How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[bbjayo]

EDIT: forget this post. got it working!

Hey Beany - How did you get it to flash. I'm having the same issue in win 7 x64.

Batch file or manually via cmd appear to work but gpuz still shows 1408 shaders after flash.

bb

 

[stevec]

Ok, I just put the 6950 w/ unlocked shaders Asus bios on my Gigabyte 6950. I did this because I want to use smart doctor. All seems fine, shaders are unlocked and I can use SmartDoctor, but I lot the Power Control Option in the ATI Catalyst Control center. I wanted to put that up to 20% as suggested since I will be overclocking, but it's not there. Why is it gone? Do I need the power control option if I am manually upping the voltage via Smart Doctor? Without the Power Control Slider, and without it being at 20%, will my card get throttled back if its not getting enough power??
- Mike

Once you've "enabled unofficial overclocking" in Asus SmartDoctor, uninstall it. I'm pretty sure my PowerTune bar went missing while I was fiddling but it's back now, so I can only assume that PopcornMachine is right and that it disappears if you're using a 3rd party OC tool.

Give it a try and lemme know if it works.

 

[Qed]

Anyone else experiencing high clock of the Sapphire 6950 in idle? I'm talking with only shaders unlocked.

I found 4 profiles in the bios:

00:
GPU 800 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

01:
GPU 150 MHz
RAM 150 MHz

02:
GPU 500 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

03:
GPU 725 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz


The card is using the profile 02 in idle and not the 01. My HD5870 has a normal behave, it is using the profile 01.

01:
GPU 157 MHz
RAM 300 MHz

 

[rzayas28]

Zalman vf3000a

This is exactly what I have done with my asus card. Works a treat @ 6970 speeds and 1.0V. I also use MSI Afterburner to gradually increase fan speed so it's quiet most of the time but as said earlier I'm going to stick a Zalman vf3000a I have on there when I get the time.

Mark22,

Would you mind posting your experience with that cooler once installed? There is a review at Tom's Hardware on Thermalrights Shaman VGA cooler that gives it high marks, but just on the GPU cooling part. It says that you have to buy another cooler for the chips on the back part of the card. I got this from XFX support:

[ 12/28/2010 6:11:41 PM] I was reading a review of Thermalright`s Shaman VGA cooler which is compatible with the 6950 at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/aftermarket-vga-cooling-shaman,2797-2.html, but was unsure how I would get it on the card. If I open the casing on the card, does that void the 2 x Lifetime warranty? I also ran Furmark in stability mode with xtreme burn settings and 8x AA and the cards got up to 85c before I got scared and stopped Furmark. What is the max temp I should allow them to get to before shutting them off?
[DANIEL_E 12/30/2010 12:49:39 AM] Hi, you may change or remove the cooler on the video card as well as adjust the clock speeds through software e.g. riva tuner, etc... However any physical damage caused to the card by affixing a 3rd party cooler to the video card will not be covered (i.e. say a capacitor was damaged or knocked off the card during the installation of a 3rd party cooler, water damage from a water cooling leak, etc.). If you need warranty service then as long as the fault occurred during normal use the card will be covered under warranty. Ensure you keep all of the stock components for the video card as before we can offer any warranty service the video card must be returned to 100% original condition (i.e. ensure you remove any 3rd party products and affix the stock factory parts back on the card) before returning the card to us. The card must also have been registered within 30 days of the purchase date to quality for the double lifetime warranty. If you`re not seeing 95c or higher I wouldn`t worry. Daniel

 

[Icer Jo]

b4 I unlocked 1 of my Sapphire 6950's, only time I've seen a card use profile 01 was in crossfire it would put my 2nd card in that state or it would just turn it down to zero.

 

[Shrike]

Starcraft 2 freeze

Hey Guys,

i did the Biosflash and everything went well (Powercolor).
I tested Crysis, Furmark, Unigine Heaven, 3DMark and everysingle one went trough without any problems.
But in SC2 the game freezes after starting a game.
On low or middle details it goes well but on high or Ultra details not only the game but the pc freezes and restart ist necessary.
I tryied 850 Mhz but it didnt help and i tried to cool the card better but even if the temps aint higher than 55 °C the pc freezes after about 5 minutes.
I even tried blocking the framerate and Vsync on/off.
Dunno what to do now... ):

Please help

Shrike

 

[Bensam123]

Turn the GPU down to 800 and the memory down to 1250, the default speeds.

 

[Shrike]

Hmm works well so far Bensam, but why is SC2 having such problems while other programms/games dont...
Any ideas?

 

[Qed]

Hmm works well so far Bensam, but why is SC2 having such problems while other programms/games dont...
Any ideas?

It seems like you dont wanna be helped.

 

[Shrike]

Oh, u got that wrong
i did what he said and THAT works fine now
Though why is sc2 having such problems?

Sorry

 

[Qed]

Oh, u got that wrong
i did what he said and THAT works fine now
Though why is sc2 having such problems?

Sorry

Starcraft 2 on Ultra settings is a pretty heavy game. Most likely is a RAM problem, try lowering the frequency, your GPU should be fine @ the 6970 frequency and vcore. If you can provide a screenshot it will be easyer to understand the cause.

 

[Jynks]

Hey All,

Confirming 2 x Gigabyte 6950s unlocked with shader unlocked ASUS 6950 BIOS, may overclock them a tiny bit.

Big thanks to Wizzard for the walkthorugh, Rui for the modded BIOS, and whoever discovered this (Dave?), and to everyone else for the feedback and troubleshooting in this thread!

THANKS!

 

[Qed]

b4 I unlocked 1 of my Sapphire 6950's, only time I've seen a card use profile 01 was in crossfire it would put my 2nd card in that state or it would just turn it down to zero.

If my browser is open and not minimized (Mozilla), my videocard is running at full speed even if i have only 1 tab open and it is the hope page of www.google.com

I know browsers are integrating the gpu acceleration, but srsly... full speed to view a static page?

 

[tecnoworld]

I'm eagerly waiting for some tool able to change voltage to the GPU for non Asus cards. Is there anything like that, right now?

 

[hd6950]

Flashed sapphire hd6950. After 2 hours of gameplay got somekind of artifacts in 3d. Flashed back to old. Still artifacts. Lower clocks. still artifacts. Switched to 2nd bios. Still artifacts. Installed new drivers. Still artifact. Dirt2 isn't going to 5760 x 1080 res. anymore.

 

[Icer Jo]

If my browser is open and not minimized (Mozilla), my videocard is running at full speed even if i have only 1 tab open and it is the hope page of www.google.com

I know browsers are integrating the gpu acceleration, but srsly... full speed to view a static page?

I know that I read a couple pages back that if you turned down the power then it would stay at a lower clock more often but that can also affect you game play where u need the higher clock.

 

[abirdie4me]

***** what are your Core/memory speeds?
if those are same - I guess answer is yes. However I noticed one more thing - when I was using Asus 6970 Bios My scores in Furmark Actually increased when I was down-clocking cards.

May be it's related to stability - despite the fact that I was running furmark with 975/1400.
The problem arises while playing Bad company 2 - I had artifacts at the beginning of the game but not during the game.

I set my cards to the same speeds you listed (915/ 1375, I think) and ran 3DMark11. I can run every benchmark and game for hours with no artifacts at 950/1450 as long as I keep the fan cranked up. I guess I got lucky with 2 really good cards. I've created several profiles now for different games, as only Metro 2033 and Crysis really need the higher clocks. I keep the settings around 900 / 1300 for most games since there is no noticible difference in frame rates and I can keep the fan turned down (and not go deaf!).

That sucks about the artifacts in Bad Company...but I bet it still runs silky smooth for you at 915/1375.

 

[abirdie4me]

Anyone else experiencing high clock of the Sapphire 6950 in idle? I'm talking with only shaders unlocked.

I found 4 profiles in the bios:

00:
GPU 800 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

01:
GPU 150 MHz
RAM 150 MHz

02:
GPU 500 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

03:
GPU 725 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz


The card is using the profile 02 in idle and not the 01. My HD5870 has a normal behave, it is using the profile 01.

01:
GPU 157 MHz
RAM 300 MHz

Are you running 2 monitors?

 

[bystander]

Anyone else experiencing high clock of the Sapphire 6950 in idle? I'm talking with only shaders unlocked.

I found 4 profiles in the bios:

00:
GPU 800 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

01:
GPU 150 MHz
RAM 150 MHz

02:
GPU 500 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz

03:
GPU 725 MHz
RAM 1250 MHz


The card is using the profile 02 in idle and not the 01. My HD5870 has a normal behave, it is using the profile 01.

01:
GPU 157 MHz
RAM 300 MHz

I think you are experiencing the same issue I had a while back in the thread. You are using Internet Explorer and viewed an Adobe Flash video. For some odd reason, when you do this, the voltage on the card changes to 1.000, and the clocks are set to 500/1250 (or 500/1350 if you are using the 6970 bios) regardless of what you have it set for. What is worse is the clocks will not go into 3D mode.

If you chage the page with the viewed video, it goes back to normal. I installed Mozilla Firefox and that stopped the madness.

 

[tecnoworld]

Flashed sapphire hd6950. After 2 hours of gameplay got somekind of artifacts in 3d. Flashed back to old. Still artifacts. Lower clocks. still artifacts. Switched to 2nd bios. Still artifacts. Installed new drivers. Still artifact. Dirt2 isn't going to 5760 x 1080 res. anymore.

[url]http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2867/naamloos2e.jpg[/URL]

you could have produced a damage to the memory, if you flashed your card to the 6970 bios. I'd advise everyone to flash just to the modified 6950 bios, instead, which unlocks the shaders, but doesn't touch the memory

 

[tl.dr]

with an unlocked 6950 shader bios, how do you overclock past 840, 1325 ? thats the limit in CCC and asusu smartdoctor

 

[baud]

with an unlocked 6950 shader bios, how do you overclock past 840, 1325 ? thats the limit in CCC and asusu smartdoctor

it looks like you need to do some research Mr. tl.dr.

 

[tl.dr]

this thread is 35 pages long you could just tell me

 

[baud]

this thread is 35 pages long you could just tell me

true, but the answer to your question isn't in this discussion. just play around with smart doctor, you'll find it.

 

[tecnoworld]

tl.dr: use triXX, afterburner os smart doctor. They'll all let you go beyond those limits, but unfortunately no tool will let you overvolt your card, unless it's an asus.