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Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

Ok i have used the guide over at techpowerup, to flash my ASUS 6950 2GB to 6970, while the shadders have increase to 6970 levels, the clock speed seems to still have a max value of 840 in overdrive....



Any ideas?
 
Click the unlock key icon above the 'Enable AMD Overdrive' text ;) and i take it you did the Smartdoctor install, enable overclocking range enhancement, uninstall?

You may of had to do this prior to the install/uninstall of Smart Doctor. If you dont get the full range then simply do the install, enable overclocking range enhancement, and uninstall again - this should give you the full range in CCC.
 
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I think your results are spot on. The perceivable difference between 6950 and 6970 would only be possible when using the highest resolutions at the highest quality settings and the latest DX11 titles. However, as the time passes, there will be newer and more demanding titles and then it will all start to make much more sense.
 
Ardbeg said:
Click the unlock key icon above the 'Enable AMD Overdrive' text ;) and i take it you did the Smartdoctor install, enable overclocking range enhancement, uninstall?

You may of had to do this prior to the install/uninstall of Smart Doctor. If you dont get the full range then simply do the install, enable overclocking range enhancement, and uninstall again - this should give you the full range in CCC.
Click to expand...

Cheers that sorted it, so what are stock settings for the 6970 card, and what should i set the memory and clock too, i want to play it safe??

On a side not benched heaven with max everything maxed, running at 880/1325 speed atm:



Not sure if thats good or not
 
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Seems low to me.

One 6950@6970 settings for me bags 56 fps and crossfire they bag 103fps.... Standard 1920x1200 settings (not sure if yours are standard, I'm at work and can't look).
 
Is there another way to flash the card instead of Winflash? Doesn't seem to run properly on Win7 x64 SP1. (Either via GUI or CMD prompt). :(
 
Anyone here running a 6970 bios actually had a dead / dying graphics card? Both my self and a guy from work are running sapphire 6950's with a 6970 bios with no issue. Not bothered if the card eventually dies, can just rma it with a distributor which is easy and quick.
 
Firegod said:
Is there another way to flash the card instead of Winflash? Doesn't seem to run properly on Win7 x64 SP1. (Either via GUI or CMD prompt). :(
Click to expand...

Well on checking my Event Log this morning I think I see why...

...\winflash\atidgllk.sys has been blocked from loading due to incompatibility with this system. Please contact your software vendor for a compatible version of the driver.

I wonder if I can overwrite the one in the folder with a newer file from my PC.

Time to test!
 
Resolved

Well, finally managed to crack it. :) I had to re-download ATIWinFlash, then set the .exe to Windows Vista and Admin credentials (for all users). This allowed the app to launch and I could save the default BIOS.

However, it would not let me flash the new BIOS to the card, giving me a SubVendorID mismatch all the time. So I launched a CMD prompt as an Admin and ran:-

atiwinflash -unlockrom 0
atiwinflash -f -p 0 newbios.bin

Had to reboot twice, but now I have gone from:-

73b5d2f3.gif


to

79e3d4ea.gif


This is on an ASUS 6950 card for information. :)
 
Puppetmaster said:
Anyone here running a 6970 bios actually had a dead / dying graphics card? Both my self and a guy from work are running sapphire 6950's with a 6970 bios with no issue. Not bothered if the card eventually dies, can just rma it with a distributor which is easy and quick.
Click to expand...

Never seen any proof of any 6950s dying from being flashed, and I don't expect to see any either. Moreover, OCUK are advertising the rev 1 6950s as being flashable to 6970s so I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Andrei23 said:
Power Control settings sat at +20% at all times.
Yes, it would seem that there is only a 1-2% increase with the added shaders at same clock speeds, which one can barely notice. As a matter of fact I was under the impression that unlocking actually gave me less performance than my overclocked 6950 until I took the time to put it through some tests.

These are the results I got:
A) stands for 6950 @ 880/1325
B) stands for 6950 @ 6970 stock

Dirt 2 Benchmark
A) Min Fps: 44.5
Max FPS: 49.5
Score: 4560
B) Min Fps: 43.9
Max FPS: 50.9
Score: 4766

4.5% increase

3DMark 11
A) P4562
B) 4620

1.2%

FFXIV Benchmark
A) 3398
B) 3474
2.2%


Heaven 2.1 cold run
A) 1039
FPS: 41.2
Min FPS 17.8
Max FPS 80.1
B) 1064
FPS 42.3
Min FPS 18.1
Max FPS 82.4

2.6%

Crysis Benchmark
A) Min FPS 26.34
Max FPS 40.50
Average FPS 33
B) Min FPS 25.69
Max FPS 41.80
Average FPS 36.5

10.6% increase

These were all conducted at 1080p with the exception of 3DMark 11.
Click to expand...

Now I could point out to you that Haven is tesselation limited, both cards have two tesselation engines, and so theres very little real change there.

All the other results you posted except one are BENCHMARKS, they aren't designed to be absolute graphical performance benchmarks, but system benchmarks. Essentially speaking in the one game you ran, you got over a 10% increase, though that will be a best case scenario most likely.

Dirt 2 is the next closest to a gpu benchmark, that showed 5%, FF as I understand it, is quite cpu limited but I'm not sure on that one, 3dmark sucks balls and has a margin of error run to run of 1-2%, meaning you could be showing best run vs worst run and seeing results much closer than normal.

Haven as said is tesselation limited but still shows an ok increase, that will be mostly clockspeed as opposed to shaders.

As with anything, some games are bandwidth limited, some will be shader limited and some clock speed limited, some a perfect balance of all 3 and scale great when all things are increased.... Crysis.


My main gripe was you somehow using 1fps and 1% interchangably, unless you see a 1fps increase from a base 100fps, you aren't talking about 1%, AT ALL.

A 580gtx is only 10% faster than a 6970 in several things, if thats only 2fps in some cases does that not really count, sure it does.

Faster is faster, slower is slower, 2-10% performance increase, with the two most real world examples being between 5-10%, for FREE.
 
As per the previous posts I have taken a dump of my MSI HD6950 bios and unlocked the shaders to HD6970, I have then modded the modded bios using RBE to set the Voltage to 1175, this works perfectly. Ideally I would like to be able to change the clocks to 880 and 1375 but this will not work, card will not boot into windows. I have read that RBE does not support this right now, is this correct ?

Should I now just keep MSI Afterburner to apply the clocks and play games at HD6970 levels. The reason I I have used this method is because there were posts about differnent clock speed on the HD6970 supplied from tutorial, is this the safest mothod right now ?
 
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