6950 running 6970 bios power problems

[brigzilla]

Today i decided to reflash my 6950's bios to the stock 6970's bios and have yet to run into any problems playing games. Upon reading somewhere (after having flashed my GPU) i noticed that the 6970 has the extra 2 pins on one power connector. Now i dont know an awful lot about power and what each pin/wire does but it occured to me that someone here probably does. My question is would the lack of pins (ie 12 instead of 14) have any noticable effect on the card at all 1: performance wise and 2: lifecycle wise...

thankyou

 

[tommybhoy]

1. Nope
2. Nope

 

[Shayper]

1, not at all, unless yu count a slightly smaller potential overclock a difference in performance - although the memory chips are binned at a lower speed anyway, so you won't be able to reach true 6970 overclocks anyway.

2, doubt it, as people would have reported problems with the last card that was bios flashable - card itself slips my mind, however I'm sure it was a regular card to an ultra or summat similar, think there was less pins on the regular. Needs citation for this point though

Hope this helps mate

 

[brigzilla]

Thanks for your two responses and sorry for the late reply

 

[el Kuarlos]

You should not use a 6970 bios on a 6950.

-different memory chips.
-slightly different pcbs.
-different power connectors.

There is a pervading opinion that it will be fine but some people are finding their cards are dying.

General concensus is that flashing a cards bios when the bios is coded to deal with different memory chips may not be good for the card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2174236#post2174236

We have eleven 6970 bios users to three 6950 bios users, one of which was on an overclocked bios.

There is a mod to turn a 6950 bios into one with unlocked shaders. You should use that, catalyst limits are harsh (840/1325), but you can enter 'warmode' and sacrifice powerplay when going into a hard gaming sesh by enabling msi afterburner unofficial oc with voltmod active, that will let you get a fast as any 6970.

Yes it might work fine but several users have reported their 6950s will not support a 6970 bios right after inital flashing. Artefacting is the main concern- now given there are different memory modules and the above thread states 6950s running 6970 bios are starting or are dying whereas modded 6950 bioses are only doing so rarely...make your own call.

EDIT; some issues could be driver based but no one is sure.