Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

MR.B · 5 Jan 2011 at 09:22

GJ02 said:
how did you flash them, take one out and flash 1, then take that out put other in and flash ?

Yep. I also tried two ways of flashing with each card, one was done the CMD way, and one using this. It has a BAT file in it that you run which does everything for you, so it's just a single click to flash!

on your ud7 have you got the cards spaced appart ?

Theres a empty PCIE in between them but theres only about half a cm gap between the cards... they get well noisey in crossfire after flash though. I've clocked the cores down to 820mhz so it's somewhat bearable. If yours is fast enough and you're only using 1080p res then i wouldn't bother flashing if you go crossfire because of the noise.

muggs · 5 Jan 2011 at 09:40

gareth170 said:
it works on win7 x64 so it should work on vista x64

sounds promising, if i remember correctly you have the asus 6950 bios with unlocked shaders right?

if so could you please link me to the bios?

gareth170 · 5 Jan 2011 at 10:35

muggs said:
sounds promising, if i remember correctly you have the asus 6950 bios with unlocked shaders right?

if so could you please link me to the bios?

yes

http://www.mediafire.com/file/80ywuj7umub2ei0/asus6950full.bin

blackninja · 5 Jan 2011 at 20:33

I am happy to report that my 2xHIS 6950s that arrived today are in fact now masquerading as overclocked (just a bit

) 6970s! Fans not too loud either and when the long Xfire bridge gets here I'll run em spaced apart better and they'll have better noise levels ... I doubt there will be noticable impact @ 16x/8x PCIe. Just wish I got em when they were £200!

Top card maxes out @ 76c with 45% fan .... I am impressed.

MR.B · 5 Jan 2011 at 21:53

blackninja - What cooling are you using? I have my case side off with my crossfired HIS cards, and the noise is pretty ridiculous. Do you have a case fan blowing on them?
I suppose it's worse being as i have the side off, just makes 'em louder sounding, but compared to before flash or my 5870's these flashed 6950's are about 40% louder unless i underclock them.

GJ02 · 5 Jan 2011 at 21:58

ive been playing black ops for the past 2 hours and my temps never reached above 65 on both cards !

blackninja · 5 Jan 2011 at 22:10

MR.B said:
blackninja - What cooling are you using? I have my case side off with my crossfired HIS cards, and the noise is pretty ridiculous. Do you have a case fan blowing on them?
I suppose it's worse being as i have the side off, just makes 'em louder sounding, but compared to before flash or my 5870's these flashed 6950's are about 40% louder unless i underclock them.

Hi - I have 2x120mm 1200 rpm fans at the front and 2 at the back of my full tower case (had it since my Athlon Thunderbird watercooling days and still going strong

) so the airflow is pretty good, there's a 4.2GHz i7 in there too .. and my stuff has always been cooler with the side on (and helps keep the noise down a bit) ... I have also splayed the cards a bit about 1/4 inch to help airflow ... no side fans but they might be next!

So, nothing special but the case has been dremmelled and jigsawwed to this state over a few iterations (Athlon XP, Barton Mobile, Opteron 165, Q6600 + i7 - all OCed to the max).

Piccy from before (5970+5870, which got louder than these!) to give you an idea ..:

blackninja · 5 Jan 2011 at 22:54

No crashes yet and max temp is 80c after looping the Crysis Warhead benchmark 10 times ..

I am thinking that I should have got 3 of these!

MR.B · 6 Jan 2011 at 00:47

@ blackninja cheers for that

Guess i'll try some better case cooling and space the cards more apart, see how that goes. I've got things water cooled so theres not much air going through the case.

J.D · 6 Jan 2011 at 05:30

Juantjie said:
Anyone else getting the problem of not being able to have the power adjust control on CCC after the flash? This is kinda bad because I'm receiving lots of throttling

That happened to me, I simply restarted the PC and it was there when I went back into CCC.

trigger-happy · 6 Jan 2011 at 12:56

I heard AMD just manufactured some 6950's which will prevent users to unlock the graphics card. They will be sent off at the end on January, so my guess is it buy now!

GJ02 · 6 Jan 2011 at 13:05

Does anyone know if afterburner is compatible with 6950 cards in the way of how it monitors the cards ? I know it's not fully comparable with voltages and core clocks

Reason I ask is, I have afterburner monitoring my temps on both cards and in wondering if the way in which it monitors is not working correctly because my temps are very nice, for a xfire setup with cards on top of eachother I can play black ops, crysis,f1 all for well over an hour +, and I won't see temps reach over 67 degrees, ive also checked gpuz and it's also reading same temps.
I'm not complaining at all,

muggs · 6 Jan 2011 at 14:20

gareth170 said:
yes

http://www.mediafire.com/file/80ywuj7umub2ei0/asus6950full.bin

Thanks for the bios.

Right it flashed fine, smart doctor works now however just cause 2 lags now, I see it dip into the 30fps range where as with the 6970 asus the lowest I saw was 48. I then upped the voltage to 1.2 and I could play at 920/1420 however there was still lag. I then upped it to 940/1450 and it lasted a few mins only. Reset the machine got to logon screen logged on and it would crash straightwaway, never had this problem with the 6970 bios. Had to flick the bios switch then flash it back asus 6970 and everything was normal again. Also with the asus 6950 bios I could not have powerplay enabled with anything above 840 which was a pita.

So had a few probs with that bios. Guess I’ll have to keep waiting for another way of increasing volts. Temps didn’t really change when I upped the volts either

gareth170 · 6 Jan 2011 at 14:28

muggs said:
Also with the asus 6950 bios I could not have powerplay enabled with anything above 840 which was a pita.

in smart doctor enable overclocking range enhancement

muggs · 6 Jan 2011 at 18:20

gareth170 said:
in smart doctor enable overclocking range enhancement

oh cool, good to know for future ref, wish my card liked the bios abit more

Durzel · 6 Jan 2011 at 22:48

Bah humbug.

2 ASUS 6950 OCs, 1st one flashed to 6970 BIOS, try and run Heaven benchmark and it's basically painting by numbers, total screen corruption.

2nd ASUS 6950 OC, flashed exactly the same way, runs perfectly at 890/1375 with no artifacts whatsoever.

Think I'll be able to return the first card under DSR? (not OCUK)

blackninja · 7 Jan 2011 at 01:06

blackninja said:
I am happy to report that my 2xHIS 6950s that arrived today are in fact now masquerading as overclocked (just a bit ) 6970s! Fans not too loud either and when the long Xfire bridge gets here I'll run em spaced apart better and they'll have better noise levels ... I doubt there will be noticable impact @ 16x/8x PCIe. Just wish I got em when they were £200!

Top card maxes out @ 76c with 45% fan .... I am impressed.

Now I am really impressed with these .... my 5970 @ 950/1300 gave about 62FPS at these settings!! The MSI AB trace is whilst running Heaven with 50% fan (ignore the CCC fan setting!) which I can cope with for gaming with headphones ... Only issue I have is that when overclocked I lose the temperature reading of the lower card - at stock it is reading fine :confused:

95thrifles · 7 Jan 2011 at 02:00

I know its bit late in the day, but is there anyway a mod can add a poll to this thread so people can see at a quick glance success rates people are getting when trying this?

Dazboots · 7 Jan 2011 at 07:02

3dmark 11

unlocked 2 6950 got a score of 9872 in 3d mark 11.
both clocked to 900 core only. i think for the money these r amazing.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/370078

Puppetmaster · 7 Jan 2011 at 11:40

What is the success rate of unlocking?

I will be building a new pc at the end of the month and wondering what card to go for. Im very tempted by a 6950 and unlocking it to a 6970, but then if it doesnt work im stuck with the lesser of the 2 cards. Ofcourse i have the option of buying a second, but that means another waterblock and a new power supply.