How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[manofthem]

Hi all,
I have been a long time reader, following this thread closely, ... While everyone has been talking about overclocking and how to get the fastest speeds possible, no one, has been exploring undervolting.

I do appreciate the thoughts on lowering voltage. It's been talked about a little on this thread, though not extensively; I haven't tried it yet.

This is not completly true... I changed my 2D VID2 from 900mV to 850mV which gave me 2°C lower temps in 2D! BUT: 800mV did NOT work for me (Blackscreen in Windows - thanks to Dual Bios )... This seams to be very sensitive!.

Exactly. I could lower mine to around 770mv. 750mv was really too low though This resulted in a black screen as well. Idle temps are around 31C, which is a lot better than my old GTX275.

 

[jayc]

I do appreciate the thoughts on lowering voltage. It's been talked about a little on this thread, though not extensively; I haven't tried it yet.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DJManiac
This is not completly true... I changed my 2D VID2 from 900mV to 850mV which gave me 2°C lower temps in 2D! BUT: 800mV did NOT work for me (Blackscreen in Windows - thanks to Dual Bios )... This seams to be very sensitive!.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VinnieM
Exactly. I could lower mine to around 770mv. 750mv was really too low though This resulted in a black screen as well. Idle temps are around 31C, which is a lot better than my old GTX275.

Your success here, and that of DJManiac and VinnieM's, might depend on which bios is used on the 6950.

Specifically, I am using the modded 6950 bios which unlocks the shaders only.
Using this modded 6950 bios on my 6950 card, I'm able to reduce the 2D voltage to 770mv as per VinnieM.
I wonder what bios DJManiac is using?
There might be something in this. Quite possibly, a 6970 bios for the 6950 requires more voltage to be stable. Note: a real 6970 has 6+8 pin power, whereas, the 6950 has 6+6 pin power only.

Use our findings as a guide.
If you are using a 6950 bios, then 750mv is far too low and results in black screen on bootup. 760mv will boot up but you will get screen artifacts at the desktop. 770mv is perfect for anything in 2D and will save you a few degrees in heat build up.
If you are using a 6970 bios, then 850mv is the appropriate target for 2D clocks.

This change was one of the simplest things to do with very little risk thanks to the dual bios feature of the 69x0 cards. Overvolting has higher risks associated to it, but undervolting isn't as bad.

 

[megatimes12]

I need some help with my 6950. I bought the VTX3D 6950 and i flashed it to the asus bios (6950 bios), and now im trying to flash it again to the 6950 with unlocked shaders bios. However when i run winflash i get a "cannot erase rom" error, and when i try to force flash with cmd everythings fine until i get the force flashing progress bar where it stays up for a few seconds before dissapearing and i dont get and verification box or nothing. This really has me puzzled to the point where i had to open up my case to check whether i left the switch on the GPU at the 1 position, which it was. Any ideas guys? cheers in advanced

 

[Bengie]

I was using the 6970 flash for a bit, but stumbled across wizard's post about using the 6950 mod instead.

I use my original XFX6950 bios and the patch successfully. All 1536 shaders show up and my voltages are back to 6950 stock.

I was playing around last night and pushed my card to 930/1500 and 3Dmark 2011 ran fine multiple times. No artifacts or weird polygons. Card ran quite a bit warmer, but only 52c. It didn't break 46c with stock speeds. I did not try to go any higher because of a limit I seem to be hitting, which I will describe below.

I was going to try to push it further, but I noticed my GPU usage and clock speeds were not able to maintain 100% according to MSI AB at those speeds. Do you think I'm hitting the TDP limit? If this is the case, I may get a benefit from under-voltaging the core a bit to reduce wattage. I do have a distributed GPU app that can usually peg my GPU, but it now levels at 95% to, but only at those high clock speeds.

Thanks

P.S. I did get to play 1.5 hours of BC2 last night with the new OC and I had no issues at all.
P.P.S. Because of this GPU cap I seem to be getting, I dropped clock speeds down to 910/1420(after playing BC2) since the extra power draw is just capping off anyway.

 

[Bengie]

Finally found time to run some tests now that I got home

I was able to drop the voltage, but nothing changed for clock speeds. BC2 and 3D mark 2011 are able to run the clock at max and keep it near/at 100%

The card ran unstable at 1.06v but pass 3DMark with 1.065v core. I pushed it up to 1.08v to keep it from soft crashing in the middle of games.

So, I'm running 910/1420 @ 1.08v core and stock mem voltages. Reduced the temps about 6c. 3D mark now caps at 51c instead of 57c. Seems stable so far.

I know someone out there wants to take my card, drop an aftermarket cooler on it and try to push it. I'm happy with the current clock rates.

 

[Wijkert]

Finally found time to run some tests now that I got home

I was able to drop the voltage, but nothing changed for clock speeds. BC2 and 3D mark 2011 are able to run the clock at max and keep it near/at 100%

The card ran unstable at 1.06v but pass 3DMark with 1.065v core. I pushed it up to 1.08v to keep it from soft crashing in the middle of games.

So, I'm running 910/1420 @ 1.08v core and stock mem voltages. Reduced the temps about 6c. 3D mark now caps at 51c instead of 57c. Seems stable so far.

I know someone out there wants to take my card, drop an aftermarket cooler on it and try to push it. I'm happy with the current clock rates.

I am not sure that you got those voltages right. It seems you are missing a '.1' or 100 mlv on all mentioned numbers in you above post.

I stopped using 3dmark as a benchmarking test, because games like BBC2, Crysis and Napoleon Total War seem to crash when my clocks were stable in 3dmark. I am currently running mine at 880/1375 @ 1.125 volts. I have finished Mass Effect 2 with 1.110 volts and most other games will run without problems as well. The before mentioned 'heavy' games will crash on 1.110 volts. Keep in mind that every card is different and this is only an indication.

The sweetspot of the memory seems to be at 1375 wich is the same clockspeed as the 6970. My mem can reach 1440 stable, but the benchmark scores remain roughly the same as at 1375.

Edit: Did anyone here try to reaply the stockcooler for lower temps?

 

[Bengie]

"I am not sure that you got those voltages right. It seems you are missing a '.1' or 100 mlv on all mentioned numbers in you above post."

Nope, I am actively under-volting the core. MSI AB says 1080mv. At 1060 it would crash 2011 and at 1065 it would pass it. I pushed it up to 1080 to make sure it stayed stable being. BC2 seems to run fine. I also ran through 8 work units for ~16 minutes on my distributed program just fine.

I played BC2 for an hour at these settings to. Would've been longer, but watched "how to train a dragon" with the wife and got tired.

 

[Wijkert]

"I am not sure that you got those voltages right. It seems you are missing a '.1' or 100 mlv on all mentioned numbers in you above post."

Nope, I am actively under-volting the core. MSI AB says 1080mv. At 1060 it would crash 2011 and at 1065 it would pass it. I pushed it up to 1080 to make sure it stayed stable being. BC2 seems to run fine. I also ran through 8 work units for ~16 minutes on my distributed program just fine.

I played BC2 for an hour at these settings to. Would've been longer, but watched "how to train a dragon" with the wife and got tired.

Liked that movie

My bad, so you are trying to undervolt at stock clocks? I missunderstood because must people that post in this thread are trying to do the opposite.

Are you also undervolting the 2d volts to about 770? Would like to do that too, but is more useful in the summer. What I realy would like is to be able to change the fancurve in RBE instead of a 3rd party program, because I am currently using a ASUS 6950 bios (unlocked shaders / 6970 clocks @ 1.125 volts), so I can change the CCC limits with SD and then uninstall the program. Maybe a ASUS bios is no longer necessary because of this tool. Any of you have any idea if RBE will ever be able to change the fancurve of the 69xx series?

 

[Bengie]

"My bad, so you are trying to undervolt at stock clocks?" nope. I'm undervolting while overclocking. Seems the card I got doesn't mind whatever clock speed I set it at. Card temps do go up quite a a bit as I increase the clock speeds, so I know it's doing stuff and my distributed GPU app is finishing faster.

I have not messed with the 2D voltage because the card is rated at only ~25-30watts idle so I'm not concerned with 2d voltages.

I decided to do under-volting because I'm cpu limited, the card is crazy fast already, and why create more heat with summer around the corner.

I pushed the card to 930/1500 on stock voltages, which I think is freak'n awesome. But I'm perfectly happy. So right now I'm running 910/1420 @ 1.08v. This is like the Celeron 300a all over for me again.

I'm tempted to find out it's limits on stock voltages just for S&Gs. I have not found the card's limit yet. I think I might try finding the cards cap today after work. Of course I'll set the core back to 1.1v before testing.

I'll let you guys know how it goes. Too bad my stock i7-920 caps my performance unless I crank up the AA. BC2 with ultra settings and 2x AA (hbao off), I'm getting 60% gpu load at 55fps. hbao pushes that up to 90% load, but that just double my electricity cost without adding enough "pretty".

P.S. "How to Train a Dragon" was really good Gonna watch "Kick Ass" tonight

edit: after doing some reading on the 6950s VRM, I am hesitant to push it further as it would just add extra power load.
edit2: some more reading is telling me just to watch vrm temps. people are saying gpu temp #3 on gpu-z should be the vrm. I'll just watch all 3 temps

 

[Bengie]

Bah, not much luck pushing it further. At stock 6950 voltages, it wouldn't go much past 930. At 1.125v it went to 950, but at 1.175 I wouldn't make 960 without locking the machine after a minute of two of Unigine.

I did notice a few consistent minor visual issues with Unigine that went away when lowered from 1420 to 1400.

Because Unigine showed a few more issues that neither 3DMark2011 nor Bad Company2 showed, I decided to back down to 905/1385 @ 1.085v core.

I seem to have a huge diminishing return after 910mhz, so I'm playing it safe with 905 to run cooler and more stability cushion.

 

[Bengie]

I backed down further to 890/1385 @ 1.08v. Seems I was getting micro-stuttering from the VRM self-limiting the power draw during heavy rendering.

Personally, I don't see how anyone can push the 6950 past 900mhz w/o hitting the power limit. Even under-volting the chip to consume less power, I'm up against the power limit.

The 6950 flashed to 6970 uses 6970 stock voltages for both GPU and memory, but the card is still stuck with the same power limit of the 6950.

A card with a 6970 flash will consume about 8% more power than my card just because of the increased voltages. I see no way of a flashed 6950 gaining any benefit past 900/1400. Even if you can clock it past that, it will just limit the power draw which will limit the performance.

Benchmarks may show higher because the "Average" FPS will be higher, but any heavy rendering will cause the power to be limited and that annoying stuttering will kick in. My FPS during the stuttering barely changes, but I find it crazy annoying. The stuttering went away once I dropped the voltages enough to lower power consumption.

You know something is up when "lowering" voltages below stock makes it run better.

 

[MaxMax]

I backed down further to 890/1385 @ 1.08v. Seems I was getting micro-stuttering from the VRM self-limiting the power draw during heavy rendering.

Personally, I don't see how anyone can push the 6950 past 900mhz w/o hitting the power limit. Even under-volting the chip to consume less power, I'm up against the power limit.

The 6950 flashed to 6970 uses 6970 stock voltages for both GPU and memory, but the card is still stuck with the same power limit of the 6950.

A card with a 6970 flash will consume about 8% more power than my card just because of the increased voltages. I see no way of a flashed 6950 gaining any benefit past 900/1400. Even if you can clock it past that, it will just limit the power draw which will limit the performance.

Benchmarks may show higher because the "Average" FPS will be higher, but any heavy rendering will cause the power to be limited and that annoying stuttering will kick in. My FPS during the stuttering barely changes, but I find it crazy annoying. The stuttering went away once I dropped the voltages enough to lower power consumption.

You know something is up when "lowering" voltages below stock makes it run better.

sorry, i cannot follow your statement: i run my 6950@6970 at 950/1500@1.17volt w/o any stuttering (tested with metro 2033, crysis, anno 1404, settler 7 with SSAA). the only thing you have to do is adjust the fan profile manually so that the core temp of the flashed 6950 does not get above 65°C (yes it gets louder than at stock, but i do not mind, usually 55-60% fan power and good caseventilation is enough to keep it below 65°C)
greets

 

[ShaunB]

Having issues flashing XFX 6950's, when I run ATIwinflash it shows my previously installed XFX 5770 as the video card. I have tried unistalling the drivers, and using driver sweeper but when I reinstall and run ATIwinflash it keeps coming up as 5770.

Please assist.

ATIwinflash shows the device id as: 0x6719

all the fields and information are blank, when I try flashing it tells me unable to erase ROM and I have trided the CMD prompt options and through the application.

UPDATED:

well I'm not sure how I got it to work but I got them flashed using Wizard's 6950 BIOS and unlocked the shaders, still sys ATI 5770 in ATIwinflash though.

 

[cZm]

I have a quick question which I am sure has been raised before but cant find in the last 75 pages

I have flashed my sapphire 6950 to the standard 6970 BIOS and left at that , no OC'ing Volts, fan profiles etc.
Done a few weeks ago and had no issues what so ever and pleased I done it, my question is regarding heat. Under full load it max's out ar 83c?
As i said I have no issues with it I just wanted to see if that is too warm???

Thanks

 

[kenjin]

I was having problem with unlocking my powercolor 6950. got the cannot erase rom msg.

I tried the command in cmd did not work.

but after i try using wizards unlock package script he posted it work flawless. if anyone having issue unlock should definitely try that.

 

[MaxMax]

I have a quick question which I am sure has been raised before but cant find in the last 75 pages

I have flashed my sapphire 6950 to the standard 6970 BIOS and left at that , no OC'ing Volts, fan profiles etc.
Done a few weeks ago and had no issues what so ever and pleased I done it, my question is regarding heat. Under full load it max's out ar 83c?
As i said I have no issues with it I just wanted to see if that is too warm???

Thanks

i think the maximum temperature junction is around ~100°C for the 69xx (e.g. the new intel core i5/i7 32nm have a maximum of 98°C) if you reach this temp, the innercore structures will be destroyed. so you are still "far" away...

 

[n0cks]

packaged the hd 6950 bios modding script.

www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip

give it a try and let me know how well it works

Hi. I've seen that it contains several files. Which one should I run, the batch file or the .exe one?

I'm actually reading through the pages, so it can take me some time, since I'm newbie regarding OC and so

It's supposed to automatically make a modified BIOS so I can flash it with ATIWinFlash?

By the way, is there any risk to do this with no extra cooler?

Edit: Ok.. now I guess I have to run the batch file.

Also.. my PSU is Corsair VX550W. Will it handle it?

Edit2: After some php reading, yeah, I have to run the batch file and place in the same folder that the batch file my bios, renamed to original.bin. Now I only have to know how to get my original BIOS >.<

Edit3: Yeah, I have to do the BIOS save with AtiwinFlash ^^

 

[Hexblade6950]

Hello all! currently I have a sapphire 5750 but I will be buying my 6950 very very shortly my concern is that the card I chose wont be able to be upgraded to 6970 specs, I see that most people have Sapphire and they seem to get the upgrade with no issue, Im more inclined to go with Asus or MSI, what would the experts in the matter suggest ? (I did read that Asus are a bit trickier to get upgraded)

MSI Card: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R6950-Twin-Frozr-II.html
Asus Card: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?p_id=dekcicifak0zpxuk

I like to OC, alot! so I read that the 6950 works top at 900 correct ?

 

[Bengie]

sorry, i cannot follow your statement: i run my 6950@6970 at 950/1500@1.17volt w/o any stuttering (tested with metro 2033, crysis, anno 1404, settler 7 with SSAA). the only thing you have to do is adjust the fan profile manually so that the core temp of the flashed 6950 does not get above 65°C (yes it gets louder than at stock, but i do not mind, usually 55-60% fan power and good caseventilation is enough to keep it below 65°C)
greets

Maybe I need to play around a bit more. But my card isn't getting past 55c playing games at 930/1500 @ 1.12v

 

[jayc]

Hello all! currently I have a sapphire 5750 but I will be buying my 6950 very very shortly my concern is that the card I chose wont be able to be upgraded to 6970 specs, I see that most people have Sapphire and they seem to get the upgrade with no issue, Im more inclined to go with Asus or MSI, what would the experts in the matter suggest ? (I did read that Asus are a bit trickier to get upgraded)

MSI Card: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R6950-Twin-Frozr-II.html
Asus Card: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?p_id=dekcicifak0zpxuk

I like to OC, alot! so I read that the 6950 works top at 900 correct ?

Just get the cheapest 6950 you can find that is based on the reference design.
The Asus card you linked is based on the reference design.
However, the MSI twin Frozr II you linked is NOT reference design and most certainly does not have the dual bios feature. Do not expect it to unlock shaders to 6970 specs.

Look for any 2Gb card that looks like the Asus card, which is a reference design, then buy the cheapest one. Reference cards, despite the brandname, are all the same.

 

[n0cks]

Just get the cheapest 6950 you can find that is based on the reference design.
The Asus card you linked is based on the reference design.
However, the MSI twin Frozr II you linked is NOT reference design and most certainly does not have the dual bios feature. Do not expect it to unlock shaders to 6970 specs.

Look for any 2Gb card that looks like the Asus card, which is a reference design, then buy the cheapest one. Reference cards, despite the brandname, are all the same.

How do you know if they are based on the design or not?

I'm about to get this one.

 

[jayc]

I'm about to get this one.

Yep, that will work with the unlock to a 6970.

 

[Hexblade6950]

thank you so much Jayc, I will be looking for the asus then, will update later as I go

btw since you said a 2gb one, Im guessing this one would be out of the question ?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7198682&SRCCODE=WEBAMZP1

 

[Caryntjen]

Ok, I'm new here and I'm going to build my first computer soon. I've been looking at graphic cards and HD6970 was my first option ofcourse, but now I've read this decent thread & you've got me convinced to go cheaper , more money for SSD !

I'm just wondering with 2 cards:

The first one is from Asus, but that one is already OC'd to 810Mhz, I'm guessing than it's not gonna work (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=dekcICIFak0zpxUk&templete=2).

Then my second option would be a Sapphire one: http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=1021
I'm thinking this one would do the job.

But just wanted some confirmation. Thanks in advanced!

 

[jayc]

thank you so much Jayc, I will be looking for the asus then, will update later as I go

btw since you said a 2gb one, Im guessing this one would be out of the question ?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7198682&SRCCODE=WEBAMZP1

That is the 1Gb version of the 6950. It will NOT upgrade to the 6970 bios, since the 6970 bios has 2Gb memory. You will also notice a non reference fan and heatsink. That's a clue that it's not a reference design. This 1Gb card most likely will NOT have the dual bios feature as well. So any incorrect flashing of the bios will probably render the card useless.

As yet, I don't think you can unlock the extra shaders on a 1Gb version. At least I have not read of any one doing so.

So unless you don't want/need that extra performance on a 2Gb version with the option of unlocking shaders and flashing to a 6970, THEN buy the 1Gb 6950 version.