How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[remdiablo]

With the shaders unlock only, how can you get it to past 840mhz in CCC? I've heard you can use MSI AB... but when I installed that program I noticed the speeds and voltages are limited to the 6950 bios settings (max 840/1325)... Can anyone point me towards the information I need to OC my 6950 without flashing to 6970 bios???

Use that link It works perfect !!! screens for validation.
http://www.techimo.com/forum/graphi...9-enable-higher-overclocks-ccc-reg-entry.html

and I attached the file ,you can create reg file ,that is so easy.

 

[Vicc]

Did you read the beginning of the thread? there is all the info you need to flash your card.

Download THIS It has everything you need to flash back n forth.

I did read the beginning but Atiflash didn't recognize the file in my quote.

I'm guessing I just have to run the file? It opens a command window but I'm not sure as to what to type in it.

 

[fullinfusion]

I did read the beginning but Atiflash didn't recognize the file in my quote.

I'm guessing I just have to run the file? It opens a command window but I'm not sure as to what to type in it.

Dude you just need to open the CMD window and just copy and paste the commands you see below...


cd %USERPROFILE%\desktop\winflash
atiwinflash -unlockrom 0
atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin


BUT LOOK HERE 1ST v
- 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".

 

[slypenguin0]

I have a MSI Twin Frozr II 2gb. I downloaded the 6950mod, made a backup of my card with winflash, put it in the folder, made the modded.bin then flashed but it failed. I restarted and tried the CMD route. Upon entering the -unlock part my screen flashed a couple times then went black. Finally hit the restart button after awhile and the computer cycled through turning off on off on until finally actually booting up.

Maybe mine has the rumored code written in by ATI to not allow flashing.

 

[lauri_hoefs]

I have a MSI Twin Frozr II 2gb. I downloaded the 6950mod, made a backup of my card with winflash, put it in the folder, made the modded.bin then flashed but it failed. I restarted and tried the CMD route. Upon entering the -unlock part my screen flashed a couple times then went black. Finally hit the restart button after awhile and the computer cycled through turning off on off on until finally actually booting up.

Maybe mine has the rumored code written in by ATI to not allow flashing.

Hi.

I had the same problem (computer freezing, screen going black) once when unlocking too.

Don't worry, it doesn't necessarily mean trouble, I have been able to flash the BIOS many times since without it ever freezing again.

My card is the Asus 2GB reference design, so the unlocking was necessary. Do you actually even need the unlock with an MSI card?

Now that I'm thinking about it, the freezing might have occurred when I was flashing a 6970 BIOS to my card after already unlocking it when trying the modded BIOS. I haven't been able to replicate the freezing though.

Anyone else run into this?

 

[lauri_hoefs]

I tried my Asus 6950 flashed with an Asus 6970 BIOS, and it worked nicely. No artifacting, stable under load, run it for a couple of days without errors. The only thing I didn't like though, were the temps that started to rise to unbearable levels under heavy load and automatic fan (fan speed doesn't rise much above 40% though the temps start to hit 90).

No wonder, that some 6970 flashed cards start developing problems after a while, at least if the GPU-Z readings are to be believed (and why wouldn't they be) the mem temps can rise way over 100 degrees just under normal gaming loads!



Now for a trivial question:

With the fan set to 50% or above the modded card stays cool enough, but being quite lazy I find it troublesome to always have to change to a CCC profile to game, and to another to get the card to quiet down for watching movies etc. (That's, like, two extra mouse clicks every time! )

One option would be to use Smart Doctor to control the fan speed, but I noticed that the minimum speed that you can set is actually not that low, and unfortunately quite loud too.

Are any of the other manufacturers programs (like Afterburner) any better with the fan profiles?

I've put a lot of time and effort to make the computer run as silent as possible under normal usage, and balancing the cooling so that Q-Fan starts to kick in when the computer is stressed and temps start rising. Running the card with original BIOS and stock clocks it stays quiet and cool enough to my liking, but still it would be really tempting to OC and mod it..

If there is no easy solution, the I'll just keep it stock, it's not like I actually am desperately needing the marginal speed increase


tl;dr: Is there an easy way to cool the 6970 modded card enough, while still keeping it as quiet as possible when idling, and doing all this with minimal effort and if possible automated?

I want my cake and eat it too

 

[xxyyy]

No BIOS switch

Hallo

i have tried to find the BIOS switch on my HD6950 but there is no switch there. You can see a printed white text on the PCB which says SW1 but there is no switch soldered on there. Is it still possible to Flash the BIOS to the HD6970. The manufacturer of the VGA is HIS.

Thx in advance

 

[yacoub]

I tried my Asus 6950 flashed with an Asus 6970 BIOS, and it worked nicely. No artifacting, stable under load, run it for a couple of days without errors. The only thing I didn't like though, were the temps that started to rise to unbearable levels under heavy load and automatic fan (fan speed doesn't rise much above 40% though the temps start to hit 90).

No wonder, that some 6970 flashed cards start developing problems after a while, at least if the GPU-Z readings are to be believed (and why wouldn't they be) the mem temps can rise way over 100 degrees just under normal gaming loads!



Now for a trivial question:

With the fan set to 50% or above the modded card stays cool enough, but being quite lazy I find it troublesome to always have to change to a CCC profile to game, and to another to get the card to quiet down for watching movies etc. (That's, like, two extra mouse clicks every time! )

One option would be to use Smart Doctor to control the fan speed, but I noticed that the minimum speed that you can set is actually not that low, and unfortunately quite loud too.

Are any of the other manufacturers programs (like Afterburner) any better with the fan profiles?

I've put a lot of time and effort to make the computer run as silent as possible under normal usage, and balancing the cooling so that Q-Fan starts to kick in when the computer is stressed and temps start rising. Running the card with original BIOS and stock clocks it stays quiet and cool enough to my liking, but still it would be really tempting to OC and mod it..

If there is no easy solution, the I'll just keep it stock, it's not like I actually am desperately needing the marginal speed increase


tl;dr: Is there an easy way to cool the 6970 modded card enough, while still keeping it as quiet as possible when idling, and doing all this with minimal effort and if possible automated?

I want my cake and eat it too

Sapphire's TRIXX program allows custom fan control by temp: http://www.sapphiretech.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx

 

[Scrizz]

hehe just picked up a MSI 6950, unlocked and flashed without a hitch.

 

[slypenguin0]

hehe just picked up a MSI 6950, unlocked and flashed without a hitch.

What kind? Twin Frozr II?

 

[trt740]

MSI 6950 Twin FrozerIII owners look here. Anyone seen this http://www.ocdrift.com/2011/04/msi-r6950-twin-frozr-iii-peoc-unlocking-guide/

 

[slypenguin0]

Can someone post up the process they took to unlock using RBE. As I posted before, Winflash failed for me and when I went the cmd line route my computer froze when I tried to -unlock
I have the MSI Twin Frozr II 2GB

 

[NameonPrime]

Artifacting

Hey big problem

As soon as i installed the catalyst 11.4 drivers, i started expiriencing artifacting in Unigine
Heaven 2.5 Benchmarks even @ Stock 6950 Clocks , Am i Alone?, What are your suggestion

this comes as a big surprise because on amd's website it states:-

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System
This section provides information on resolved known issues in this release of the AMD Catalyst 11.4 software suite for Windows 7. These include:
•The GPU no longer shows high GPU usage after running Firefox 4 with hardware acceleration enabled.
•Bioshock no longer displays random tearing and screen corruption with Vsync and MLAA enabled.
•Water textures no longer flicker in Two Worlds II in Crossfire mode.
•Bulletstorm lightshafts no longer appear broken when running on a HD 6970 series product.
•Bulletstorm no longer displays random texture corruption when running in Crossfire mode.
•FI 2010 no longer slows down intermittently when in Crossfire mode.
•PowerDVD no longer crashes if Crossfire is enabled / disabled during playback of a BD title.
•WinDVD no longer displays corrupted BD playback when the monitor is rotated to portrait mode.
•Crysis Warhead corruption is no longer randomly observed when launching the game.
•Running the Heaven benchmark no longer displays graphics corruption during DirectX 11 tests.
•Catalyst Control Center Avivo settings are now correctly displayed after connecting a secondary display.
•The Catalyst Control Center screen no longer flickers while adjusting screen brightness.

 

[mvx15n]

hi,

Yesterday after installing 11.5 drivers the system was quite unstable and after a couple of blue screens I removed the previous drivers using the drivers funtion and the installed them again an everything came back to normal...

In my unlocked 6950 uniengine works perfectly under 11.5 of catalyst. (available in ati-amd.com

good luck and remember to unistall first previous drivers... (ati drivers suck here I never had this kind of issues with nvidia)

 

[slypenguin0]

Well I did even more research. The Twin Frozr II isn't unlockable =/ I had seen people say they unlocked their's the day I decided to buy it (since all the ref cards were out of stock) but now, going back to those posts, they typo'd. They meant to say their Twin Frozr III cards unlocked. Lame. But I can still overclock my card.

 

[jojo2peter]

Hey guys,

i have a HIS HD 6950 iceQ Turbo X
840MHz

I looked for the switch but i didnt find any, but i wanted to unlock the shaders.

Well, i did, then i had a bluescreen, so I logged in with secure mode, deleted the drivers
then i could start windows normally. Then I tried another flash (edited with RBE, like the old) thought the 900MHz i set caused the Bluescreen. So I chose only the Shader "6950 -> 6970" method, but it failed hard.

Now, no display is recognizing the card, so i took another card, (nvidia 8500gt) put it in the first PCIe slot, worked... The 6950 was in the second slot and AIDA64 recognized it... but as "ASUS EAH6950" (no screen yet, the card is just in front of me, looking for any switch >.<)
So i didn't know what I did wrong, except the try to unlock it again ^^...

Is there any solution, how to flash the card? i tried "atiflash -p 1 new.rom" (took a HIS file from here http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/95377/HIS.HD6950.2048.101223.html) i guessed it is the right one, but oviously it didn't flash, because its name is ASUS EAHxxxx

btw. didn't try atiflash -p 0 new.rom because i dont wanna flash me only left pcie card :-S

lol when i look at this picture, i see, that the version that is posted here as "HIS HD 6950" is a ASUS oO



SOLVED: I was able to flash the original Bios (i made a backup!!!) via ATIwinflash... nice...

 

[Rockitman]

Gentlemen,

This whole episode for the 6950 has become quite confusing. Let me see if I got this right:

One is led to the original instructions here on this forum regarding flashing the card with a 6970 bios, which unlocks the shaders, bumps up the clocks, and also the memory voltages. Plus one is to bump up the powerslider in CCC to 20. This is supposed to make the 6950 act just like a 6970.

Later on, others brought up the issue that the 6950 memory is not made to run at 6970 settings and that one could be harming the memory on their card by going this route.

It has then been suggested that one can modify their 6950 bios to unlock the shaders.
Then they can manually set their overclocks in Afterburner. This appears to be the safer route as the memory voltage is untouched.

If this is true, how come the original article is not modified to present this information?

Why does one have to plod through over 100 pages of forum thread to glean this vital information?

Trying to get the big picture from this 100 page thread is making my head explode.

I have 2 XFX 6950's and they have the bios switch. At the time I only had one installed and went through the procedures in the article successfully, ( I did have to do it from the command line though). I had no problems with the card but did notice it ran hotter and since I had another 6950 in the box, I decided to go back to original bios at stock settings and just add the other card for crossfire.

Now that I'm in crossfire, I'm doing fine and am even playing my games at 5760 x 1080 as I have 3 28" hannsg monitors in eyefinity now. With that said, some games require me to throttle down some of the settings to get smooth gameplay. Now I'm looking at boosting my cards again and am thinking I want to take the safer route and modify the 6950 bios and manually overclock.

Would you guys agree this is the best route to go?

 

[manofthem]

It has then been suggested that one can modify their 6950 bios to unlock the shaders.
Then they can manually set their overclocks in Afterburner. This appears to be the safer route as the memory voltage is untouched.

If this is true, how come the original article is not modified to present this information?

Why does one have to plod through over 100 pages of forum thread to glean this vital information?

Trying to get the big picture from this 100 page thread is making my head explode.

I have 2 XFX 6950's and they have the bios switch. At the time I only had one installed and went through the procedures in the article successfully, ( I did have to do it from the command line though). I had no problems with the card but did notice it ran hotter and since I had another 6950 in the box, I decided to go back to original bios at stock settings and just add the other card for crossfire.

Now that I'm in crossfire, I'm doing fine and am even playing my games at 5760 x 1080 as I have 3 28" hannsg monitors in eyefinity now. With that said, some games require me to throttle down some of the settings to get smooth gameplay. Now I'm looking at boosting my cards again and am thinking I want to take the safer route and modify the 6950 bios and manually overclock.

Would you guys agree this is the best route to go?

It doesn't take reading the 100 pages to determine that the majority vote goes to unlocking shaders if possible. That was discussed and agreed upon early on; that is the safer way, unlocking your shaders. Though safer, it doesnt mean that some report eventual problems; it's a gamble when messing with that stuff.

if you're worried about heat, ensure you have nice air flow in your case, and use custom fan curve in MSIAB. Im running 2 ref. cards unlocked and OC'd to 900/1375, and they never go above ~68*C, 70*C max Under load. Granted it usually means your fans are running faster and thus more noise.

 

[Rockitman]

It doesn't take reading the 100 pages to determine that the majority vote goes to unlocking shaders if possible. That was discussed and agreed upon early on; that is the safer way, unlocking your shaders. Though safer, it doesnt mean that some report eventual problems; it's a gamble when messing with that stuff.

if you're worried about heat, ensure you have nice air flow in your case, and use custom fan curve in MSIAB. Im running 2 ref. cards unlocked and OC'd to 900/1375, and they never go above ~68*C, 70*C max Under load. Granted it usually means your fans are running faster and thus more noise.

Well then, why isn't the original article updated to include this info?

Regarding custom fan curves, I have MSI Afterburner but it isn't very intuitive on how to set up a fan curve. Could you give me some pointers?

When playing crysis in crossfire, with eyefinity at 5760x1200, Afterburner shows that my temps on my cards will get up to 80C. Is that an ok temp? I have great airflow in my Silverstone Fortress case, but I suspect that my 6950 fans aren't kicking in better when the temps get high.

 

[manofthem]

Well then, why isn't the original article updated to include this info?

Regarding custom fan curves, I have MSI Afterburner but it isn't very intuitive on how to set up a fan curve. Could you give me some pointers?

When playing crysis in crossfire, with eyefinity at 5760x1200, Afterburner shows that my temps on my cards will get up to 80C. Is that an ok temp? I have great airflow in my Silverstone Fortress case, but I suspect that my 6950 fans aren't kicking in better when the temps get high.

As for the article not being updated, I don't know but I sure wouldn't question W1zzard

80C is safe for these cards, though personally I try to keep it as low as possible, which obviously means some more noise. I have my fan curve in MSIAB as follows:

 

[Rockitman]

thanks for that snapshot of your fan curve. I've adjusted mine and now when I get hot and heavy in Crysis, these cards are staying much cooler, in the 60's. Of course I can hear the fans kick in and they get louder but in the middle of the game I don't hear them at all.

 

[menacenz]

Hi.

First time poster here and I've really enjoyed all the indepth information that I could find in this thread but I for some reason cannot get my card to unlock the shaders.

The model is a Gigabyte GV-R695OC-1GD so a non reference, over clocked 1GB 6950.
Now I've had no issue in obtaining my bios, updating it ( both with wiizard's batch files and RBE method ) and even the flashing both using GUI winflash and the command prompt method ( running the -unlock command first followed by the flash itself ).
As far as I can tell everything works perfectly, no errors or anything.

However whenever I reboot back to windows GPU-Z continues to tell me I only have the 1408 shaders unlocked even though loading up my bios in RBE tells me it's already been flashed to the 6970 shaders ( as will Wiizard's batch file error if I try flash a second time ). This implies the flashing worked but for some reason the shaders have not unlocked?

I do note earlier in the thread another user with the exact same model as me had success using the RBE method.

Not too sure what else to try from here because I would have thought if anything was wrong in thep rocess I would have got an error or the bios would not show as being updated after reboot.

I guess it could be a hardware thing in the sense the bios is indeed udpated but the old architecture that linked the bios flash to the physical unlocking of the shaders could be removed but that doesn't explain how the other user did it with this card being this is marked as revision 1.0 on the card so I can't possibly have a newer model?

Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

edit:

As an update I DO have a 8800GT in slot 1 of my PC I plan on patching to use for physx but I don't believe anything I can read of here could be having that cause the issue since I'm not actually getting any flash errors?

 

[Vargtass]

Have you run a benchmark with both 1408 and (presumably) 1536 shaders and observed any difference in score? There should not be any need for reinstall the catalyst drivers.

 

[capital]

Hey guys, making my first post and I've got a question about the 6950 I'm picking up tomorrow afternoon.

How can I be sure that it's indeed a reference card that I'd be picking up? From what I gather, it should at least have the black back plate and the dual bios switch, along with the red fans/exhaust? Anything else I can look at from a physical stand point?

Here's an image of the card that the seller had sent me: http://i.imgur.com/0Gd9L.jpg

Thanks! I'll get back to reading the rest of the thread.

 

[lauri_hoefs]

Can someone post up the process they took to unlock using RBE. As I posted before, Winflash failed for me and when I went the cmd line route my computer froze when I tried to -unlock
I have the MSI Twin Frozr II 2GB

Did you try this more than once, and did it freeze every time?

Note that in Windows Vista you have to open cmd with administrative privileges (with right mouse button, select "Run as administrator")

Other than that, the shader unlock does not involve anything else than the steps mentioned in many other posts:

1. Save your original bios with CPU-Z
2. Open it with RBE, on the last tab select "Unlock shaders"
3. Save the modified bios file (to unlock.bin or what ever you wish)
4. Write the modified bios to the card with Winflash
5. Reboot and enjoy

ADDITIONAL STEPS IF PROGRAMMING THE BIOS FAILS, NOT NEEDED ON ALL CARDS
4. Unlock the cards bios with "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0"
5. Write the modified bios with "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
6. Reboot and enjoy




-Lauri