Gigabyte 6950 OC 1GB - unlock bios

[ThomasuDesu]

Trying to reinstall a few times. Changed the colours of my screen to black and dark blue, couldn't see anything so I had to system restore. Working out the kinks and will let you know.

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Yeah reinstalled drivers a few times, updated to 12.1 and still no unlock. Bios is still flashed as saying unlocked but GPU-Z says no unlocked shaders, just regular 1408. :/ I did get some major problems when using the unlocked shaders though. Uninstall the drivers, and my second monitor would go black and very few colours, unable to do anything with it. Installing some kind of drivers again fixed it. (BIOS and booting colours were fine, just IN windows they were messed up.) Without drivers, GPU-Z and RBE would both crash the pc (just black screen and lock up). Drivers installed they work fine. :/

But yeah uplugging for 30s and reinstalling drivers, no bueno.

 

[Anusha]

Yeah reinstalled drivers a few times, updated to 12.1 and still no unlock. Bios is still flashed as saying unlocked but GPU-Z says no unlocked shaders, just regular 1408. :/ I did get some major problems when using the unlocked shaders though. Uninstall the drivers, and my second monitor would go black and very few colours, unable to do anything with it. Installing some kind of drivers again fixed it. (BIOS and booting colours were fine, just IN windows they were messed up.) Without drivers, GPU-Z and RBE would both crash the pc (just black screen and lock up). Drivers installed they work fine. :/

But yeah uplugging for 30s and reinstalling drivers, no bueno.

Happened to me even before flashing mine.(maybe not the same as your case) Screen would go blank when I tried to save bios from GPU-Z. Even with the drivers installed. Something seemed to have interrupted something.

Are you on a Z68 board and is virtu running? Also are you using the latest intel video drivers? Seemed like there was a problem with latest intel drivers. Uninstall all and disable iGPU from bios and proceed. Remove any overclock on CPU and disable overdrive and anything else that could interrupt . You can enable them later if all goes well.

 

[ThomasuDesu]

I'm not sure what virtu is, but I do have a lot of recent Intel drivers. Also not sure what iGPU is :/ but ill try on a fresh install tonight. I use I think H61, I've got the ASRock H61M-VS.

 

[Anusha]

Ok you dont have virtu. Virtu is on Z68. Then it is probably driver related. You did a cleanup of drivers using driver cleaner after uninstalling the drivers, right?

 

[ThomasuDesu]

No :/ I didn't. Is the best course of action to reinstall with regular bios, install drivers, unlock shaders and flash, uninstall drivers, clean drivers, update drivers?

 

[Anusha]

Uninstall current drivers and reboot
Go to safe mode and clean ati drivers using driver sweeper (sorry its not driver cleaner. I mistyped earlier)
Reboot and reinstall drivers
Flash back to stock bios
Reboot (or turn off for a while) and flash to modded bios
Reboot (or turn off for a while)
Remove drivers and sweep as before

See how it goes.

 

[ThomasuDesu]

About to re-install drivers, flashed modified bios following your instructions, but oh dear.

Slight shock horror. Gonna install drivers and see what happens.

 

[Anusha]

gosh! seriously?? (tbh, i didn't require a driver reinstall for GPU-Z to show the updated figures).

which bios file did you flash?
i hope you flashed the original unmodified bios + shader hack.

what happened when you flashed back your original bios?

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Yeah I flashed my original bios, the ORIGINAL, unmodified, and it still showed 1408 shaders. Every time I flash a bios nothing happens to the shaders, always stays on 1408, but when I acquire the bios using RBE it says unlocked, but there's no effect on the shaders.

It's less glitchy after Driver Sweepering and safe mode stuff. I'm hoping it's a driver thing saying this, or I'm just reflashing the original. This is the FIRST time after flashing a bios of ANY kind I've had a shader change. Please let this be a good thing...

 

[Anusha]

Yeah I flashed my original bios, the ORIGINAL, unmodified, and it still showed 1408 shaders. Every time I flash a bios nothing happens to the shaders, always stays on 1408, but when I acquire the bios using RBE it says unlocked, but there's no effect on the shaders.

It's less glitchy after Driver Sweepering and safe mode stuff. I'm hoping it's a driver thing saying this, or I'm just reflashing the original. This is the FIRST time after flashing a bios of ANY kind I've had a shader change. Please let this be a good thing...

I just hope you won't get it bricked. Play safe.

You do know that what all this will give you is just a 1-2% more FPS, right?

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Lost some bandwidth and fillrate. I think I might give up on doing this :/ It's just so uncooperative.

 

[Anusha]

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/11/12/18/gpn.png

Lost some bandwidth and fillrate. I think I might give up on doing this :/ It's just so uncooperative.

That's because you have turned off overdrive.
870/1250 vs 900/1325 clocks

BTW, are you in Japan? (looking at your nickname)

 

[ThomasuDesu]

No no, I'm not from Japan ^__^ Though I wish to visit some day, I'm from Australia, the land of Nothing and Intolerance. My girlfriend has gone a few times and says it's amazing.

I'm very worried about bricking after all the modding and whatnot I've done, bricked my last GPU, 9600GT, becuase I was wiring it up directly to my PSU because I didn't have enough PCI-E plugs. XD Slight error and it grounded the thing.

 

[Anusha]

No no, I'm not from Japan ^__^ Though I wish to visit some day, I'm from Australia, the land of Nothing and Intolerance. My girlfriend has gone a few times and says it's amazing.

your nickname is so misleading. (look who's talking, eh? i'm a guy XD)

I'm very worried about bricking after all the modding and whatnot I've done, bricked my last GPU, 9600GT, becuase I was wiring it up directly to my PSU because I didn't have enough PCI-E plugs. XD Slight error and it grounded the thing.

well, it seems you can still recover from a bad flash, if you have a spare card. in your case, i guess you will need a PCI card, unless you can do it with the iGPU.

could it be that your 3-8 pin connection mod is somehow shorting other pins on the chip?

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Nah I took off the pin mod, it was flashing without it for some reason. I found out the reason I lost that bandwidth was because Overdrive was on without my permission (*shakes fist*) But it restored fine, so yah.

Also, can you speak Japanese?

 

[Anusha]

Also, can you speak Japanese?

a bit. i can manage.

anyways, too bad you had to give up the unlock.

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Waiting for any details on others who can't unlock. I think maybe Gigabyte changed the bit location of the unlock.

 

[Anusha]

Waiting for any details on others who can't unlock. I think maybe Gigabyte changed the bit location of the unlock.

but the thing is, my cards are newer, in the sense they came with much newer bios than yours.

bios version 013.012.000.025.000000 as per GPU-Z

i'm not even sure if you can flash your card with this new firmware. gigabyte doesn't list any bios files on their site.

one question though. in the overdrive page, are you able to change the power limiter? (-20% ~ +20% thingy) that option doesn't show up for mine. (as i established earlier, there is something wrong with the overdrive settings. even RBE says there is a problem, even though i didn't get any issue when i stubbornly ignored that error and flashed with the unlocked bios.)

 

[ThomasuDesu]

I do get the +-20% power. I think like an idiot I didn't turn off overdrive, though driver scrubber should have fixed that... What does this mean for my chances of unlocking? I only really wanted was the extra shadets to help me push this card. Can I get stable clocks on stock voltage at say 950/1400 without ublock?

 

[Anusha]

I do get the +-20% power. I think like an idiot I didn't turn off overdrive, though driver scrubber should have fixed that... What does this mean for my chances of unlocking? I only really wanted was the extra shadets to help me push this card. Can I get stable clocks on stock voltage at say 950/1400 without ublock?

i doubt it. the max i was able to push was 920 on the core (with trixx). not sure on the memory, but it wasn't stable at 1400. but this was with 1408 shaders.

 

[buradd]

i doubt it. the max i was able to push was 920 on the core (with trixx). not sure on the memory, but it wasn't stable at 1400. but this was with 1408 shaders.

i cant even use amd overdrive with 12.1 preview driver, its apparently broken.. but i was able to use it with 11.11 and 11.11a, got it to 900/1325 on both cards but it would crash in games..

having it at stock 870/1250 on both cards is just as quick really, i cant notice the difference besides the games not crashing

 

[codehavok]

Did nothing different. Used all the versions as listed. Did NOT use the 3-8. Unlocked fine NO ERRORS!

 

[ThomasuDesu]

Mine runs easily at 900/1325 with 5% power increase, no artifacts, never above 55 degrees n_n still no unlock though...

 

[buleandra]

Hi ppl, just want to say thx for sharing your experience with unlocking this card.
Ive managed to unlock mine with UAC off, gpuz 0.5.6, rbe128, and atiwinflash .13, catalyst 11.12 - just restart no driver reinstall.

BTW NO HARDWARE UNLOCK 3-8.