How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[GSG-9]

I couldn't hit 900 on stock voltage. I think I had to go to 1.15v.

Edit: Yup its at 1175 volts. It starts crashing @ 920, so I leave it at 900.

 

[Mark22]

I have Asus HD6950 2GB with stock 810/1250 clocks and I have no problems with unlocking additional shaders although I did not use HD6970 bios. Still I'm damn happy about this card.

One question to you, guys: What is your max stable GPU OC on HD6950 with 1.1V on GPU (stock voltage)?

I think I was doing 880/1300 also on an Asus card (never stressed the memory).

Now I'm using a unlocked Asus 6950 bios that also has core voltage at 1.175 (was mentioned earlier in thread) and run at 920/1480 for every day 3D.

The core is identical to 6970 and can probably easily take more voltage than this. In furmark my card never reaches above 70c at these speeds using a Zalman VF-3000A cooler. So if trying yourself beware of that, I also have a modded Antec 902 case with very good fans and airflow (quiet though)

 

[fullinfusion]

Im still looking for ATIFLASH Version 3.85 ppl! I need it asap please

 

[ranom]

One question to you, guys: What is your max stable GPU OC on HD6950 with 1.1V on GPU (stock voltage)?

I could only go up to 860 on my unlocked XFX 6950
While it aint that bad I think I can say mine uses a 6950 binned GPU, which is a liiiittle bit disappointing considering the Cayman cores were rumored to have good yield and that AMD had too many cores that could be binned 6970s. But then again I NEVER get lucky so I should be happy the shaders were unlocked w/o a problem

 

[fullinfusion]

I could only go up to 860 on my unlocked XFX 6950
While it aint that bad I think I can say mine uses a 6950 binned GPU, which is a liiiittle bit disappointing considering the Cayman cores were rumored to have good yield and that AMD had too many cores that could be binned 6970s. But then again I NEVER get lucky so I should be happy the shaders were unlocked w/o a problem

Thats XFX for ya bro! sorry but I've been there and done that. The only thing XFX is good at is RMA and thats it!

I run this 24/7 no problem on my HIS card...

And this is no voltage bump and power controll settings @ 0%

 

[manofthem]

Thats XFX for ya bro! sorry but I've been there and done that. The only thing XFX is good at is RMA and thats it!

I run this 24/7 no problem on my HIS card...

And this is no voltage bump and power controll settings @ 0%

http://img.techpowerup.org/110201/6970best.png

So you're running the 6970 bios OC'd to 990/1450?!!! On stock 1.175 voltage? Man I need to get rid of my XFX and get an HIS! those are some crazy numbers. I'm jealous, well done.

 

[fullinfusion]

So you're running the 6970 bios OC'd to 990/1450?!!! On stock 1.175 voltage? Man I need to get rid of my XFX and get an HIS! those are some crazy numbers. I'm jealous, well done.

Look at my gpu screen shot, look at the Default clock speeds vs the Overclocked speeds. The Gpu speeds are stock 6950 speeds.... not the 6970 speeds.
And.... Umm, NO. I'm using the HIS Bios just to unlock the shaders, that's all

Im not going to kill this card due to memory over volt as others have done in the past by using True 6970 Bios's... I have a great gpu and Im keeping it that way

 

[manofthem]

Look at my gpu screen shot, look at the Default clock speeds vs the Overclocked speeds. The Gpu speeds are stock 6950 speeds.... not the 6970 speeds.
And.... Umm, NO. I'm using the HIS Bios just to unlock the shaders, that's all

Im not going to kill this card due to memory over volt as others have done in the past by using True 6970 Bios's... I have a great gpu and Im keeping it that way

I hear what you're saying about not killing the card. But the default clocks in your gpuz shot say 880/1375, which are the clocks of the 6970 bios, if I'm not mistaken. That's why I thought you were that bios... Either way, it looks good.

 

[DJManiac]

Thats XFX for ya bro! sorry but I've been there and done that. The only thing XFX is good at is RMA and thats it!

I run this 24/7 no problem on my HIS card...

And this is no voltage bump and power controll settings @ 0%

It looks like that you have also a NVidea card installed because PhysX is enabeld in GPU-Z.... Then a 6 Core.... And then 990/1450....

And ONLY P5700 3DMark11 ???

Much too less then!!!! It looks like that your card throttles down! Whatch your card clocks while benching (eg. log it) - Try with Power sliders 12%-20%...

And let us know if then the card is stable with only 1175 mV under really full load...

And manofthen is right - If you are running 880/1375 default then its 6970 BIOS!

Never heard about a card which ist stable 990/1450 without voltage adjustment... But if its so its one if the best HD6900 chip I heard of...

Guys, dont take this example to compare it with your card...

This ist with 1000/1500 and Sys see below in CPU-Z specs

 

[yonef]

I could only go up to 860 on my unlocked XFX 6950
While it aint that bad I think I can say mine uses a 6950 binned GPU, which is a liiiittle bit disappointing considering the Cayman cores were rumored to have good yield and that AMD had too many cores that could be binned 6970s. But then again I NEVER get lucky so I should be happy the shaders were unlocked w/o a problem

It is not binned 6950 GPU! You disregard the fact that you are running it on 1.1v while STOCK 6970 has 1.175v. If you up your voltage to 1.175 you'll get far beyound 6970 stock clocks. Every 6900 series card can run 880Mhz on 1.175v which again is the default voltage on 6970 bios. Even, lots of 6970s won't run 880Mhz on 1.1v !

 

[arroyo]

I could only go up to 860 on my unlocked XFX 6950
While it aint that bad I think I can say mine uses a 6950 binned GPU, which is a liiiittle bit disappointing considering the Cayman cores were rumored to have good yield and that AMD had too many cores that could be binned 6970s. But then again I NEVER get lucky so I should be happy the shaders were unlocked w/o a problem

Nothing to worry man. I was asking because my ASUS overclocks to 860 MHz on stock voltrage (1.1V). On 1.175 I can do 910 MHz

 

[JimmyJump]

It is not binned 6950 GPU! You disregard the fact that you are running it on 1.1v while STOCK 6970 has 1.175v. If you up your voltage to 1.175 you'll get far beyound 6970 stock clocks. Every 6900 series card can run 880Mhz on 1.175v which again is the default voltage on 6970 bios. Even, lots of 6970s won't run 880Mhz on 1.1v !

Errr... 880MHz Core is the default speed of a 6970 card...

 

[JimmyJump]

Look at my gpu screen shot, look at the Default clock speeds vs the Overclocked speeds. The Gpu speeds are stock 6950 speeds.... not the 6970 speeds.
And.... Umm, NO. I'm using the HIS Bios just to unlock the shaders, that's all

Im not going to kill this card due to memory over volt as others have done in the past by using True 6970 Bios's... I have a great gpu and Im keeping it that way

The stock speed in GPU-Z is that of the 6970. A 6950 has 800MHz/1250MHz as stock...

 

[yonef]

Errr... 880MHz Core is the default speed of a 6970 card...

Um.. we all know that. I still don't get your point.

 

[GSG-9]

Errr... 880MHz Core is the default speed of a 6970 card...

Um.. we all know that. I still don't get your point.

Your missing each others points, Yonef was saying a 6970 wont get 880 @ 1.1 V as it needs 1.175V so why would a 6950 get 880mhz without the voltage bump.

 

[yonef]

Your missing each others points, Yonef was saying a 6970 wont get 880 @ 1.1 V as it needs 1.175V so why would a 6950 get 880mhz without the voltage bump.

exactly what I meant

 

[Mark22]

It looks like that you have also a NVidea card installed because PhysX is enabeld in GPU-Z.... Then a 6 Core.... And then 990/1450....

And ONLY P5700 3DMark11 ???

Much too less then!!!! It looks like that your card throttles down! Whatch your card clocks while benching (eg. log it) - Try with Power sliders 12%-20%...

And let us know if then the card is stable with only 1175 mV under really full load...

And manofthen is right - If you are running 880/1375 default then its 6970 BIOS!

Never heard about a card which ist stable 990/1450 without voltage adjustment... But if its so its one if the best HD6900 chip I heard of...

Guys, dont take this example to compare it with your card...

This ist with 1000/1500 and Sys see below in CPU-Z specs..]

Can I ask what voltages you are using, core and mem, and did you use RBE to set them? I'd like to bump my core up to 1000 and see what temps I can maintain with my cooler.

Cheers.

 

[manofthem]

MSI Afterburner 2.1.0 Beta 7 is ready, changes list includes:

- the official support of GTX 560 Ti / GT 440.
- Now Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 runtime libraries are included in distributive
- Hardware database is now configured to force fan duty cycle monitoring to be performed via slower AMD ADL SDK path on AMD RADEON 4870 X2 and 5790 series cards
- Changed way of unlocking unofficial overclocking on AMD graphics cards to make overclocking newbies think harder before enabling this functionality blindly and coming to support forums with fake bugreports
- Added alternate unofficial overclocking path allowing keeping PowerPlay active on some modern ASIC families during overclocking
- Fan control settings are now being forcibly reapplied after changing the clocks via unofficial overclocking path to bypass bug in AMD driver causin the fan control settings to be reset to defaults after programming PowerPlay table

To enable unofficial overclocking in this version it is necessary to:

- Set UnofficialOverclockingEULA field to the following text: I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
- Set UnofficialOverclockingMode to 1 to keep PowerPlay active (may not work on old ASICs), 2 to traditionally disable PowerPlay or to 0 to temporary disable unofficial overclocking path

-> http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3870536

Has anyone used this yet? If so, is it a good way to overclock and increase the voltage to say ...~1.250v? It seems like this would be ideal because the reported bugs seem to be getting worked out. Unfortunately, my Internet is down and can't try this until the 10th. Stupid AT&T!!!

 

[Sebascenso]

Which voltage vid do I have to modify using RBE to give my sapphire 6950, 1.175v? I have a mess in my head, because I think I read that the sapphire bios uses differently the vids.

 

[obsoletepower]

Well my card is fubar'd. I initially replaced the bios with the 6970 bios and kept trying to make it work. I then reverted back to the original bios and just did the shaders unlock. I have to mention that while I had it overclocked, I kept the fan speed at 100% to minimize the chance of ruining it. I am pretty sure it was the memory that I messed up. The card was noticeably screwed. I had constant game freezing, artifacts, driver crashes etc. It used to take a few reboots before I could play a game. Eventually it got to a point where any game I would start would cause the computer to lock up. I put in my HD4890 and the problems all go away.

I have RMA'd the card. I expect a replacement soon. Hopefully this one has the T2C chips and will allow me to overclock it without ruining it.

 

[Mark22]

Which voltage vid do I have to modify using RBE to give my sapphire 6950, 1.175v? I have a mess in my head, because I think I read that the sapphire bios uses differently the vids.

In the modded Asus one I'm using (I didn't mod it, was posted somewhere else), both vid 3 and 4 are set to 1.175, seems to do the job for me.

 

[manofthem]

Which voltage vid do I have to modify using RBE to give my sapphire 6950, 1.175v? I have a mess in my head, because I think I read that the sapphire bios uses differently the vids.

It depends on what card you have, either VID3 or VID4. I have an XFX and ViD3 is the one I change to adjust voltage. I believe someone else with a Gigabyte card used VID4. So it may take some messing around with. When trying to figure it out, I adjusted VID4 first, and everything kept crashing, couldn't even get into a game or even benches. So if it's crashif like woah, it's probably the other value.

 

[manofthem]

Well my card is fubar'd. I initially replaced the bios with the 6970 bios and kept trying to make it work. I then reverted back to the original bios and just did the shaders unlock. I have to mention that while I had it overclocked, I kept the fan speed at 100% to minimize the chance of ruining it. I am pretty sure it was the memory that I messed up. The card was noticeably screwed. I had constant game freezing, artifacts, driver crashes etc. It used to take a few reboots before I could play a game. Eventually it got to a point where any game I would start would cause the computer to lock up. I put in my HD4890 and the problems all go away.

I have RMA'd the card. I expect a replacement soon. Hopefully this one has the T2C chips and will allow me to overclock it without ruining it.

That sucks. If you flash with a different bios, do they know it or not? I hope they cover it!!! When you get your new card, are you going to run it a little more gently? what were your clocks/voltage at?

 

[dulemk]

I just record it now my artifact problem with MSIA.

Run vantage at 900/1300 with 1.2v on my unlocked 6950.

Here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiLl68BNHCA

And why at that voltage vantage stuck??
A tough all chips can at least work at 1.175 on 900 core without a problem.

 

[Stranger]

first card is 450/1250 idle
2nd card is 250/150 idle..

any idea how i can make my first card drop down while its idling?
its cooking itself for nothing!

or does one card have to be set at the above speeds for normal desktop usage???
(running in xfire)