How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

[x900lbGorillax]

The +20% increases the wattage limits before it throttles the core clock down to a lower level. It doesn't raise voltage. If you want to raise voltage, then MSI afterburner works as well as manually setting it via RBE. But at clocks of 840/1325, you shouldn't have to raise voltage.

Ah ok I see, thanks for the help!

 

[vvulture]

There is alot of confusion over the PCIe power connector because you have to pay to get the real specs. That bit I quoted above, is from nVidia directly, on what thier plugs are for, for a specific SKU, and note that both the 6-pin and the 8-pin have sense wires, and that a 6-pin connector requires only 2x12v leads, as in the picture is put in the above post, contrary to your link.

Here's what you link says:








So your source admits they do not know the purpose of the connectors.

You know, I really try to make a point to bring real, accurate info, so please do keep that in mind.

Ok, the cards may use these wires as some sort of 6 pin or 8 pin sensing mechanism, but the PSU itself does not "sense" anything. The PCI-E plug itself is pure 12v +ve and COM GND.
Thats the point i was trying to make.. I have made this observation myself and i am 100% certain that ALL the yellow wires are simply 12v +ve, and ALL the black wires are simply COM GND wires.
As simple as that... What ever the card manufaturers decide to use these wires for is entirely up to them.

 

[azaelpc]

I downloaded the script here on the site.
I ran and did biosmod.

VGA XFX 6950 my 2gb.

I used the files that came in scritp site.

detail POWERTUNER'm not using, I configured at 0%

run some risk of having problems with my VGA?

 

[manofthem]

I downloaded the script here on the site.
I ran and did biosmod.

VGA XFX 6950 my 2gb.

I used the files that came in scritp site.

detail POWERTUNER'm not using, I configured at 0%

run some risk of having problems with my VGA?

That should be fine, no need for powertune with just shaders unlocked. or did you do the 6970 bios? If so, rethink it and go with shaders only and OC that junk like nobody's business!

 

[SAlunasky]

Please help me! I Flashed my 6950 to a 6970 easily and it was running great for about a month. Until my girlfriends games updated my drivers (the ones for the 6950) and now i can even install any drivers for the card nor can i flash it back to 6950 or to a 6970 again. Please help me out ive been trying to figure this out for about 4 hours now.

 

[manofthem]

Please help me! I Flashed my 6950 to a 6970 easily and it was running great for about a month. Until my girlfriends games updated my drivers (the ones for the 6950) and now i can even install any drivers for the card nor can i flash it back to 6950 or to a 6970 again. Please help me out ive been trying to figure this out for about 4 hours now.

How about a little more information?
What card do you have? What's happening with it now?
Try to flash it back to a 6950 the same way you flashed it before.

 

[SAlunasky]

Edit: Got it figured out thanks! Quick response from someone on a different thread!

 

[jayc]

Now i cant update the drivers whatsoever. even after i DO update the driver when i reboot its back to no drivers

This doesn't make sense. Driver updates have nothing to do with your video card bios.
If you can't update system drivers, then windows isn't allowing you to.

Are you still running on your girlfriend's account or are you in Admin account ???

You won't be able to do jack with bios flashing or driver updates if you're not in Admin account.
Go check and never let your girlfriend play with your machine.

 

[jayc]

Edit: Got it figured out thanks! Quick response from someone on a different thread!

What was it then?

Was it admin rights? In which case you deserve a , in a friendly joking kind of way.

 

[Sinster]

So far success on an HIS H695FSG2M flashed with the .bat files provided in this thread. Ran FURMARK for 10 minutes with no issue. Did manually adjust fan to 60% and maintained 72-74c. Auto temps shot up to 90c and freak once it hit 90°c Hopefully when I get my second card tomorrow it will flash without issue.

A few question though
At what temp should I start to worry?

Those who had issues after a successful flash and then notice issue how long did it take to notice the issue and what kind of issues?


I replaced my 5850's for these and I notice that my audio isn't looping anymore when I shut down games. I'm stoked about that.

The big question is should I just use the 6950 Modded or the 6970 which I'm running now? I'm not a big OC'ing so I'm not going past stock 880/1375.

 

[manofthem]

So far success on an HIS H695FSG2M flashed with the .bat files provided in this thread. Ran FURMARK for 10 minutes with no issue. Did manually adjust fan to 60% and maintained 72-74c. Auto temps shot up to 90c and freak once it hit 90°c Hopefully when I get my second card tomorrow it will flash without issue.

A few question though
At what temp should I start to worry?

Those who had issues after a successful flash and then notice issue how long did it take to notice the issue and what kind of issues?


I replaced my 5850's for these and I notice that my audio isn't looping anymore when I shut down games. I'm stoked about that.

The big question is should I just use the 6950 Modded or the 6970 which I'm running now? I'm not a big OC'ing so I'm not going past stock 880/1375.

Most definitely use the 6950 bios modded with shaders unlocked, much safer than a 6970 bios. And instead of using a set fan speed, use MSI afterburner to set up a custom fan curve to keep the card(s) cool, and MSI ab will also allow you to adjust voltage to OC back to the speeds of a 6970 and beyond.

Seems like at default fan on auto, furmark gets the card up to about 90-92*C. Using a custom fan curve allows for better cooling, given some extra noise. When running one card with custom fan curve, my temps were always around 55-65*C @ 60-70% fan, with the higher numbers being a game like Crysis.

 

[Sinster]

Most definitely use the 6950 bios modded with shaders unlocked, much safer than a 6970 bios. And instead of using a set fan speed, use MSI afterburner to set up a custom fan curve to keep the card(s) cool, and MSI ab will also allow you to adjust voltage to OC back to the speeds of a 6970 and beyond.

Seems like at default fan on auto, furmark gets the card up to about 90-92*C. Using a custom fan curve allows for better cooling, given some extra noise. When running one card with custom fan curve, my temps were always around 55-65*C @ 60-70% fan, with the higher numbers being a game like Crysis.

So how do I go about flashing to the modded 6950 since I flashed to the 6970? Go back to old bios and then use the run.bat to unlock the shader? Since installed the 6970 successfully I don't need to use the switch to flash it to old.bin?

Do I use the flash_back.bat or winflash orig.bin. I installed it via winflash unlock.bin.

 

[manofthem]

http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip
Should be it...
Download the mod script that has the "run.bat" file. Take your default 6950 bios and throw it in the folder where "run.bat" is in. Name bios "original.bin" and run the bat file. The bat file will run a few cmd lines and you'll have a new file there named "modded.bin". Flash that bin the same way as you did the 6970 bios. It'll overwrite whatever is there as long as the switch is in the 1 position.

 

[Sinster]

http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip
Should be it...
Download the mod script that has the "run.bat" file. Take your default 6950 bios and throw it in the folder where "run.bat" is in. Name bios "original.bin" and run the bat file. The bat file will run a few ms lines and you'll have a new file there named "modded.bin". Flash that bin the same way as you did the 6970 bios. It'll overwrite whatever is there as long as the switch is in the 1 position.

Cool thanks.

 

[Sinster]

One more thing and it's probably been answer before and most likely in the 89 pages. Why would you fry the card if running 6970 bios? Wouldn't OCing to those specs do the same damage?

I'm running MSI AB 840/1325 @ core v stock.

 

[jayc]

One more thing and it's probably been answer before and most likely in the 89 pages. Why would you fry the card if running 6970 bios? Wouldn't OCing to those specs do the same damage?

I'm running MSI AB 840/1325 @ core v stock.

Overclocking using MSI Afterburner, for example, increases the voltage for the core ONLY.
The 6970 bios runs the ram on the 6950 at a higher voltage. The memory voltage is not the same as the core voltage.

And since the 6950 ram is not the same as the ram used in the real 6970 cards, this extra voltage (to the ram) is probably what is causing damage to some people's vid cards.

Adjusting the voltage on MSI Afterburner does not alter the memory voltage.

Even if you are not seeing issues in the first few days after the 6950 to 6970 mod, you might experience issues later, as some have reported.

However, the shader unlock only mod uses the bios from your own 6950 to unlock the extra shaders. This keeps voltages at what your ram is rated for. Then overclock it to 880/1375 speeds to match a real 6970, and adjust core voltage to meet your increased core speed.

 

[hv43082]

Overclocking using MSI Afterburner, for example, increases the voltage for the core ONLY.
The 6970 bios runs the ram on the 6950 at a higher voltage. The memory voltage is not the same as the core voltage.

And since the 6950 ram is not the same as the ram used in the real 6970 cards, this extra voltage (to the ram) is probably what is causing damage to some people's vid cards.

Adjusting the voltage on MSI Afterburner does not alter the memory voltage.

Even if you are not seeing issues in the first few days after the 6950 to 6970 mod, you might experience issues later, as some have reported.

However, the shader unlock only mod uses the bios from your own 6950 to unlock the extra shaders. This keeps voltages at what your ram is rated for. Then overclock it to 880/1375 speeds to match a real 6970, and adjust core voltage to meet your increased core speed.

Good explanation. I will do that when my 6950's arrive.

 

[Sinster]

Thanks Jayc.

AB is only allowing me to go to 840/1325 how can I go higher? Is it because I'm using 11.4's?

 

[manofthem]

Thanks Jayc.

AB is only allowing me to go to 840/1325 how can I go higher? Is it because I'm using 11.4's?

No it's not 11.4. You need to enable unofficial overclocking. You can do that by:
-Make sure you have the newest verison of MSI AB
-Go in to the program directory (example C:\Program Files(x86)\MSI afterburner) and open MSIAfterburner.cfg
-Scroll to bottom and enter the following values
[ATIADLHAL]
UnofficialOverclockingEULA = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode = 1
AccessibilityCheckingPeriod = 0
-Open Afterburner and you can now clock higher than default 840/1325
-Open settings in MSI AB, and on the front tab, click "Unlock Voltage Control" and optionally "Unlock Voltage Monitoring"
-Restart MSI AB
You can now increase voltage and increase core/memory clocks. Only increase voltage as much as needed for a given clock speed.

Let us know how it goes and what clocks you reach!

 

[Sinster]

Let us know how it goes and what clocks you reach!

I was running 1.175 @880/1375.. I think.. My second card came in and I'm about to flash that one so I put everything to default. I removed the first card.

 

[Sinster]

Second card has been modded and running @ 1175 880/1375. Tell you the truth I really didn't try the default 1.1 voltage. I ran Furmark for 12 minutes and heaven benchmark and everything working fine. I'm going to install my second card now.

 

[Sinster]

Having issues.. Everything in CCC is grayed out and in MSI AB it won't let me set the GPU Volt and Mem Volt when I hit apply they go to 0.

EDIT: Reinstalled drivers and all is good now.

 

[NameonPrime]

The final word

Hey wizzard



i just want your final word on the whole flashing thing,



i am soon to receive a sapphire hd 6950 2gb card and im looking into unlocking it to a fully fledged hd 6970

but i've come across at least three posts in forums stating that the hd 6970 uses different memory timings than the hd 6950

which when applied to a hd 6950 would kill the card and even reverting to a hd 6950 bios wont help becoz of the damaged memory modules on the card.



now i need to hear this from you,



is it true, about the memory timings?



would you recommend for me to unlock the 6950 or should i stick with it?



plus why do sapphire cards have such a high failure rate of unlocking but with rendering errors?



how would i know if my card has the reference board/pcb so i can unlock?



can i unlock on a non-reference board/pcb?



My current specs:

Asus crosshair IV formula

AMD Phenom II X4 970 BE Processor @ 3.51Ghz (stock)

XFX hd 5830 1gb

Apower ak850 850w psu

coraisr xms3 ddr3 4gb (2x2gb) @ 1333mhz RAM

 

[fullinfusion]

^ WOW GOING STRAIGHT TO THE TOP ON HIS QUESTION LOL... oops my bad for the caps.

Hey its a risk every one takes when messing with hardware. You do it at your own risk.

And yes the memory timings are different on the 6950 vs the 6970... the 6970 use better binned mem chips... some fail and like me am lucky to have 2 cards that haven't been hurt running the full fledged unlock...

Dude only you can answer your question, W1zzard cant... he can only recommend.

I would just do the un-locked shader bios only to be safe.. but if you have lots of money then go for it... turn them into 6970's

Its your choice.

 

[manofthem]

^ WOW GOING STRAIGHT TO THE TOP ON HIS QUESTION LOL... oops my bad for the caps.

Hey its a risk every one takes when messing with hardware. You do it at your own risk.

And yes the memory timings are different on the 6950 vs the 6970... the 6970 use better binned mem chips... some fail and like me am lucky to have 2 cards that haven't been hurt running the full fledged unlock...

Dude only you can answer your question, W1zzard cant... he can only recommend.

I would just do the un-locked shader bios only to be safe.. but if you have lots of money then go for it... turn them into 6970's

Its your choice.

Bravo!