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Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

ok, so I have just tried to run the automated bios flash by using the techpowerup link and well basically now my pc wont even boot.......

a. is it doomed to a new card or is it
b. fixable

any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
 
Have a read of your manual, does the card have a switch on it that lets you go back to the factory default bios ?

On mine, it's a tiny switch just to the right of the xfire connection on the card as you look at it installed in the PC.
 
Even without a dual BIOS switch, you can try booting up with a different graphics card as the primary and attempt to flash back the original BIOS.
 
bezzz said:
Thank god for dual bios. Didn't even realise it had one. Thanks for that AWESOME suggestion!
Click to expand...

Now what you need to do is boot it up on the good BIOS and with the system running, flick the switch back over to the broken BIOS and have another go at flashing it :)
 
Just for peoples info, had to send one of my powercolors back as it was indeed faulty (how bad is the quality control on these things!) my 3rd powercolor 6950 also unlocked so thats 3/3 for me.
 
bought a 1gig 6950 sapphire - sitting at 1536 shaders and 881 core atm (err forgot the mem). Only got it 2 days ago so only did 1 test run to see if stable at stock 850 then 881 using trixx.
Nice card for the price ... also going to see what this card will run at as far as the core ...

well looks like <922 appears to be the max on the core ... 900 seems to be fine but did a 922 run and I locked up. Sitting here at 900 and going to leave that go for a bit to see if any problems; bumped the mem up to 1300 just to see; looks fine atm. Temps are 64 c (nice sapphire cooler); a bit hot in here also atm. idle seems to be about 44-47c.
kombustor works well to test the card ... havnt done anything about voltage but think Ill just leave it.

I actually think they get a chip from amd test it out to see if it can pass a decent clock with the 1536 shaders and if it cant then they bin it as a 6950 ... example - not much overhead here if the 6970 clocks at 880 but hey its all good for a 6950 with unlocked shaders etc ...
 
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well i got problems with Oc of mine 6950. In 2d mode no problem runs at 930. But when i play BF3 in 3d then after 10 minutes game freezes. I can run Furmark for like 10 minutes no problems. Not sure whats up :/ VRM overheats or something ???
I have put aluminium coolers on ALL CHIPS that card got. And i changed ****** thermal strip on VRMs with Arctic Silver.
Im thinking about watercooling atm heh.
 
Lord_ZED said:
well i got problems with Oc of mine 6950. In 2d mode no problem runs at 930. But when i play BF3 in 3d then after 10 minutes game freezes. I can run Furmark for like 10 minutes no problems. Not sure whats up :/ VRM overheats or something ???
I have put aluminium coolers on ALL CHIPS that card got. And i changed ****** thermal strip on VRMs with Arctic Silver.
Im thinking about watercooling atm heh.
Click to expand...

Jesus stop using that POS furmark on 6xxxx or 7xxx series cards it does not stress the card correctly.
thats why your card is failing when gaming.
best stress test is to run 2 gpu hungry and memory hungry games. if after 2 hours and your not crashing then clock up again and retest ;)

I beleave furmark is the program that mostly breaks cards by overvolting there VRMs.
 
I use furmark to see how temps go on chip and to melt down thermal compound tbh.
Whats the use of having stable Furmark when you cant play games on those settings. I for once do play games not only benchmark my pc :D.
When im gaming bf3 on 860/1300 settings at 1080p high settings on 3d card goes to 55c max. I get around 13xxmb vram usage. Interesting thing is that at 720p with AA ultra ect in 2d mode it is stable at 950/1350 no problems thats with around 15xxmb ram usage.
I tried with locked shaders same resoult.
Its not rl about having it ocd that high. Its just im bored and i like to play with stuff even if i end up bricking it. Besides that if/when prices of 7950s drop i will get one anyway. I need more power for 3d gaming heh.
 
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