bios but at stock 6950 frequency e.g. 800/1250 ?

yep tried the 6970 bios with 6950 clocks.
also tried the 6950 bios with shader unlock
same thing, weird colours and that. depending on the game, it gives a different thing like in metro 2033 i would have crazy lines and beams of colour coming from everywhere. in crysis i would have flashing textures. But when i do a stability test with furmark or kombustor, no problems at all, i can let it run for 12 hours straight

edit: i would like to add that when on the STOCK bios, im watching flash videos on certain sites it would get really pixellated and some parts of the video would lag behind others creating strange and glitchy stuff. This problem isnt experienced on my 5770, should i rma?

 

[Qed]

tried the 6950 shader unlock and 6970 bios and i keep getting rendoring errors. Please tell me this is another problem like dx11 or driver issue, i really want this shader unlock to work

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSrwcjtLC4I/AAAAAAAAANk/cFkgQXwhqkA/s576/00000.jpg

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSrwfP9CuSI/AAAAAAAAANo/NwS4MgzieeE/s576/00001.jpg

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryCmUvFDI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/6ppZO6I8DfM/s576/00008.jpg

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryDreQ9II/AAAAAAAAAOU/_XrLmF7fgJQ/s576/00002.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_PsQcSpwqtwA/TSryEBdw10I/AAAAAAAAAOg/cup0-0kFA_c/s576/00005.jpg

These are RAM artifacts. Flash back your card with the 6950 + shaders.

 

[MaxMax]

yep tried the 6970 bios with 6950 clocks.
also tried the 6950 bios with shader unlock
same thing, weird colours and that. depending on the game, it gives a different thing like in metro 2033 i would have crazy lines and beams of colour coming from everywhere. in crysis i would have flashing textures. But when i do a stability test with furmark or kombustor, no problems at all, i can let it run for 12 hours straight

edit: i would like to add that when on the STOCK bios, im watching flash videos on certain sites it would get really pixellated and some parts of the video would lag behind others creating strange and glitchy stuff. This problem isnt experienced on my 5770, should i rma?

yes, rma the card: if it is really buggy at stock bios with flash videos, than the card has a serious (cooling?) problem (of the ram chips?)