Poll: What caused your flashed 6950 permanent damage?

Bjorn_Of_Iceland · Jan 13, 2011

Hmm well some 6950 gpus are 6970 drop outs, so I wouldnt doubt it if stuff comes up sooner or later.

smakked · Jan 13, 2011

WHy freak out if it dies?
Some people freak out over nothing, its a graphics card if it dies buy another. We all know thw risk if we flash but its only $300 who cares really.

LAN_deRf_HA · Jan 13, 2011

smakked said:
who cares really.

People who don't shit gold?

Goodman · Jan 13, 2011

smakked said:
WHy freak out if it dies?
Some people freak out over nothing, its a graphics card if it dies buy another. We all know thw risk if we flash but its only $300 who cares really.

Well if it's only $300 & you don't care... you could send me the $300 i will take care of it :laugh:

smakked · Jan 13, 2011

Goodman said:
Well if it's only $300 & you don't care... you could send me the $300 i will take care of it

How about you do my job and earn it

smakked · Jan 13, 2011

How many have actually died, are people running furmark or something?

Jeager · Jan 13, 2011

Im running my 6950 at 900/1250 since one week, I will push up the RAM tonight for another week and if everything goes right, I will flash for the 6950 modded bios.

f0d · Jan 13, 2011

smakked said:
How many have actually died, are people running furmark or something?

no furmark here except to test the powertune throttling for 2 mins max

mostly through playing bfbc2 and normal benchmarks
heres some youtube vids of my artifacts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHvow6ILpQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJvZav_Ux4

sliderider · Jan 13, 2011

Falkentyne said:
Some people were flaming 6970 owners, saying how they "wasted their money" Funny how those people have completely vanished now....maybe I'll head over to the [H] forums and stalk the guy who said that, to see what he has to say now.... or was it on XS, I forgot...

I remember one doubter saying "I think it's best to wait and see if the cards hold up to this cross flashing" (Btw, this is always a good reason to wait a month before buying anything...you let the early adopters be the guinea pigs), and it looks like his suspicions are correct. The only cards NOT having problems are the ones with shader unlocks only; if the shaders work, you're good to go...

This is why I never rush to mod any of my parts the first day someone discovers they can unlock or speed it up in some way. I always wait until a bunch of people have done it first so the long term reliability of the mod can be established. If you rush to do the mod early and it turns out to have bad consequences then you'll be one of the ones who gets burned by it.

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

f0d said:
no furmark here except to test the powertune throttling for 2 mins max

mostly through playing bfbc2 and normal benchmarks
heres some youtube vids of my artifacts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHvow6ILpQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJvZav_Ux4

Memory artifacts.

sliderider · Jan 13, 2011

smakked said:
How many have actually died, are people running furmark or something?

Some people do things like folding and that stresses parts immensely. Even extreme gaming across multiple monitors and at very high settings for long periods can cause enough stress to break a part that has hidden flaws. If unlocking a part or overclocking it to the extreme exposes such a flaw, then it will be made evident in short order when those parts are pushed hard even though they may otherwise seem fine under less stressful conditions so where a 6950 may work fine when used as intended, unlocking parts that were deactivated at the factory or running them at speeds higher than rated can cause problems.

sliderider · Jan 13, 2011

smakked said:
WHy freak out if it dies?
Some people freak out over nothing, its a graphics card if it dies buy another. We all know thw risk if we flash but its only $300 who cares really.

Well, from a certain perspective this is true. In the bigger picture what does anything we do in life matter? We all have a hole in the ground waiting for us at the end, right?

In the smaller picture it's different. Some people can't afford to replace a $300 video card that easily. If I was going to spend $600, $900 or more replacing video cards because of failed mods I'd just get an Asus Ares and run it at stock speeds.

phanbuey · Jan 13, 2011

I like this poll, but it is difficult to find out how many non-flashed 6950's died anyway. It doesnt sound like the flash is what killed it. Hell it could even be weak voltage circuitry that was on the card to begin with.

Since almost everyone flashed their 6950's as soon as they could, the best way would be to find out the failure rate of regular 6970's since im sure that it is fairly high.

These cards did have alot of hold backs regarding their VRM's and they were finally rushed out with a substitute VRM from another manufacturer, that was not necessarily designed for this card. I wouldnt be surprised if alot of 6900 series are dying.

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

phanbuey said:
It doesnt sound like the flash is what killed it.

DigitalUK · Jan 13, 2011

this is what i was thinking, some peoples idea of testing is playing there favourite games for afew days or hours , no problems then flashy time..
when i installed my 6970 i occt tested for 30min to 1hr then ran every benchmark i could get and run as hard as i could. this gave me and idea of the cards normal idle temp and cards max temp, fan speed etc.

phanbuey · Jan 13, 2011

Qed said:

What's so funny?

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

phanbuey said:
What's so funny?

Flashing a bios on a different PCB and running 1250 certified ram at 1500 and saying it was NoT the flash destroying my ram.

phanbuey · Jan 13, 2011

Qed said:
Flashing a bios on a different PCB and running 1250 certified ram at 1500 and saying it was NoT the flash destroying my ram.

is it? was your ram so weak that some over-clocking fried it permanently? if so it would have been dead soon anyways.

Basically you don't know until you've seen all the 6950 numbers, you have no control, and you're just assuming that "this is what you did and it died and whoops that must be it and it cant be anything else durr."

Running your card real hard 24/7 i.e. Folding has very much the same stressor effect as overclocking - if youre memory chips died from a frequency hike then they real real weak to begin with and would have fried. A 20% OC killing your memory is very :wtf:

.

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

phanbuey said:
Basically you don't know until you've seen all the 6950 numbers, you have no control, and you're just assuming that "this is what you did and it died and whoops that must be it and it cant be anything else durr."

I know, overvoltage and overclock ruining computer parts is something we've never seen...

phanbuey · Jan 13, 2011

Qed said:
I know, overvoltage and overclock ruining computer parts is something we've never seen...

Oh? what did your voltage change from?

and what is the last component that you'e fried from an overclock w/o overvoltage, before the 6950?

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

phanbuey said:
Oh? what did your voltage change from?

and what is the last component that you'e fried from an overclock w/o overvoltage, before the 6950?

I did not fry my card because i'm not dumb and the voltage comes from the new bios.

phanbuey · Jan 13, 2011

Qed said:
I did not fry my card because i'm not dumb and the voltage comes from the new bios.

You're still assuming that this is what killed the card. Until you have proper data, all it is your opinion.

DigitalUK · Jan 13, 2011

the voltages are different from 6950 to 6970, and theres nothing to say theres not a memory voltage hidden away in the bios. the memory timings will be different as well but i doubt that would cause perminent damage over short period if flashed back to stock.

6950 voltages default taken from XFX bios

VID1= 1000 VID2 = 900 VID3=1100 VID4=1065

6970 Voltages default taken from XFX Bios

VID1= 1000 VID2 = 900 VID3=1150 VID4=1175

Qed · Jan 13, 2011

DigitalUK said:
the voltages are different from 6950 to 6970, and theres nothing to say theres not a memory voltage hidden away in the bios. the memory timings will be different as well but i doubt that would cause perminent damage over short period if flashed back to stock.

6950 voltages default taken from XFX bios

VID1= 1000 VID2 = 900 VID3=1100 VID4=1065

6970 Voltages default taken from XFX Bios

VID1= 1000 VID2 = 900 VID3=1150 VID4=1175

You cannot know what are the voltage of a 6950 flashed with a 6950 bios, once again DIFFERENT PCB.

sliderider · Jan 13, 2011

phanbuey said:
is it? was your ram so weak that some over-clocking fried it permanently? if so it would have been dead soon anyways.

Basically you don't know until you've seen all the 6950 numbers, you have no control, and you're just assuming that "this is what you did and it died and whoops that must be it and it cant be anything else durr."

Running your card real hard 24/7 i.e. Folding has very much the same stressor effect as overclocking - if youre memory chips died from a frequency hike then they real real weak to begin with and would have fried. A 20% OC killing your memory is very .

Memory is more sensitive to overclocking damage than the core is. That's why you have to be more careful when dealing with it. You might be able to get a 10% improvement in core speeds but the memory may only take 1 or 2% or may not be overclockable at all. As was said previously, the 6950 in many cases does not have the same memory chips as the 6970 so it's more sensitive to overclocking damage than if you were overclocking a real 6970 card.

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Processor	Intel i7 920
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Video Card(s)	3x ATI HD6950
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Poll: What caused your flashed 6950 permanent damage?

Your 6950 started having permanent damage while flashed/clocked as such:

6970 bios, stock 6950 memory and gpu speeds (1250/800)

6970 bios, stock 6970 memory and gpu speeds (1375/880)

6970 bios, Stock 6950 memory (1250), overclcocked gpu (800+)

6970 bios, Stock 6950 gpu (800), overclcocked memory (1250+)

Modded 6950 (shaders enable only) bios, stock memory and gpu speeds (1250/800)

Modded 6950 (shaders enable only) bios, stock memory speeds (1250), overclocked gpu

Modded 6950 (shaders enable only) bios, stock gpu speeds (800), overclocked memory

Modded 6950 (shaders enable only) bios, overclocked memory and gpu speeds (1250+/800+)

Other, Please list your configuration

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