Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

GJ02 · 28 Dec 2010 at 20:15

am i right in saying, to save your bios ( 6950 ) this can be done via gpu-z?

J.D · 28 Dec 2010 at 20:17

Vinny1511 said:
Hi JD,

Ive had it since the day after release - Always with intention of clocking it ! Everyday since Ive had it, Ive been meaning to sit down and look at it properly, but have failed everytime (Wife and Kids )...

I heard of the new BIOS - So decided, after a bit of thought to install and here I am.....

Will get round to clocking shortly, and will post results - I must say, what a bargain so far !!!

Thanks,

-Vinny-

I'll let you off mate as kids and wives always seem to squash the time consuming benchmarking and fiddling

.

I bet you were surprised, a happy surprised though when this information came out?. A free upgrade to the 6970 you never bought

.

"What a bargain!". I agree, and it's this that has made me change from the 5850 to this as I want to be included in the fun lol.

I'll be keeping my eyes on the threads so good luck with your benchmarking and overclocking when you get the chance

.

ahenners · 28 Dec 2010 at 20:18

Vinny1511 said:
Hi JD,

Ive had it since the day after release - Always with intention of clocking it ! Everyday since Ive had it, Ive been meaning to sit down and look at it properly, but have failed everytime (Wife and Kids )...

I heard of the new BIOS - So decided, after a bit of thought to install and here I am.....

Will get round to clocking shortly, and will post results - I must say, what a bargain so far !!!

Thanks,

-Vinny-

You going to drop yours under water when some full blocks come out Vinny? Im looking forward to receiving mine but not sure how I'll cope going back to an air cooled card after being used to the silence and cooling of my water 4870

Steves1982 · 28 Dec 2010 at 20:44

I don't know how to post images of my benchmark results but here are my Heaven results with different power control settings.

Power Control @ 0

FPS: 54.1
Scores: 1364
Min FPS: 34.7
Max FPS: 139.0

Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (OC'd to 3.0)
CPU flags: 3005MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series 8.790.6.2000 2048Mb

Render: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: normal

Power control at +20

FPS: 54.1
Scores: 1362
Min FPS: 34.7
Max FPS: 139.0

All other settings same as above.

No difference with the different power control settings here so I assume it's best to leave it at 0?

gareth170 · 28 Dec 2010 at 21:09

maximusmi2 said:
No difference with the different power control settings here so I assume it's best to leave it at 0?

yeah

only FurMark you'll see a difference

Ezyryder · 28 Dec 2010 at 21:21

Just bought a HIS 6950 - hopefully it will unlock fine as I was going to get a 6970 prior to this discovery.

GoogalyMoogaly · 28 Dec 2010 at 22:09

Does anyone know what the minimum PSU would be for running 2 6950s in XFire?
Does flashing them to 6970s change the power requirements? What about if you up the slider to +20% would that have any real impact on PSU requirements?
My current PSU has separate 12v rails

what sort of amps do I need on each rail?

Cheers.

Shayper · 28 Dec 2010 at 22:14

Roight, got a refund for the 5850 that never arrived (200 quid), gonna try and sell the other for 120 quid, should fund a new 695... I mean magical 6970

pieman109 · 28 Dec 2010 at 22:26

GoogalyMoogaly said:
Does anyone know what the minimum PSU would be for running 2 6950s in XFire?
Does flashing them to 6970s change the power requirements? What about if you up the slider to +20% would that have any real impact on PSU requirements?
My current PSU has separate 12v rails what sort of amps do I need on each rail?

Cheers.

I asked this another thread and apparently "Gibbo" reckons a corsair HX620 will just fine, but I reckon that sort of psu should be considered absolute minimum meself, I like to see at 850w (corsair standard) psu powering 2 x 6950 unlocked to 6970.
saying that, I reckon my second HIS 6950 will arrive tomoz, so if I get a bit of time before I go to work, I'll slap it in, flash it, instal the second one and give it a go.

Garee · 28 Dec 2010 at 23:35

Can you crossfire two 6950 flashed to 6970 but with different OC settings? ( I'm a complete newb at overclocking ).

Jakus · 29 Dec 2010 at 00:09

Garee said:
Can you crossfire two 6950 flashed to 6970 but with different OC settings? ( I'm a complete newb at overclocking ).

Why would You want to ?, if the crossfire is for example using AFR (alternate frame rendering) the slower card will essentially slow everything down. matched equal cards is best

Swampster · 29 Dec 2010 at 05:02

JAKUS said:
Why would You want to ?, if the crossfire is for example using AFR (alternate frame rendering) the slower card will essentially slow everything down. matched equal cards is best

It's something I was wondering about too to be honest, as I probably can't justify 2 cards at the minute; so it's entirely possible that if I got a card now, and another at some point down the line that the latter card might not be capable of this mod if AMD decides they don't like the idea of their flag ship card not selling so much and take physical steps to prevent it.

But I figured, if worst came to worst I'd just run them both as 6950's in xfire.

cainer · 29 Dec 2010 at 08:57

Pick said:
OMG...
Chinese rumors about 1920SP in Cayman XT for 6+8pin power, 6 SIMDs deactivated. AMD hid the BIOS.

2.6 bln transistors/389mm2 = 1920SP/120TMU

might be some truth in this (crosses fingers,hopes and prays.

), seems people with 1536sp 6970's get no benefit from using the +20% power boost thingymajig.. if extra sp's can be enabled it might need around a 20% power boost as 1536sp is 80% of 1920sp
i dont know if this is plausable,.. we need a wall of text from DM followed by a summery by someone the rest of can understand to shed some light on this

CSA · 29 Dec 2010 at 10:00

just about to hit the buy button on a HIS , we sure these will flash ok ?

Seal100 · 29 Dec 2010 at 10:09

CSA said:
just about to hit the buy button on a HIS , we sure these will flash ok ?

Well, at the moment 6950 flashing has a 100% success rate so the chances are that your card will flash.
And my HIS 6950 should arrive tomorrow, so soon I'll be able to take that success rate down when my card magically goes up in flames. I'm just that good with this stuff

Scougar · 29 Dec 2010 at 11:29

cainer said:
might be some truth in this (crosses fingers,hopes and prays. ), seems people with 1536sp 6970's get no benefit from using the +20% power boost thingymajig.. if extra sp's can be enabled it might need around a 20% power boost as 1536sp is 80% of 1920sp
i dont know if this is plausable,.. we need a wall of text from DM followed by a summery by someone the rest of can understand to shed some light on this

The question is, why would they do this? It might be a marketting nightmare for AMD to have hidden extra performance via the BIOS?

Ezyryder · 29 Dec 2010 at 11:43

By the way, what is the best driver to install when I get the 6950@70 next week? Anyone can point to the specific location? thanks!

lollyhayes · 29 Dec 2010 at 12:12

Pick said:
OMG...
Chinese rumors about 1920SP in Cayman XT for 6+8pin power, 6 SIMDs deactivated. AMD hid the BIOS.

2.6 bln transistors/389mm2 = 1920SP/120TMU

TBH I doubt this is true, this was conjecture prior to the release of the 6970. We know 2 things:
1. The 6950 & 6970 chips are both a 40nm process.

2. The 6990 is a dual Cayman.

Therefore assuming the 6970 & 6950 use the same 40nm chips, it would be impossible for there to be 1920 SP's on such small chip (the 5870 had 1600 @40nm) without:
A) A large Die size increase.
B) A TDP above 300w (card no longer supported officially with PCI-E) Big no-no...

On a different note I am gunna try a new 6970 bios when I get back home on my 6950's. The fan profiles are adjusted, to be more suited to the increased heat production.

tomos · 29 Dec 2010 at 12:45

well, i just got my 6950 just now, along with an SSD. SSD tonight and reinstalling windows.

6950 tomorrow i think

Steves1982 · 29 Dec 2010 at 12:53

Is there any way to edit the automatic fan profile for ccc without using 3rd party software such as MSI, Riva etc? I don't want to have to set the profiles everytime I boot.

The 6970 bios is working perfectly but I wouldn't mind the automatic fan running the fan 5-10% faster to keep the temps down a bit more. It's barely audible at the max speed it runs at which is about 38% under load.

I saw fixes for the 4870 which involved editing these sections of the profile.xml file.

<Feature name="FanSpeedProtocol_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedProtocolProperty" value="Percent" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Automatic" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="66" />