How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[Arcus]

where+when did you buy it exactly?

Purchased from Newegg.com.
Ordered it 8-24-2011
They were "out of stock" but still listed, I really like MSI and the reviews I read for this card so I checked every night for about a week and on Wednesday 8-24-11 they were back in stock, I ordered it. Checked back the next day with thoughts of crossfire, and they were "deactivated". MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB ...



MSI X58M
I7 920 @4.0Ghz (200x20) 1.27v W/ Noctua NH-D14
24GB kingston Hyperx (6x4GB) @1600Mhz 1.65v 9-9-9-27-1T
MSI 6950 TFIII PE/OC unlocked to 1536 shaders
OCZ Vertex2 120GB SSD (OS drive)
1TB WD Black 7200rpm (Data Drive)
650W Antec EarthPower

(The reason I have 24gigs of RAM is I install almost all my games to a RamDisk, then save the image to my storage drive and just load whatever game installation image I want to play in to Memory.) My Ramdisk reads at ~9500MB/s compared to My SSD at ~250MB/s

 

[reddie007]

Purchased from Newegg.com.
Ordered it 8-24-2011
They were "out of stock" but still listed, I really like MSI and the reviews I read for this card so I checked every night for about a week and on Wednesday 8-24-11 they were back in stock, I ordered it. Checked back the next day with thoughts of crossfire, and they were "deactivated". MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB ...

nice... let know whats your max stable overclock

 

[Nicokeller]

Hello Guys.
I'm back again... Now I finally am able to write new bioses in my GPU, however, ANY of the bios in the GPU bios database works on my board...
I mean... They flash and all the stuffs, but when I start up windows, it won't recognize my GPU... Well... It recognizes as an HD 6950, but the shaders, gpu clock, memory clock, everything is "unknown".
I'm ALMOST sure that it isn't working, because all these bioses on the database are from ATI (under the HIS "tab"), and it's not working at all...
I'm REALLY hoping that some awesome soul would share with me a 6950 HIS IceQ X 2GB original Bios, or at least a Bios which works for my HIS card..

Thanks in advance!
Nico

 

[epa]

Please check this file also, found it later... I don't remember exactly which one is uploaded and worked, but if you said that the 880 one is with problems, then this must be the right one.


LE:
Added new saved bios from shaders unlocked working card rom and bin versions.

i tryed the other cayman shaders 4 ,doesnt unlock shaders:shadedshu
i took detailed pics of my card without cooler.
maybe we can compare with card that is unlockable.
also ,the modded bios with rbe is different from modded bios with bat.file page 381,also different from your cayman shaders 4?
they al flash ok but no free shaders.
pic1
pic2
edit/ looking@ the bottem of the gpu ,upper left corner there are 2 resistors missing r3605 and r3601(if i read it right)maybe they suply power 2 the missing shaders?

 

[Nicokeller]

Ok. What's happening here ?
The bios flashes sucessfuly but seems like it didn't

I`m trying to flash with the bios provided in the gpu database, and no, I didn`t backup my bios image FML (I think, cuz the one I think is my backup, keep acting the same way)

Anyone ?

 

[pacifist]

Hello Guys.
i have a XFX HD6950 XXX Edition 2GB GDDR5 (HD-695X-CNDC) (830/5200) and i cant unlock the shaders. Someone can help ? Thanks! With kind regards Vitaly

PS I flash a video card a bios modified an utility from Wizzard (Mod_BIOS_HD_6950) http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip
nothing changed, the amount of shaders had remained former - 1408

 

[unchiu]

i tryed the other cayman shaders 4 ,doesnt unlock shaders:shadedshu
i took detailed pics of my card without cooler.
maybe we can compare with card that is unlockable.
also ,the modded bios with rbe is different from modded bios with bat.file page 381,also different from your cayman shaders 4?
they al flash ok but no free shaders.
pic1
pic2
edit/ looking@ the bottem of the gpu ,upper left corner there are 2 resistors missing r3605 and r3601(if i read it right)maybe they suply power 2 the missing shaders?

Well.... please mark on the picture the missing resistors so I will compare with my card 4. I hope they are not on the GPU side because I don't want to remove the cooler.

I found this on the internet... If I understand correctly it may be a cause for non unlocking shaders:
"Just to add my personal note on this matter. There have been many reports of people not being able to unlock their cards despite MSI's confidence that the card will unlock. This may be due to recent batches of the cut down Cayman GPU being laser cut and thus rendered unable to unlock. So please do this at your own discretion and beware that in flashing the card, you will also void your warranty but there are ways to avoid that... Should the flash be successful but fail to unlock the extra shaders, you will still get the benefits of an increased overclocking headroom in MSI Afterburner. As soon as more info is available from MSI, the article will be updated."

 

[epa]

look here @ the bottem of the card.
if they are lasercut,then from now on,al 6950 should be hard locked.
hopefully not.
best thing is to compare to see any differences.

 

[unchiu]

look here @ the bottem of the card.
if they are lasercut,then from now on,al 6950 should be hard locked.
hopefully not.
best thing is to compare to see any differences.

Both my cards look just like yours. The resistors are there and they are black. Here is a picture with card 4. Just press the button to download.

 

[epa]

hm your eyes and camara are better then mine
i think i give up on it.probably hard locked.
ill keep an eye on this thread.

 

[ctn]

Have you guys noticed that the 6950 overclocks better with a 6970 bios vs a shader unlocked 6950 bios esp on the memory. I could max out the slider on the memory on the 6970 bios but on the 6950 shader unlocked bios, it would artifact over 1375.

 

[Mason69]

Has anyone been able to flash this one:

?????

If yes, how??

 

[broon]

Just bought a Sapphire 6950 Dirt 3 2gb which I was planning to unlock the shaders on. I've noticed that GPU-Z is reporting that the GPU is Antilles and that the device id is 671D. Is that normal? Can I still go ahead and unlock the shaders?

Edit: Just realised I can't unlock the shaders using RBE, that option is greyed out because the hardware ID on the card is that of a 6990. What's going on here?

 

[epa]

Just bought a Sapphire 6950 Dirt 3 2gb which I was planning to unlock the shaders on. I've noticed that GPU-Z is reporting that the GPU is Antilles and that the device id is 671D. Is that normal? Can I still go ahead and unlock the shaders?

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/11/09/09/azp.png

Edit: Just realised I can't unlock the shaders using RBE, that option is greyed out because the hardware ID on the card is that of a 6990. What's going on here?

http://i.imgur.com/9IqAN.png

i could not unlock my shaders with my saphire dirt3 2 card,as you have probably read above.
unchiu has2 identical card's 1 unlocks, the other one doesnt.
you could try using the batfile method in post 381(on that page).
you could post your bios here for devellopment,maybe in the future someone is succesfull.

 

[Mason69]

Has anyone been able to flash this one:

http://www.powercolor.com/pt/show_img.asp?id=313&file=image_a_s.jpg


?????

If yes, how??

?????????

 

[allocura]

hello gentlemen, my Saphire 6950 (with the fan on the middle) card does not have the bios switch thingy on it, if I flash it and something goes wrong, can I just plug in the 4850 I have in another PC and flash the original back in?

 

[loube]

you should copy your bios and then modify it with the shader script. Much safer!

 

[allocura]

and how do I go about doing that? all the information I've seen comes from the article this thread is about.

 

[loube]

you can take GPU-Z and export your bios to a file then you would take this http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip modify your bios as show on this post http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2258094&highlight=mod_bios_+hd_6950.zip#post2258094 then try and flash that back to your card with RBE 1.28

 

[allocura]

Thanks a bunch ill try it out.

 

[losbellos]

sapphire hd 6950

hej,

I managed to flash my sapphire hd 6950 to 6970. I had some rendering errors but after setting the power control to +20% it disappeared.
My setup core: 840mhz, memory:1350mhz
It seems to work, 25% performance increase in furmark compared to 6950
It is Interesting that the board is black with the flex case design. I thought only the original amd cards are reference design.

 

[inerax]

Does this work this new drivers?

Hello all, I am running dual 6950's stock. does this unlock still work with the newer drviers?

any changes? thanks all

 

[loube]

drivers have nothing to do with flashing. we need more info, what type of cards do you have? Look at my post above on this page. that is the safer way to upgrade your 6950 > 6970.

 

[Ginnoskie]

Hey Guys..i Just owned a Sapphire HD6950 reference card..now all i want is to unlock the shaders and not to touch the voltage thing and not to flash it to 6970 because there are many issues about it, also I've already read some comments here that there is a 6950 mod which only unlock's the shaders..does anyone one know where could i get it?? and how to make it happen? can someone give me an idea i really appreciate it..

 

[broon]

In addition to my last post, I tried the batfile script on the BIOS from my Sapphire 2gb Dirt3 edition, and flashed with the BIOS that the script created. The flash was successful as far as I can tell, but the number of shaders remains at 1408. I have uploaded the original BIOS.