Unlock your ATI 6950 to a 6970 Thread

ViRuS2k · 20 Apr 2011 at 11:41

postmanfw said:
My top one runs about 12c hotter due to lack of air Was more but i wedged the cards apart slightly and you could here the fan noise change and the flow increase out the rear

58c is fine though plenty of overclocking headroom...though i notice your cards were running very hard during that shot?

edit: just noticed fan speed...80%? ouch!! I keep mine at 39%

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STATUS UPDATE,
your right the temps where pritty high and i found out the reason why, practicly both cards where sitting on top of each other with no gaps lol it was like the top card was sitting on top of the bottom and getting no air.
here is a status image update

i dont run the fans like that in realtime gaming.

Here is another furmark bench with 920/1375 on both cards with a power control of 13% to stop the cards throttling when overclocked with vsync disabled

as you can see cards are completely stable and the highest temps that my system would ever get i get no where near these fan speeds or temps with normal games

and yes i also wedged my cards apart now and the temps are much improved. lol

Number_25 · 22 Apr 2011 at 11:21

Would anyone recommend underclocking it a tad bit down to something more 'stable' like 840/850?

Lum · 22 Apr 2011 at 20:23

Well I stuffed up and flashed the wrong BIOS on my Asus 6950 oc edition (810MHz) now my second monitor doesn't work.

I can switch to BIOS2 and use it as a 6950 but any attempt to flash another BIOS onto BIOS1 fails with ATIWinFlash bombing out half way through, and ATIFlash for DOS reporting error 0FL01

I don't want to flash anything to BIOS2 and risk bricking my card, any idea how I'd go about recovering BIOS1?

pdw8 · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:08

Anyone had any luck unlocking the shaders on an Asus 6950 DirectCu version? I have tried every way but cannot unlock them or get a 6070 bios to work.

MOOGLEYS · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:33

Lum said:
Well I stuffed up and flashed the wrong BIOS on my Asus 6950 oc edition (810MHz) now my second monitor doesn't work.

I can switch to BIOS2 and use it as a 6950 but any attempt to flash another BIOS onto BIOS1 fails with ATIWinFlash bombing out half way through, and ATIFlash for DOS reporting error 0FL01

I don't want to flash anything to BIOS2 and risk bricking my card, any idea how I'd go about recovering BIOS1?

Download the below tools package. There are 2 bios files in there one for a stock and one for a 6970.
Shut down the pc and boot with the bios switch in bios 2 (This is write protected so cannot be flashed). Open up the files just downloaded, Switch the switch to position 1 and then run the 5850 batch file. This will write the stock 5850 bios to your card. re-start and you should now be running the stock bios.
I have the same card and used the 6970 bios which worked fine try it if it does not work repeat the above...

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

Cavallino · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:55

Just an update folks.
Well so far the green artifacts have not appeared again since the last time I discussed it on here. So I think I will be ok for now

Lum · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:59

MOOGLEYS said:
Download the below tools package. There are 2 bios files in there one for a stock and one for a 6970.
Shut down the pc and boot with the bios switch in bios 2 (This is write protected so cannot be flashed). Open up the files just downloaded, Switch the switch to position 1 and then run the 5850 batch file. This will write the stock 5850 bios to your card. re-start and you should now be running the stock bios.
I have the same card and used the 6970 bios which worked fine try it if it does not work repeat the above...

That batch file just automates what I was doing manually, and therefore fails with the same problem.

I need some way of getting this incorrect BIOS off my card and my original back before I can attempt a reflash.

MOOGLEYS · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:02

Lum said:
That batch file just automates what I was doing manually, and therefore fails with the same problem.

I need some way of getting this incorrect BIOS off my card and my original back before I can attempt a reflash.

Have you booted up with the switch in position 2 and then switched to 1 just before flashing..?

Lum · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:08

Yes, that is exactly what I am doing.

MOOGLEYS · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:11

Lum said:
Yes, that is exactly what I am doing.

Have you tried using RBE ? You can save the bios from position 2 and flash to position 1 and force it to ignore any errors...

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1962/TechPowerUp_Radeon_Bios_Editor_v1.28.html

Lum · 23 Apr 2011 at 00:16

I made a backup of my of my BIOS from position 1 before starting.

Nothing will flash to position 1 any more!

I think part of the problem is my original ROM size was 0xFE00 but the one I flashed was 0x20000 which is somewhat larger. If I download this ROM back off the card, the reported size is 0x10000 which is, I'm guessing, the maximum size the flash can hold, hence the bad flash.

Lum · 25 Apr 2011 at 16:42

Well, I accidentally flashed a 6970 BIOS (The one linked by MOOGLEYS on the last page) into position 2 while trying to fix this.

It worked, boots, second monitor runs fine, P4975 3D Marks vs P4610 previously, furmark peaks at around 94 degrees C with 60% fan duty cycle, which isn't bad considering it's bloody hot here and the sun is shining through the window.

Still annoyed that BIOS1 is unusable, but the card is running fine as a 6970 so going to leave it at that I think

MOOGLEYS · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:16

Lum said:
Well, I accidentally flashed a 6970 BIOS (The one linked by MOOGLEYS on the last page) into position 2 while trying to fix this.

It worked, boots, second monitor runs fine, P4975 3D Marks vs P4610 previously, furmark peaks at around 94 degrees C with 60% fan duty cycle, which isn't bad considering it's bloody hot here and the sun is shining through the window.

Still annoyed that BIOS1 is unusable, but the card is running fine as a 6970 so going to leave it at that I think

Cool that its working but position 2 should be unwriteable, it is a protected version of the stock Rom ? Position 2 is closest to the back of the card, are you sure you haven't got them muddled up.. ?

Lum · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:21

Both positions are (or rather were) writeable on my card it seems.

After I wrote to position 1 (closest to DVI ports) with a duff BIOS that one became unwriteable.

At least the duff BIOS does boot and work, just with no second monitor support, so I can at least use it for recovery if I decide to tinker further. Will likely do any further overclocking in software though. How high have you gotten your GPU and memory to go on that 6850?

MOOGLEYS · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:29

Lum said:
Both positions are (or rather were) writeable on my card it seems.

After I wrote to position 1 (closest to DVI ports) with a duff BIOS that one became unwriteable.

At least the duff BIOS does boot and work, just with no second monitor support, so I can at least use it for recovery if I decide to tinker further. Will likely do any further overclocking in software though. How high have you gotten your GPU and memory to go on that 6850?

The one closest to the Dvi ports is position 2 mate. That should be the locked one.

I run mine at the stock 6970 880x1375, It stays nice and cool and quite. I have run it at 950x1450 but noticed little ingame difference..

Lum · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:31

That's the position it was in when I got the card, so is the one I flashed first.

That position has a 6970 BIOS in it currently, just a broken one.

I have no idea what happened.

MOOGLEYS · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:34

Lum said:
That's the position it was in when I got the card, so is the one I flashed first.

That position has a 6970 BIOS in it currently, just a broken one.

I have no idea what happened.

Sounds like you wrote to the unwriteable rom somehow and nuked it.. ?

Position 1 furthest from the Dvi ports is the one to use for any modded bios's.

Lum · 25 Apr 2011 at 18:45

My GF suggested that maybe the switch wasn't over quite all the way. Thinking about it this could make sense, if it's just switching an additional address line to choose BIOS and it's also switching a write protect on and off then putting it the half way position could make it select the lower address line (which would be 0) while not engaging the write protect.

Would have to take the card out and examine the PCB to be sure, and frankly I can't be bothered.

Muzza1875 · 26 Apr 2011 at 14:30

Lum said:
Well I stuffed up and flashed the wrong BIOS on my Asus 6950 oc edition (810MHz) now my second monitor doesn't work.

I can switch to BIOS2 and use it as a 6950 but any attempt to flash another BIOS onto BIOS1 fails with ATIWinFlash bombing out half way through, and ATIFlash for DOS reporting error 0FL01

I don't want to flash anything to BIOS2 and risk bricking my card, any idea how I'd go about recovering BIOS1?

Boot into safe mode, unistall drivers restart and then reflash back to ure old bios which you should have saved, if not just look for one online..
Only works if you have onboard graphics.

Lum · 26 Apr 2011 at 14:43

I don't have onboard graphics, but realistically speaking, if I can't even flash from DOS (by which I mean proper DOS, as in the OS that was obsoleted by Windows 95, not a Command Prompt window) I'm not sure how safe mode is going to help.