How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

ALBPM · Jan 12, 2011

I flashed my 2 Sapphire cards with the unlocked 6950 Sapphire bios back on Dec. 29 and have been running both at 840/1300 with no problems.
My Top card has only hit 74 degrees and bottom maxes out around 65 degrees using the 10.12a driver and fans on Auto..

My only problem so far is trying to get Trixx to work. I get a BSOD even setting it to the default 800/1250...???

Qed · Jan 12, 2011

f0d said:
im now getting artifacts in bfbc2 even as a stock 6950
this mod seems to only have problems after using it for a while - at the start i diddnt have any problems, now they are starting to pop up after about a week

the settings are 1920x1200 8xaa all high
the artifacts im getting are black and white "blobs" in the middle of the screen every now and again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHvow6ILpQ

Overvoltage and overclock are decreasing the life of your components without even considering the 3 different resistors on the VRM, That might cause your the 1.175V to be anything.

This as been pointed out many times on this thread, flashing your 6950 with a 6970 is dangerous especially for the ram. Anyone who got ram damage should know that's permanent and prevent you from using OpenCL applications.

bushwakko · Jan 12, 2011

I used the 6970 bios in the guide and unlocked it successfully, it's also running at default 6970 speeds. However I do get loads of artifacts in Starcraft 2, but only for like a minute or so and it goes away completely. I have some artifacts in windows as well, but this also goes away. I suspect this might be a fan control problem, making the card run hot for about a minute before the fans kicking in or doing their thing. Anyone else experienced this.

During the artifacts, clocing the card down to 800 and memory way down as well does not help (doesn't seem to do anything in fact) nor does changing the power to 0% or 20%. I've been playing starcraft for hours without problems. The GPU goes to about 80-90 degrees.

wmblalock · Jan 12, 2011

bushwakko said:
I used the 6970 bios in the guide and unlocked it successfully, it's also running at default 6970 speeds. However I do get loads of artifacts in Starcraft 2, but only for like a minute or so and it goes away completely. I have some artifacts in windows as well, but this also goes away. I suspect this might be a fan control problem, making the card run hot for about a minute before the fans kicking in or doing their thing. Anyone else experienced this.

During the artifacts, clocing the card down to 800 and memory way down as well does not help (doesn't seem to do anything in fact) nor does changing the power to 0% or 20%. I've been playing starcraft for hours without problems. The GPU goes to about 80-90 degrees.

Im not sure about the artifacting but it doesn't sound good and might get worse / permanent as time goes on. I would flash it back to the stock bios / speeds to see if you still get artifacts (permanent damage). Also, do yourself a favor and use a program like afterburner to cool down your card. I use afterburner and set a manual fan curve up to keep it cool but quite and my card never goes over 40ide / 62full load

Ciaos · Jan 12, 2011

I emailed W1zzard 2 weeks ago indicating that my XFX6950 was successfully flashed to 6970 w/ Powertune + 12%.

However, artifacts have started to appear and I have since flashed to the XFX6950 modded bios and everything seems to be grand now. I think its the memory clocks being too high maybe?

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

I saved my bios before flashing to 6970. It Saved it as just a file, no extension like .bin. So do I just rename with a .bin after and reflash with that?

Qed · Jan 12, 2011

manofthem said:
I saved my bios before flashing to 6970. It Saved it as just a file, no extension like .bin. So do I just rename with a .bin after and reflash with that?

Yes, or you can just boot with the switch in position 2 and extract the bios.

GSG-9 · Jan 12, 2011

manofthem said:
I saved my bios before flashing to 6970. It Saved it as just a file, no extension like .bin. So do I just rename with a .bin after and reflash with that?

Yup that should do, or just flip the switch on your card to recover it.

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

Alright thanks. I'll have to re-read that section about about flipping the switch to 2 and then flip it back to 1 while on...

Has anyone does this? Is it easy to do?

Qed · Jan 12, 2011

manofthem said:
Alright thanks. I'll have to re-read that section about about flipping the switch to 2 and then flip it back to 1 while on...

Has anyone does this? Is it easy to do?

But cant you just boot with the switch on 2, extract the bios, boot with the switch on 1 and flash?

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

Qed said:
But cant you just boot with the switch on 2, extract the bios, boot with the switch on 1 and flash?

I don't know how to do it. I just was about to check the process right now on how to flash back. I don't want to permanently damage my card. I flashed it last Friday. I haven't run into any problems, but then again I haven't gamed that much either, other than an hour of BC2 last night. Sure did play nicely though, 55-60fps online.

bushwakko · Jan 12, 2011

wmblalock said:
Im not sure about the artifacting but it doesn't sound good and might get worse / permanent as time goes on. I would flash it back to the stock bios / speeds to see if you still get artifacts (permanent damage). Also, do yourself a favor and use a program like afterburner to cool down your card. I use afterburner and set a manual fan curve up to keep it cool but quite and my card never goes over 40ide / 62full load

The artifacts are completely gone after under a minute and I don't see any other artifacts after that, and everything seems pretty good. Very strange, what's the difference between the modded 6950 bios and the 6970 one btw?

wmblalock · Jan 12, 2011

bushwakko said:
The artifacts are completely gone after under a minute and I don't see any other artifacts after that, and everything seems pretty good. Very strange, what's the difference between the modded 6950 bios and the 6970 one btw?

Modded 6950 bios only enables the extra shaders, and everything else in the bios is left the same as stock (clock speeds, voltages, timing, etc). By flashing a 6970 bios you are upping your gpu voltage, possibly changing the memory timing / voltage, and upping the default clock speeds.

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

wmblalock said:
Modded 6950 bios only enables the extra shaders, and everything else in the bios is left the same as stock (clock speeds, voltages, timing, etc). By flashing a 6970 bios you are upping your gpu voltage, possibly changing the memory timing / voltage, and upping the default clock speeds.

Is the modded 6950 bios safer than the 6970, not showing to cause artifacting or other errors? I'm going to flash back to default bios, but if this is safer, I would like to do that.

wmblalock · Jan 12, 2011

manofthem said:
Is the modded 6950 bios safer than the 6970, not showing to cause artifacting or other errors? I'm going to flash back to default bios, but if this is safer, I would like to do that.

I don't believe there is really any risk in running the modded 6950 bios if you run it at stock 6950 clock speeds. Your probably even safe to overclock the gpu, but I would leave the memory stock 100% for now.

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

wmblalock said:
I don't believe there is really any risk in running the modded 6950 bios if you run it at stock 6950 clock speeds. Your probably even safe to overclock the gpu, but I would leave the memory stock 100% for now.

Awesome thanks. I just flashed back to default bios for now since other were talking about problems. I hope I skirted the problems by flashing back before anything happened. I'm going to look for a modded bios now, the one with the shaders unlocked.

techie81 · Jan 12, 2011

I flashed my old bios back just in case. I'm going to wait to see an explanation. The rom file just needs to be renamed to XXXXX.bin

wmblalock · Jan 12, 2011

manofthem said:
Awesome thanks. I just flashed back to default bios for now since other were talking about problems. I hope I skirted the problems by flashing back before anything happened. I'm going to look for a modded bios now, the one with the shaders unlocked.

It's probably safest to use the scrip posted earlier in this thread to modify your exact bios. That just leaves out any room for other problems such as different cards and/or manufacturers using different ram chips with slightly different specs. Just an idea.
You can download the script here: http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip
Put your original bios in the folder and call it original.bin then run the script to modify your stock bios. After that, use the other scrips in the first post on this thread to flash your card with the modded bios.

manofthem · Jan 12, 2011

wmblalock said:
It's probably safest to use the scrip posted earlier in this thread to modify your exact bios. That just leaves out any room for other problems such as different cards and/or manufacturers using different ram chips with slightly different specs. Just an idea.
You can download the script here: http://www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip
Put your original bios in the folder and call it original.bin then run the script to modify your stock bios. After that, use the other scrips in the first post on this thread to flash your card with the modded bios.

Sweet. Thanks, you saved me having to look and find it. I'm going to try this out tonight. I'll post back after seeing what happens and how it goes. I have the XFX card, so I have to run CMD as Administrator in order to flash. So this mod only changes the shaders, huh? Would you suggest perhaps upping the GPU clocks in CCC or another OC utility?

bushwakko · Jan 12, 2011

Installed unlocked 6950 bios now, no artifacts, but then again I'll have to wait until tomorrow when the computer is cold to see if it persists. I would like to overclock more than 840/1325 which is the 6950 max. Would be awesome if someone could mod a 6950 bios to have 6950 voltages and timings, but still identifying as 6970 so I can overclock more!

Any hackers?

wmblalock · Jan 12, 2011

Has anyone had any luck using the new RBE to increase the overclocking limits of their stock 6950 modded bios? I was using the Asus 6950 bios and smart doctor to override the overclock limits / voltage but got some weird stuff I wasn't sure about. I would rather use my own modded bios with increased overclock limits and voltage control to ensure complete compatibility with my card and it's exact memory chips. Anyone found any way of doing this yet with their own 6950 bios, or are we still stuck at using the Asus 6950 bios with smart doctor for now?

ac3 · Jan 13, 2011

f0d: Have you tried running Battlefield Vietnam without MSI Afterburner running in the background?.

I think I noticed the same problem but next time I ran the game (with afterburner closed) I didn't notice it any more. Are the problems people having only with BFBC2/Vietnam? seems like it.

itsdanny · Jan 13, 2011

I realized that since I switched from nVIDIA to ATI card/drivers, when I'm dragging a folder/window/application, it trails / ghosts. Anyone else?

To begin, I used Driver Sweeper to remove any old traces of nVIDIA applications and affiliates. All was cleared via Safe Mode. Then preceded to install AMD drivers, etc via provided CD. It installed the Catalyst Control Centre and the ATI Display Drivers (I assume this is the video drivers as well?), and other utilities.

Did all of this yesterday. And just a few minutes ago completed the process again, although the ghosting and trails still appear. I'm still on good ol' XP by the way, and since most are using the 10.12a, I'm unable to, but that shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure the hotfix is just somewhat dx11 related fixes, etc.

Any clue?

Crew883 · Jan 13, 2011

LongThumb said:
Got my XFX HD6950 and flashed succesfully.

Currently running it at 900/1500

I get the feeling that XFX are just softlocking full 6970's.

Add another one to the XFX list, that's 52 outta 52 now right?

Please report back after extended use

Crew883 · Jan 13, 2011

I hate to double post this, but I think it got lost in the last page...

I have a few quick questions that hopefully you guys can help me wrap my head around.

I modded my XFX 6950 bios from the tool used earlier in the thread, and I am only running my clocks at the max allowed by CCC 840 and 1270 on the memory because I am worried about what I have heard about the memory failing . Card runs max 60c in BC2 and other games over the course of a gaming night.

So: 1. How dangerous are my settings for the card? 2. Do I need to have extra power going to the card from CCC if I am just running the modded 6950 extra shaders?

Thanks to the people who put this together too, everything was easy to do and setup.

System Name	Mine
Processor	i7 x980 @ 4.0 Ghz
Motherboard	ASUS P6T
Cooling	Scythe MUGEN-2 SCMG-2000 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler
Memory	12 Gb G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800
Video Card(s)	2 x Sapphire 695
Storage	Intel 160 GB SSD, WDC 640 GB
Display(s)	DEL 2709W
Case	COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower
Audio Device(s)	Onboard Realtek
Power Supply	CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire
Software	Win7 Ultimate SP1

Processor	Intel i7 920
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Cooling	Corsair Hydro H50
Memory	Corsaid Dominator 1600 6GB
Video Card(s)	3x ATI HD6950
Power Supply	Corsair TX950
Software	Windows 7 (64 bit)

Processor	3900X @ 4.0
Motherboard	Asus ROG Strix X570-E
Cooling	DeepCool Castle 360EX
Memory	G Skill Trident Z Neo 32GB 3600
Video Card(s)	RX 5700 XT Pulse
Storage	Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB
Display(s)	LG 34UC88
Case	Thermaltake P3
Power Supply	Super Flower Leadex III 750w
Mouse	Logitech G900
Keyboard	G Skill KM570 MX Silver
Software	Windows 10 Pro

Processor	Intel i7 920
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Cooling	Corsair Hydro H50
Memory	Corsaid Dominator 1600 6GB
Video Card(s)	3x ATI HD6950
Power Supply	Corsair TX950
Software	Windows 7 (64 bit)

System Name	Livingston
Processor	i7-4960HQ
Motherboard	macbook prp retina
Cooling	Alphacool NexXxoS Monsta (240mm x 120mm x 80mm)
Memory	16Gb
Video Card(s)	Zotac Arctic Storm Nvidia 980ti
Display(s)	1x Acer XB270HU, 1x Catleap, 1x Oculus
Benchmark Scores	http://www.3dmark.com/fs/770087

Processor	Intel i5 750 @ 3.4GHz 1.0v
Motherboard	Gigabyte P55 UD3R
Cooling	CM Hyper 212 Plus
Memory	(4 x 2GB) 8GB DDR3 // Mushkin & Patriot
Video Card(s)	MSI 6950 2GB
Storage	Corsair 128GB SSD
Display(s)	LG 24"
Case	HAF 922
Audio Device(s)	Audigy 2ZS
Power Supply	Corsair 620HX
Software	Windows 7 64 Bit

How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950

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