Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

TaKeN · 7 Mar 2011 at 14:35

Posts over at the techpowerup forum suggest that running the 6970 Bios can kill the 6950s as the new bios can fry the memory due to voltage increase. Any truth in this? I'm tempted just to reflash my card to enable the extra shaders only

ahenners · 7 Mar 2011 at 14:43

TaKeN said:
Posts over at the techpowerup forum suggest that running the 6970 Bios can kill the 6950s as the new bios can fry the memory due to voltage increase. Any truth in this? I'm tempted just to reflash my card to enable the extra shaders only

Few people have had degradation or some problems with their cards after running the 6970 bios. Seems best to just do the shader unlock of your original bios. If you look at Nelly's comparisons above the difference between 6970 bios and shader unlock bios is minimal (if non existant!) so doesn't seem worth the risk

Andrei23 · 7 Mar 2011 at 17:32

I for one use the 6970 bios and have had absolutely no problems with it. No aftifacts, no BSODs, no funny business. OCCTed for 5 hours and it didn't give any errors. Countless 3DMark and Heaven Benchmark runs show no sign of fault. Gaming a lot on this machine and so far I have seen no signs of the card giving up. It is actually going quite strong. Maybe I have a good card, or maybe people who had their cards die just got lemons.

[timko] · 8 Mar 2011 at 13:15

I know that Techpowerup have a pre modded shader only bios for download but I would like to mod my own. I've looked in RBE but I can't see anything relating to shaders, only the standard clocks and voltages etc. Anyone know what tool they used?

TaKeN · 8 Mar 2011 at 13:46

I did wonder that myself Timko, but I ended up re-flashing with a HIS Bios (my cards an MSi Rev 1) that I found on the Tech Power Up forum. The BIOS will be the same on most the cards tbh.

I did flash the 6950 with the 6970 BIOS, but read about the possible memory issue so re-flashed it with a shader only modded bios.

Ezyryder · 8 Mar 2011 at 13:50

AndyH_Lufc said:
Afterburner does yes. I use Sapphire Trixx for my overclock of 900/1375 and RBE to change the voltage. Powerplay still works perfect and drops back to 250/150 for 2d. I also found it much easier to set a custom fan curve in Trixx as well. I agree though, CCC should enable unofficial overclocking as it would be much easier!

If you get Afterburner 2.1.0 then PowerPlay is not disabled when Unofficial Overclocking is enabled.

Laney88 · 8 Mar 2011 at 19:53

Ok today I've read this whole thread :rolleyes:

and now I'm ready to give it a go!

However I was planning to follow this method below but "Now download an extract this: http://uk2-dl.techpowerup.com/Tweaking/HD_6950_to_HD_6970_mod.zip" link isnt working :confused:

so where can I get this from?

MikeHiow said:
In response to this in another thread;

Ensure your BIOS switch is in position 1 before anything else.

Avoid the 6970 Bios. What you want to do is modify your own BIOS to unlock the extra shaders.

First you'll need GPU-Z and this: http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip

First you need to dump your BIOS in GPU-Z - there is a little icon next to the bios version, click this to save your bios.

Extract the 'Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip', put your bios in that folder and rename it to 'original.bin'. Run the run.bat, follow the instructions and you will end up with another file called 'modded.bin'.

Now download an extract this: http://uk2-dl.techpowerup.com/Tweaking/HD_6950_to_HD_6970_mod.zip

Ignore all the bat files, all you want is winflash. So copy the winflash directory somewhere easy, I'll use c:\ as an example. Also place the 'modded.bin' you generated in the previous step in the winflash directory.

Now open up command prompt as administrator, and type 'cd \winflash'.

Now you want to do;
atiwinflash -unlockrom 0
atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin

Follow any instructions and reboot when it's done.

Once complete you should have 1536 shaders (you can check this in GPU-Z).

Just note that you do all this entirely at your own risk. That said, if you run in to problems, you should be able to just flick the switch back to position 2, and you're all good.

Anyway it's been a month is this still the best method of unlocking the shaders with original 6950 BIOS?

TaKeN · 8 Mar 2011 at 20:25

I deleted the .zip I had of that Laney, otherwise I'd upload it for you

ONLY Unlocking the shaders seems the best way of keeping your card safe for now. I've set my clocks via afterburner (with unofficial clocking enabled) to 6970 clocks with no voltage adjustment and will be testing stabilty over the next few days.

Laney88 · 8 Mar 2011 at 20:52

TaKeN said:
I deleted the .zip I had of that Laney, otherwise I'd upload it for you

ONLY Unlocking the shaders seems the best way of keeping your card safe for now. I've set my clocks via afterburner (with unofficial clocking enabled) to 6970 clocks with no voltage adjustment and will be testing stabilty over the next few days.

Ah yeah that's what I'm planning to do if I can get the file. I'm currently running 930 core with 1360 mem stock volt and still locked :rolleyes:

ahenners · 8 Mar 2011 at 21:34

Ezyryder said:
If you get Afterburner 2.1.0 then PowerPlay is not disabled when Unofficial Overclocking is enabled.

Thanks for the heads up mate

Does it drop the clocks back to 250/150? The last version of afterburner I used dropped the clocks but not this low

[timko] · 8 Mar 2011 at 22:12

Laney88 said:
Ok today I've read this whole thread and now I'm ready to give it a go!

However I was planning to follow this method below but "Now download an extract this: http://uk2-dl.techpowerup.com/Tweaking/HD_6950_to_HD_6970_mod.zip" link isnt working so where can I get this from?

They've moved it to their official download section right here...

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1920/HD_6950_to_HD_6970_Flashing_Tools.html

It's linked to on their guide just above the "Testing" section...

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

Laney88 · 8 Mar 2011 at 22:22

[timko];18629409 said:
They've moved it to their official download section right here...

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1920/HD_6950_to_HD_6970_Flashing_Tools.html

It's linked to on their guide just above the "Testing" section...

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

Cheers for the links pal.

I've just flashed the ASUS 6950 bios gareth170 was using so I've unlocked the shaders, used the winflash method.

Is there any point now to flash again with my own BIOS modified (My card is ASUS anyway so I guess exactly the same BIOS) how I was originally going to do? If not what's next just overclock to 6970 clocks and I'm done? Seems too easy

[timko] · 8 Mar 2011 at 22:25

Laney88 said:
Is there any point now to flash again with my own BIOS modified (My card is ASUS anyway so I guess exactly the same BIOS) how I was originally going to do? If not what's next just overclock to 6970 clocks and I'm done? Seems too easy

If you want your card to always be at least 6970 speeds without having to run afterburner then flash it to a 6970 bios. If you don't mind having afterburner (or any other oc program) loading up at boot to set 6970 (and above) clocks and voltages then you will not need to flash it.

And yes, it is this easy

Laney88 · 8 Mar 2011 at 22:54

Right well I'm benching @ 935 / 1380, haven't touched the voltage so still at 1.100v as I'm posting this and all seems good. Yeah I don't mind setting the clocks in msiab so I guess now its just a case of overclocking until I see problems then up the voltage to 1.175?

Laney88 · 9 Mar 2011 at 00:44

Ok so I've unlocked the shaders still at stock volts with an unlocked 6950 BIOS so I might be able to get it higher?

6950 @ 970MHz core > 1375MHz Mem +20 power control

Nelly · 9 Mar 2011 at 01:55

Ezyryder said:
If you get Afterburner 2.1.0 then PowerPlay is not disabled when Unofficial Overclocking is enabled.

Just double checked mine, didn't take notice of the settings in Afterburner.

Running @ 880/1375 with 1.1v using unlocked shader bios, 2D clocks 150/250, very happy indeed, I was thinking because CCC options disappear it wasn't working but shows up on Afterburner Hardware Monitor.

dwskillz · 9 Mar 2011 at 14:08

Anybody here running 2 6950's unlocked?

Loz · 9 Mar 2011 at 14:42

dwskillz said:
Anybody here running 2 6950's unlocked?

Just this moment finished unlocking my Asus 6950's from O'clockers today.
I'd waited until the 6990 came out and I saw the details, now to get a better performance from my Crossfired 6950s for well over £100 less and not have invalidated any warranty is amazing.
Took me a little while to unlock the first one as I had the BIOS switch at position 2 by mistake, and I had to use the cmd program to do it. But after that the second one was a breeze.
Thanks to all for the help here and the links to TechPowerUp.
Add another two Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC to the list.

Vipernet · 9 Mar 2011 at 17:35

dwskillz said:
Anybody here running 2 6950's unlocked?

2 unlocked 6950s here, both underwater @ 1000/1400. No problems apart from ati's dodgy eyefinity setup.

Laney88 · 9 Mar 2011 at 22:32

Got it running now as set in the screen shot below, stock cooler at 50~55% speed using afterburner custom fan profile maxing out at about 82c IIRC. Looks like I've got a good chip? pushing the memory further results in lower scores in unigine.

Pic is a bit small so here they are singularly

Does this look ok? I've not seen any ill effects when benching besides a few driver crashes now and then before I increased the voltage. Just don't want to over do it if I'm doing something wrong that I have not noticed :confused: