Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

Cavallino · 7 Apr 2011 at 18:47

Ok think I will want to stick to the 6950 speeds but I want to just unlock the shaders. Where can I grab the relevant bios?

Muzza1875 · 7 Apr 2011 at 19:04

Can anyone tell me which 6950 is best for oc and flashing to 6970? Also does anyone know the 6950 can still be flashed ,I'm thinking of buying one next week when i get paid and perhaps another one for Xcode next month.

Thanks

RynceWynd · 7 Apr 2011 at 19:30

Ashfield said:
whats the side step bug?

That itch you have to try something new but you can't afford something better

but am loving my 6970 er 50 atm

always feels nice to get something extra for free

reminds me of the 9500non pro to 9700 mod I had from way back in the day.

i always like to try these mods, i had the nvidia 6800le as well when it came out, first thing I did was change the resistor configuration on the pcb, and bang 6800gt for 150quid

1 month later it went bang

ah well.

Leebob17 · 7 Apr 2011 at 20:40

Unlock query

Can anyone help me with this.....?

I bought 2 MSI 6950's a few weeks ago, unlocked them to 6970's on bios 1 using the winflash and CMD unlock method as detailed on this forum. All was fine apart from high temps so i decided to throttle back to 6950 stocks by switching to bios 2.

I have since read that the original 6970 bios's weren't the best way to do it, so tonight i have followed another guide on here just to unlock the shaders and then manually overclock from there. Both cards have been flashed using a diamond bios as described in the guide. So far so good.

However, when using CCC (or afterburner for that matter) to apply the overclocks, one card has a range from 1250 to 1325 on the memory slider and 500 - 840 on the cpu slider and when i swich CCC to the other card it gives me a range of 1250-1450 on the memory and 500-950 on the cpu slider. Therefore i cannot set the overclock sliders to 1375 and 875(6790 stocks) on one of the cards.

I have checked and GPU-Z reports both bios's as being the same (013.008.000.009.039285), i have tried reflashing the card with the lower settings but it makes no difference and i have tried using catalyst 11.2 and 11.3 . Does anyone know what i should do? Should i try another bios (if anyone has suggestions on the best bios to use to unlock shaders only?) or is there a setting buried somewhere that i am missing? Please be basic with your suggestions as i am quite new to this overclocking dark art.

Thanks

Cavallino · 7 Apr 2011 at 23:05

Ok im about to tear my hair out folks.
For some reason my 3dmark vantage is dropping to desktop quite a lot. Even if I just modded the shaders and not the clock speed of the card.

The temperature of the card reaches around 76C before it conks out. But Ive seen people on here getting up to 80s-90C with no sweat.

So what else could it be if its not the temperature of the card?

Do I need to set any PCI related settings in the mobo bios?

Could it be I undervolted my CPU? (Currently running 1.35V on a Q6600 at 400 x 8 = 3.2GHz).

Tekgun · 8 Apr 2011 at 18:27

Cavallino said:
Ok im about to tear my hair out folks.
For some reason my 3dmark vantage is dropping to desktop quite a lot. Even if I just modded the shaders and not the clock speed of the card.

The temperature of the card reaches around 76C before it conks out. But Ive seen people on here getting up to 80s-90C with no sweat.

So what else could it be if its not the temperature of the card?

Do I need to set any PCI related settings in the mobo bios?

Could it be I undervolted my CPU? (Currently running 1.35V on a Q6600 at 400 x 8 = 3.2GHz).

So atm your graphics card has a modded 6950 bios with just shader unlock right, not a 6970 bios with the clocks lowered?
I guess the easiest way to see if the card is to blame would be put a different GC in and run vantage just to see if it still crashes. If you haven't got access to a different card then run prime95 to check for stability on the cpu, and go from there.
I didn't touch any PCI settings or anything like that.

vandiesel · 9 Apr 2011 at 20:50

Leebob17 said:
Can anyone help me with this.....?

I bought 2 MSI 6950's a few weeks ago, unlocked them to 6970's on bios 1 using the winflash and CMD unlock method as detailed on this forum. All was fine apart from high temps so i decided to throttle back to 6950 stocks by switching to bios 2.

I have since read that the original 6970 bios's weren't the best way to do it, so tonight i have followed another guide on here just to unlock the shaders and then manually overclock from there. Both cards have been flashed using a diamond bios as described in the guide. So far so good.

However, when using CCC (or afterburner for that matter) to apply the overclocks, one card has a range from 1250 to 1325 on the memory slider and 500 - 840 on the cpu slider and when i swich CCC to the other card it gives me a range of 1250-1450 on the memory and 500-950 on the cpu slider. Therefore i cannot set the overclock sliders to 1375 and 875(6790 stocks) on one of the cards.

I have checked and GPU-Z reports both bios's as being the same (013.008.000.009.039285), i have tried reflashing the card with the lower settings but it makes no difference and i have tried using catalyst 11.2 and 11.3 . Does anyone know what i should do? Should i try another bios (if anyone has suggestions on the best bios to use to unlock shaders only?) or is there a setting buried somewhere that i am missing? Please be basic with your suggestions as i am quite new to this overclocking dark art.

Thanks

use msi afterburner, install make your way to afterburner directory, open the config file with notepad, and make your way down too

UnofficialOverclockingEULA

I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

copynpaste

save

arc16 · 9 Apr 2011 at 21:51

Hi bought my Saphire HD6950 last week, have been able to flash to a HD6970 with out much hassle, stable and running fine in Heaven,all games and 3d mark11,

If i run ATI tool and scan i get massive artifacts but this is the only software it fails on.

My problem is i have tried everything to flash the bios to hd6950 unlocked shaders, or to tweak the bios in RBE but at every stage it crashes at the windows desktop at boot, currently running windows 764bit, only stable option at present for me is HD6970 bios and it seems to work fine apart from ATI tool.

I wanted to run the HD6950 shader unlock but doesnt seem to work,
other than run as a hd6970 i only have the option to run as hd6950 stock or hd6970, any kind of bios tweak or update other than these two crash and dont work,

anyone who has flashed to 6970 bios checked ATI tool do you get the same or is my die foo bar at load ?

Jayster · 9 Apr 2011 at 22:57

arc16 said:
Hi bought my Saphire HD6950 last week, have been able to flash to a HD6970 with out much hassle, stable and running fine in Heaven,all games and 3d mark11,

If i run ATI tool and scan i get massive artifacts but this is the only software it fails on.

My problem is i have tried everything to flash the bios to hd6950 unlocked shaders, or to tweak the bios in RBE but at every stage it crashes at the windows desktop at boot, currently running windows 764bit, only stable option at present for me is HD6970 bios and it seems to work fine apart from ATI tool.

I wanted to run the HD6950 shader unlock but doesnt seem to work,
other than run as a hd6970 i only have the option to run as hd6950 stock or hd6970, any kind of bios tweak or update other than these two crash and dont work,

anyone who has flashed to 6970 bios checked ATI tool do you get the same or is my die foo bar at load ?

Modded bios to unlock shaders then afterburner oc picture.
A 6970 uses a higher memory voltage than a 6950.
I would leave the extra shaders locked and overclock you can get a good bit of performance out of them that way.

Jayster · 9 Apr 2011 at 23:02

My fail mods please delete.

HEADRAT · 10 Apr 2011 at 12:51

OK I have 2x 6950 XFX GFX cards installed in my system, do you flash them one at a time? Is the easiet way just to take one card phyically out of the box, flash, check then swap over?

HEADRAT

tomos · 10 Apr 2011 at 15:53

i think you can edit which card to get flashed in the bat file. info earleir on in thread iirc

MOOGLEYS · 11 Apr 2011 at 11:38

Its here somewhere but my head hurts can someone explain how I unlock just the shaders on these cards and not the 6970 bios if that makes sense..

Cheers

tommybhoy · 11 Apr 2011 at 12:03

MOOGLEYS said:
Its here somewhere but my head hurts can someone explain how I unlock just the shaders on these cards and not the 6970 bios if that makes sense..

Cheers

tommybhoy said:
Very easy, you can either use wizards version in the sticky or you can manually do it in about 2 mins with this Asus unlocked 6950 shader version with tweakable voltage and higher ccc oc settings:
http://hotfile.com/dl/113346849/b64c6e4/Shaypers-hd6950flash.zip.html

Not risky at all, in the slim chance you were to ar$e it up, you can flick the switch.

MOOGLEYS · 11 Apr 2011 at 12:17

Cheers will it matter that this card is an Asus and allready has some voltage tweaking stuff going on..?

Nevakonaza · 11 Apr 2011 at 12:20

I have my XFX 6950 2GB flashed to an "unlocked shader" only bios,Been like it for about a month now and everything fine,I was just wondering....are you suppose to increase any voltages when unlocking shaders or not?...ive not and its been fine.

Ive not overclocked,No need to its a powerhouse stock.

tommybhoy · 11 Apr 2011 at 13:02

MOOGLEYS said:
Cheers will it matter that this card is an Asus and allready has some voltage tweaking stuff going on..?

No, it won't matter. Essentially all the revision 1 cards are all the same the only difference is each brands bios.

Nevakonaza said:
are you suppose to increase any voltages when unlocking shaders or not?...ive not and its been fine.

No need to increase voltages for unlocking shaders. Adding voltage is usually for better overclocking stability usually after 950MHz.

MOOGLEYS · 11 Apr 2011 at 13:14

tommybhoy said:
No, it won't matter. Essentially all the revision 1 cards are all the same the only difference is each brands bios.

No need to increase voltages for unlocking shaders. Adding voltage is usually for better overclocking stability usually after 950MHz.

Cheers mate all done the card now shows 1536 shaders and all stock voltages..

Thallium · 11 Apr 2011 at 16:59

Well i should have two 6950s to flash tomorow or wednesday. I have a few bios's ready to test. 810/1335 a 880/1335 and a XXX bios @900/1400.So fingers crossed i should have some results soon.

Jayster · 11 Apr 2011 at 20:25

Thallium said:
Well i should have two 6950s to flash tomorow or wednesday. I have a few bios's ready to test. 810/1335 a 880/1335 and a XXX bios @900/1400.So fingers crossed i should have some results soon.

You should be able to push much much more out of the core. Albeit with a voltage bump