How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[cadaveca]

Have just tried and it said me something strange!
Here is a screenshot http://img534.imageshack.us/i/74706951.jpg/

Hmm, what tool is that? That is not familiar to me...which could be why you are having issues...

 

[manofthem]

Have just tried and it said me something strange!
Here is a screenshot http://img534.imageshack.us/i/74706951.jpg/

Whatever you're running is trying to flash a 6970 bios, isn't it? That's not possible on your card, but you can unlock the shaders. Try the flash a modded 6950 bios instead. Maybe?

 

[cadaveca]

That tool is a techPowerUp bat file which uses the latest atiwinflash and BIOSes in its folder. I modded my BIOS saved using GPU-Z with the latest RBE and put it there so it tried to flash my own modded BIOS not the one of 6970.

I also tried to flash via the cmd as the link a few posts ago says and got the same strange error.

Everything was ran as Admin.

Do not use RBE to add shaders...use the script that mods the bios.

Do not use the flashing tool, use ATIWinFlash.

 

[jayc]

That tool is a techPowerUp bat file which uses the latest atiwinflash and BIOSes in its folder. I modded my BIOS saved using GPU-Z with the latest RBE and put it there so it tried to flash my own modded BIOS not the one of 6970.

I also tried to flash via the cmd as the link a few posts ago says and got the same strange error.

Everything was ran as Admin.

What slot on the motherboard have you got your vid card installed in?
Make sure it's in the first PCI-e slot nearest the CPU. Unless you modify the atiwinflash command, it will assume you have your card in the the first PCI-e slot.
The next time you try flashing the card, write down each step, so we can verify you are doing things right.

 

[manofthem]

8. Typed -unlockrom 0,
-f -p 0 modded.bin.

Did you type in "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0"
then "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin"

 

[cadaveca]

Yes! I did not forget to type atiwinflash

Why do you need to use the CMD option for flashing, does the GUI not work at all?

LoL. GUI is Graphic User Interface, just FYI.

 

[manofthem]

Why do you need to use the CMD option for flashing, does the GUI not work at all?

LoL. GUI is Graphic User Interface, just FYI.

My XFX 2GB ref. card wouldn't flash unless I did the CMD as admin. My Gigabyte, however, flashed fine in GUI.

 

[cadaveca]

My XFX 2GB ref. card wouldn't flash unless I did the CMD as admin. My Gigabyte, however, flashed fine in GUI.

Interesting. Mine just flashed right up. And I know XFX pre-tested my card before shipping it to me.......Interesting.

 

[xrror]

I was wondering what would be the best aftermarket cooling system for a R6950, water or air cooled what would you recommend ?

This had been driving me nuts too. Similiar to BababooeyHTJ's concerns, my biggest "need" was cooling the VRM's. I managed to screw up the stock cooler when I took it off the card, well specifically I managed to screw up the thermal pads, and my attempts to shim the resultant gaps with aluminum failed utterly.

The Thermalright Shaman would have been my first choice, except I actually have PCI cards I use and the Shaman would have bascially blocked everything south of the PCIe slot. And even then it still needs seperate sinks for VRM. While that would have looked awesome with "heatsink city" coming off my card, it just was too much space.

I kept waiting for Artic Cooling to release an official kit to use it's Accelero XTREME Plus with the 6900 series cards. And waited... and waited. Finally I just got tired and ordered one with the VR005 kit since it looked like it had the most ram/chip/vrm heatsinks to play with. I only had to use a Dremel on the VRM sinks to shorten them to fit in line. However I see now that Artic Cooling now has (finally) officially marked the VR001 kit as compatible with the reference 6970. The downside is you end up spending around $90 by the end of it. At least Thermalright is more up-front about the fact you are going to be spending more than just the GPU sink.

Zalman also has some coolers, but I didn't look at them too much. But I'm not sure what compatibility they list - but if you're comfortable with a Dremel you can fix that ;p

I'm pretty happy with it, but just throwing these out there. But learn from me... don't remove the stock heatsink unless you're sure you want to replace it. My VRM temps were horrible after I removed the stock sink the first time. So I guess be very careful about those thermal pads if you do need to remove it (and want to reuse it).

 

[manofthem]

Where do you guys find the VR001 kit for the Acceleo Xtreme cooler?

Edit: I found it on eBay, but if anyone knows a site where you can buy the kit, I'd appreciate it.

 

[jayc]

I managed to screw up the thermal pads

You must have tried to remove the heatsink when the vid card was cold.

I removed mine to replace the factory thermal paste (which was poorly applied mind you).
But first run a benchmark or something similar that will heat up the card for at least 30 minutes.
Shut down, and quickly remove the card and the heatsink when it is still warm to hot.
It should leave the VRM thermal pads fairly intact. It will be soft enough to lift the heatsink off.

Just re applying the thermal paste (properly) in a thin layer with good thermal paste (I had Arctic silver 5 lying around), was good enough for a 5 deg C drop in load temps on the factory heatsink.

 

[xrror]

So what is the result?

Do you think the card can not be flashed?

I tried everything!

Or can anyone point me the post where this card flashing is confirmed?

Flip the BIOS switch?

 

[cadaveca]

So what is the result?

Do you think the card can not be flashed?

I tried everything!

Or can anyone point me the post where this card flashing is confirmed?

The card in my system confirms it is possible on some non-reference.

 

[azuki]

The card in my system confirms it is possible on some non-reference.

When did you purchase the xfx 2gb 695x?

 

[cadaveca]

When did you purchase the xfx 2gb 695x?

I didn't purchase it, it was an RMA replacement for a 5870 prior to the launch of the non-reference cards.

 

[Mark22]

Well water cooling will give you the best results. There is no doubt about that.

The thing that worries me about aftermarket air coolers is that almost all of them do a really good job on the gpu but the memory and vrms tend to run hotter than they would on the stock cooler. There isn't any real way to monitor these temps which worries me even more. This is another one of the big advantages of water cooling.

Have you tried using Afterburner to setup a custom fan profile? It may help but will probably get pretty loud.

My Zalman vf3000A had a nice big heatsink for vrm that is screwed down. I had to cut a small corner off to make it fit but that's no big deal. Now the card runs great and about 30c cooler. The memory all have heatsinks on and are a lot cooler than stock. Stock only has thermal pads barely connecting the memory to anything. So if anyone wants aftermarket cooling consider the Zalman at least because they can be had pretty cheap now.

 

[Hexblade6950]

I dont mind the noise of the fan at all, I have a total of 11 fans running on my comp, also play with headphones all the time, what would be a safe % to raise the fan speed with afterburner ?

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

My Zalman vf3000A had a nice big heatsink for vrm that is screwed down. I had to cut a small corner off to make it fit but that's no big deal. Now the card runs great and about 30c cooler. The memory all have heatsinks on and are a lot cooler than stock. Stock only has thermal pads barely connecting the memory to anything. So if anyone wants aftermarket cooling consider the Zalman at least because they can be had pretty cheap now.

I've used those aluminum sinks that come with the Thermalright coolers and they do not perform as well as the stock cooler. With my GTX280 I lost almost 50mhz in overclocking head room with those little sinks. The stock thermal pads on these stock coolers is surprisingly good. How do you know that your memory runs cooler? There is no way to know for sure. You should stress you card and touch one of your memory sinks I bet that you'll be in for a surprise.

The Zalman vrm sink scares me. That thing has taken out few cards due to shorts. You won't find a thread on that cooler on any forum without a few reports of cards that were fried.

I dont mind the noise of the fan at all, I have a total of 11 fans running on my comp, also play with headphones all the time, what would be a safe % to raise the fan speed with afterburner ?

Yeah, that is fine. You can use Afterburner to setup your own fan profile so that the fan will only really ramp up when it needs to.

 

[NameonPrime]

Sooo, guys, having problems with my unlock with my 2gb card with no BIOS switch

Primarily, I CANT even unlock the card, when i use that .bat file to unlock the shaders and then flash that resulting BIOS onto my card using ATI Winflash , i get a message saying "Cannot erase rom". So i tried using the command prompt which im sure i followed correctly,

- 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"
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

the ati winflash progress bar pops up but only reaches half-way before exiting itself and i dont get a message saying something verified.

Please cadaveca and manotfthem help me, what elso could i try. I know this has been probably answered many times over. Please HELP!!!

 

[fullinfusion]

Sooo, guys, having problems with my unlock with my 2gb card with no BIOS switch
http://images.izideal.com/img/produ...ogy-radeon-hd-6950-1-g-gddr5-pci-express.jpeg

Primarily, I CANT even unlock the card, when i use that .bat file to unlock the shaders and then flash that resulting BIOS onto my card using ATI Winflash , i get a message saying "Cannot erase rom". So i tried using the command prompt which im sure i followed correctly,

- 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"
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

the ati winflash progress bar pops up but only reaches half-way before exiting itself and i dont get a message saying something verified.

Please cadaveca and manotfthem help me, what elso could i try. I know this has been probably answered many times over. Please HELP!!!

Have you removed the ccc driver like CAD mentioned? Try that and try again.

You can always get a hold of Sapphire tech and ask them if they can give ya the tool to use for flashing purpose.

 

[Mark22]

I've used those aluminum sinks that come with the Thermalright coolers and they do not perform as well as the stock cooler. With my GTX280 I lost almost 50mhz in overclocking head room with those little sinks. The stock thermal pads on these stock coolers is surprisingly good. How do you know that your memory runs cooler? There is no way to know for sure. You should stress you card and touch one of your memory sinks I bet that you'll be in for a surprise.

The Zalman vrm sink scares me. That thing has taken out few cards due to shorts. You won't find a thread on that cooler on any forum without a few reports of cards that were fried.



Yeah, that is fine. You can use Afterburner to setup your own fan profile so that the fan will only really ramp up when it needs to.

I'm not 100% sure but I remember reading somewhere that GPU temp 3 in gpuz corresponds to vrm. This never goes above the 50's now. I used the same cooler on my old 5850 and it was great there too, trust me it runs a lot cooler, I run it at 910,1450 Mhz.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I'm not 100% sure but I remember reading somewhere that GPU temp 3 in gpuz corresponds to vrm. This never goes above the 50's now. I used the same cooler on my old 5850 and it was great there too, trust me it runs a lot cooler, I run it at 910,1450 Mhz.

Nope that is just an unspecified section of the gpu core. There is no utility available that can read the temps of the vrms on Cayman. I have actually heard that the vrm cooler on that card does a good job, probably due to the lack of thermal pads or thermal tape. At best I'm sure that the vrm plate cools as well as the stock cooler. Not using thermal pads or tape on a plate like that for the vrms can be a bit risky as can be seen by googling this cooler. I know that those little aluminum sinks don't cool as well as the stock cooler. Will that make a big difference for me and you? Thats debatable. Will it make a difference for someone in the Dominican republic?

 

[Mark22]

Fair enough, it does the job keeping everything cooler in my case, which for me is 10-15c cooler in 2d running dual monitors. It bugged me running along at over 50c core for just 2D. It seems fine in games and I only unlocked shaders so it serves its purpose for me. I used IC24 for tim, where could the heatsink short exactly? Haven't heard about that at all.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Fair enough, it does the job keeping everything cooler in my case, which for me is 10-15c cooler in 2d running dual monitors. It bugged me running along at over 50c core for just 2D. It seems fine in games and I only unlocked shaders so it serves its purpose for me. I used IC24 for tim, where could the heatsink short exactly? Haven't heard about that at all.

Your card runs fine, I wouldn't worry about any shorting. There was just an abnormal amount of reports of dead cards from the VF3000 on the forums.

 

[Mark22]

Ok cool, MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 Twin FrozR II looks good for anyone who hasn't bought yet and wants cool and quiet.