*** MSI 6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition - How To Unlock The Power ***

[Helios1234]

Indeed, it has plenty of overclocking headroom that will allow it to match the performance of a HD6970 easily, even perhaps a reference card with a respectable overclock on top. And for near GTX590 beating performance at a touch over half the price, you can't complain!

 

[Xelene]

Dont have a go at scottiB, he works for MSI does he not? so advertising is his job. He was just using the unlocking thing as advertising ammunition to do his job anyone in his place would.

Yes he works for MSI, so if he says something his own product that is not true then it's a problem.

To be fair, he's pulled the information and offered some games to people that got hit by this *and* unlocking the shaders on the 6950 barely increases performance anyway, it's the clock speeds that help.

 

[tommybhoy]

Not ScottiB's fault.

+1
He didn't write the articles he just pointed out what he read. If I seen it I would have posted it in the forum too.

The card is a 6950 not a 6970, it's not as if you paid a premium for the potential of unlocking, in fact it was a fantastic buy in the first place.

If it unlocks then you were getting a free bonus, if it doesn't you still have a tremendous card anyway.



On a side note, has anyone replaced the bios file from wizzards batch file with the msi one to try and flash the bios that way?

It was the only way you could flash the asus direct cu II iirc.

 

[Broken Hope]

What's more annoying is that MSI doesn't actually seem to make a 6970 with the Twin Frozr cooler, in fact most of the better cooling solutions only seem to be released on the 6950's.

 

[Xelene]

+1
He didn't write the articles he just pointed out what he read. If I seen it I would have posted it in the forum too.

It was MSI branded literature.

 

[drifting]

On a side note, has anyone replaced the bios file from wizzards batch file with the msi one to try and flash the bios that way?

It was the only way you could flash the asus direct cu II iirc.

The script to modify 2 bytes (the conditional jump and the checksum)? It worked for TF3 a while ago, but it no longer works for the recent batch of TF3 cards according to reports on chiphell. Guess it's now laser cut or something.

 

[Mr Krugga]

Thanks for backing me up a bit Helios, I'm sorry if you got cards that don't unlock. I'm trying to get an official response from the guys that wrote the guide. My current understanding is that whilst the shader unlock does not work, due to issues beyond our control, the BIOS should still bypass AMD's artificial clock speed/power limits. This should make the card one of, if not the, most overclockable 6950s currently available.

You may be right about the laser cutting, I cannot think of any other explanation.

Needless to say that I did not intentionally mislead anybody. I merely answered a question to the best of my knowledge based on information that was at the time I received it, and to my knowledge still was, totally accurate.

For now I can offer those of you who bought the card since the announcement a free copy of Lara Croft: Guardian of light & Stalker: Call of Pripyat (trust me your invoice number & address details)

No worries mate, thanks for the honest answer.

And yes, I'm pretty sure that is due to laser-cutting of the latest chips. Not a biggie since the performance difference is reportedly minimal.

 

[VaderDSL]

What's more annoying is that MSI doesn't actually seem to make a 6970 with the Twin Frozr cooler, in fact most of the better cooling solutions only seem to be released on the 6950's.

There's the lightning, but then it's not really just a Frozr, it's got all the voltage gubbins and overclock which I personally am no majorly interested in I just want a cool, quiet, powerful card.

 

[Troezar]

I'll still be buying this card, OC'd they're still a very good card and cool and quiet.

 

[Noto]

no ill intent from ScottiB, just tried to help as much as possible and ended up stuck in the mud. Nice one on the free game to those who did buy one. Still a top card so im thinking of getting it for the cooler really.

 

[szr01]

OMDS MSI CARD DOESNT UNLOCK NEED TO CONTACT TRADING STANDARDS WHY DID I SPEND MY CARD ON A RUBBISH GFX CARD ITS USELESS MSI REP LIED IT DOESNT UNLOCK GOONA SUE MSI!!!!!

It is not Scotti's fault for showing the slides which came from MSI. He thought they worked as it was on their company website. If you guys had brains you will RESEARCH before making any purchase on a GFX Card. Many people on other sites have stated that method didnt work (this was method was released sometime april I think), if you googled you wouldve found that out.

Plus the overclocking capabilities is much better than other 6950 and you get much better performance from overclocking then unlocking a bunch of shaders. My 6950 arrived yday and works great with nice graphics and super silent.

 

[Xelene]

It is not Scotti's fault for showing the slides which came from MSI.

No it is his fault. I think he's made good on it and it was an honest mistake, but regardless it was still a **** up.

 

[gcaster]

I agree with what most of you are saying and although Scotti was only passing on information provided to him it is still a bit disappointing. I don't hold him at all responsible and I feel banning him from the forums would be a great loss, I've found his input to be very helpful over the past few months with the Sandybridge mobo replacements and MSIs excellent customer care with this has put them top of the table for me.

I'm going to be putting my 6950 in crossfire with a reference card (unlocked and overclocked to 950/1450) so I'm obviously going to lose the benefit of the unlock on that card which is where the main disappointment is for me. Still, I plan on keeping the card and will be applying the updated BIOS in order to hopefully get a matching overclock to my reference card. For the price it is still a great card with what seems to be a top cooler (the 2 games are a nice deal sweetener too).

 

[ScottiB]

again, I'm sorry guys, the info was accurate when the cards were first released, which wasnt all that long ago. unfortunately now it seems, along with every other 6950, it's been hit by the AMD suckerpunch

 

[littlepuppy]

ScottiB,

Apol well and truely accepted.

My advice is this though as a general point and not directed at you in particular... If anyone in the forum - a bog standard user starts a thread saying a card will unlock or there are hidden features etc etc avaliable via flashes - it is buyer beware - you pays your money you takes your chance.

If a company employed by the manufacturer starts a thread saying - guys - these cards unlock in 95% of cases and heres the procedure, we naturally expect it to as you should know!

The cards were then sold as 6950's that had a 95% chance of an unlock, when in fact the chance was 0%

Thats my problem with what happened here. I think we have ALL learned from our mistakes and I include myself in that in that I could possibly accuse myself of over reacting.

You speak on behalf of the manufacturer and for that reason Scott I think you have to be sure of things before you state them..

All good as far as I am concerned though now Looking forward to the games.

 

[rgritchie]

What's more annoying is that MSI doesn't actually seem to make a 6970 with the Twin Frozr cooler, in fact most of the better cooling solutions only seem to be released on the 6950's.

This http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-123-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

 

[nshire]

as with any unlocking attempts it's sad to say that it's not 100% effective (HQ claim it's about 95%) but as long as you back up your original BIOS there should be very little risk.

ScottiB never said you were guaranteed that you can unlock. In my opinion he doesn't even need to apologise as with any overclocking/unlocking it's hit and miss.

You can't expect every AMD Phenom CPU's to unlock to 4(or 6) cores or all intel i5 2500k to get to 5ghz. It's unreasonable to expect that. Anything you can get extra from vanilla its a bonus and not a requirement.

 

[Mr Krugga]

ScottiB never said you were guaranteed that you can unlock. In my opinion he doesn't even need to apologise as with any overclocking/unlocking it's hit and miss.

You can't expect every AMD Phenom CPU's to unlock to 4(or 6) cores or all intel i5 2500k to get to 5ghz. It's unreasonable to expect that. Anything you can get extra from vanilla its a bonus and not a requirement.

You didn't get the point, NONE of the cards can or will unlock, they're not unlockable unlike ScottiB claimed (and thought to be the case).

As has been said, it's not a biggie, just that the card is missing a nicely advertised feature.

 

[=VTA=MANFACE]

ScottiB...... any of those games going for free ?

I've gone MSI in a big way, and mightily impressed.

2 x 6970 lightings and an X58 Big Bang, in the space of two weeks.

 

[gcaster]

Right guys.

After all that's been said in the last couple of days I think Scotti is maybe the one to be owed an apology.

After buying my card on Tuesday in the mad sale I've sat down with it this evening to see how my luck fared with the overclocking. After spending ages tweaking afterburner I managed to unlock the CC/MC sliders for the new MSI card however it wasn't to be. After several failed attempts I came to realise that without modifying the BIOS anything over 900/1325 would cause a hardware failure within a few seconds (perfectly stable at 900/1325 but 901/1325, 900/1326 and anything > instant BSOD). So I decided I'd flash the card anyway, having already written off the unlock after what's been posted here.

Low and behold, here's my results:


1536 unlocked shaders and a quality wallpaper courtesy of MSI. (Image resized, click to see full size.)

Now there was a minor discrepancy between the process I had to use and that described in the MSI presentation but only that the folder I put my BIOSs and ATIWinFlash into was ATI389 (not ATI 388 as described by MSI). All the files I used were from here (credit to Dem2k for the link) and I placed my BIOS backup into the ATI389 folder also. I'm not sure these changes have proved the finishing touch or if I've just got lucky but this clearly shows that they do unlock (and unless I have one lying around from an older batch no laser cut shaders).

Anyway, off to see how well it overclocks after this, I'll report back if it's worth doing so.

G

EDIT: Overclocking is going well, 920/1400 without breaking a sweat so far. I'll try further tomorrow as I'm falling asleep. Look to be pretty solid cards these, not gone much over 60deg but they are quite loud when they get going.