Can any 6950 be unlocked, or is it only certain makes/revisions?
And what exactly does this achieve?
GTX 560 Ti
HD 6950
Can any 6950 be unlocked, or is it only certain makes/revisions?
And what exactly does this achieve?
Kalniel: "Nice review Tarinder - would it be possible to get a picture of the case when the components are installed (with the side off obviously)?"
CAT-THE-FIFTH: "The Antec 300 is a case which has an understated and clean appearance which many people like. Not everyone is into e-peen looking computers which look like a cross between the imagination of a hyperactive 10 year old and a Frog."
TKPeters: "Off to AVForum better Deal - £20+Vat for Free Shipping @ Scan"
for all intents it seems to be the same card minus some gays name on it and a shielded cover ? with OEM added to it - GoNz0.
If it has the little bios switch I think you're good to go.
To echo the moose; only flash for shaders and not memory or GPU clocks to start with.
A little more about the drivers, I've also had no problems and agree with CAT's PEBKAC explanation - I've had friends with tons of cracked software/OS, disabled UAC/Win Update/no AV then they go and blame the hardware/video drivers for stuttering in games the hardware should be able to handle no problem. I imagine lots of the complainers on forums will have a similar position, and if you do a search on either brand you'd find people complaining.
Basically, don't worry about it.
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System 1: Case: Antec 900 Motherboard: Asus Z77 CPU: Core i5 3570K @3.4GHz RAM:8Gb DDR3 1600Mhz GFX: XFX AMD Radeon 6950 2Gb (Cayman) HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB O/S: Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
System 2: Lenovo Ideapad S205: AMD E350 APU (1.6Ghz), 2Gb 1066Mhz DDR3, Radeon HD6310 (integrated), 250Gb HDD, Windows 7 64Bit Home Premium
System 3:Asus Eee 901: 12Gb Ubuntu 10.10 Gnome Desktop edition
Installed, with a clean OS. Yeaaaahhh
So I've finally unlocked my HD6950 to a HD6970. FYI, I followed this guide.
The ATI WinFlash utility didn't work for me - I got a "subset ID mismatch" error. I had to follow these instructions to successfully flash a HD6970 ROM.
After successfully flashing the HD6970 ROM. GPU-Z showed that my shaders, bandwidth, clock speed and etc had all dropped by 90%. This is very bad, and I started to panic.
But I figured a quick unistall, reboot, re-install and restart of the drivers should fix this - and it did!
So on the left you see my HD6950 and on the right you see my HD6950 flashed with HD6970 BIOS.
I'm seeing a 10C increase on load which brings it to 65C. This is on Crysis 2 MP. Which is perfectly acceptable to me.
I'm happy as Larry
I would keep the RAM at HD6950 2GB speeds as most HD6950 2GB cards have slower rated RAM when compared to an HD6970 2GB.
I'm using them @6970 speeds from day 1, and I didn't have any issues so far.
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System 1: Case: Antec 900 Motherboard: Asus Z77 CPU: Core i5 3570K @3.4GHz RAM:8Gb DDR3 1600Mhz GFX: XFX AMD Radeon 6950 2Gb (Cayman) HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB O/S: Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
System 2: Lenovo Ideapad S205: AMD E350 APU (1.6Ghz), 2Gb 1066Mhz DDR3, Radeon HD6310 (integrated), 250Gb HDD, Windows 7 64Bit Home Premium
System 3:Asus Eee 901: 12Gb Ubuntu 10.10 Gnome Desktop edition
Nope no issues at all.
I've decided to remove the current BIOS and replace it with one that will unlock the shaders only leaving the voltage and clocks untouch at HD6950 stock levels. Then I can manually raise the clocks myself without having a high voltage pumped into my card.
Small update, flashed a modded BIOS that unlocked the shaders only. Leaving the clocks and voltages at normal/stock HD6950 levels. Temps are back to HD6950 levels.
It's the voltage increase that appears to kill some of these cards when flashing to 6970. I bought a HIS 6950 2Gb card for £180 (B clearance) unlocked the shaders and am now looking at a possible overclock if fan noise is low. That way there's far less chance of borking the card. The damn things a brick anyway - they're huge!
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
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