6950 to 6970 flash thread

[Apotheosis]

Here is one

much thanks for this simple guide. got my 6950 up and going in no time.

[little_scrapper]

Forgive my laziness. I have read throug MOST of the thread... But... Help me out here. I want a bios to flash to my XFX 6950 to unlock the shaders without overclocking. I want the extra shaders and I will do a controlle dOC on clock and mem.

Thanks in adv.
Also, I have been contemplating with going with a pair of 6950's. Do I need to use the same cards, or can I use a pair of different cards. The card I have is scarce nowadays so making an exact pair might be be hard.

[Darxide]

Forgive my laziness. I have read throug MOST of the thread... But... Help me out here. I want a bios to flash to my XFX 6950 to unlock the shaders without overclocking. I want the extra shaders and I will do a controlle dOC on clock and mem.

Thanks in adv.
Also, I have been contemplating with going with a pair of 6950's. Do I need to use the same cards, or can I use a pair of different cards. The card I have is scarce nowadays so making an exact pair might be be hard.

Just use RBE to unlock your own BIOS.
Thats what I did because my card refused to accecpt a 6970 BIOS.
Use GPU-Z to backup your cards BIOS, use RBE to mod that BIOS to the shader unlock option, save it as a different file name, use atiflash to flash it to your card.
BTW is your XFX the rev1 with the dual BIOS switch?
And no, you don't need another XFX card, any rev1 6950 will be indentical.

[little_scrapper]

Yes I have the dual bios switch. What is RBE (Ill google in meantime).

[BababooeyHTJ]

Yes I have the dual bios switch. What is RBE (Ill google in meantime).

Radeon Bios Editor

or you can do this.

[little_scrapper]

I used the guru batch file to flash the 6950 to 6970 bios raising my levels from 800/1250 to 880/1375. My vcore is at 1.175 now. Now sure what it was before (if it was different). Everything is running fine. I have used TRIXX and MSI Afterburner to overclock more. I like having the graphs on afterburner BTW.

I seem to max out at about 950/1400. I have to raise vcore to 1.300 to hit 950 but I have not tried with high fan speed to keep temps min.

I dont seem to have any control on mem voltage.

However, When all is said an done, I only get roughly 15% increase in perf. Hardly worth running the card redlined all the time.

[IronWarrior]

I never done bios flashing before on anything, but I'm about to buy a 6950 and an other next month and unlock them to 6970's, but if something goes wrong and you go back to the first BIOS, can you still try the second BIOS to try flashing it again or does it become totally dead?

[LowRun]

I never done bios flashing before on anything, but I'm about to buy a 6950 and an other next month and unlock them to 6970's, but if something goes wrong and you go back to the first BIOS, can you still try the second BIOS to try flashing it again or does it become totally dead?

No problem flashing it again and again.

[IronWarrior]

No problem flashing it again and again.

Thank you!

[hardmack]

Anyone have luck with the newer generation No-Switch cards? I tried using RBE on one and it did something to the card.. Hard Reboots windows and bluescreens on its partner card in crossfire... When trying to reflash to the backup bios it atiwinflash and atiflash dos boot "cant erase ROM" I didnt have the balls to try it on the other card after

[IronWarrior]

I plan on reading the whole 25 pages, but for now, what do most people do? As do you flash it with the 6970 bios? or Unlock the shaders and OC it to 6970 specs? I read that flashing to 6970 can cause damage to the memory because too much volts on some cards?

I have a MSI 6950 which am planning on unlocking or flashing today.

[zalbard]

Unlocking is more stable in general. It's not just memory voltage (I'm really not sure that can be modded via BIOS... and if it is, why can't we do it via RBE yet???), but timings, also.

[DontMakeMeEatU]

Unlocked shaders only.

885/1430 @ 1.1v stock
920/1480 @ 1.11v

update:
940/1450 @ 1.12v (I forgot that anything over 1460 for the memory made 3Dmark11 and Vantage crash. No idea how I got 1480 earlier.)
960/1450 @ 1.13v
961/1450 @ 1.14v (...)
975/1450 @ 1.15v
1000/1450 @ 1.2v


1.2v is considered low for 1000 right? I doubt I will stay at 1.2v either way even though my Scythe Setsugen 2 can keep it pretty cool.

I might flash back to a 6970 later on if I have to.

[BababooeyHTJ]

You have a golden card there.

[InCredible]

yea i can bench at 1.25 1000core with 6970 bios however its not stable gaming, for that i needed 1.3v, so yes 1.2 is crazy low.

[st0ned]

yea i can bench at 1.25 1000core with 6970 bios however its not stable gaming, for that i needed 1.3v, so yes 1.2 is crazy low.

All the 3 cards I've had were just like that. My last one a PCS++ have really sucky memory tought 1300Mhz only

[IronWarrior]

Just completed the first step, unlocked the shaders: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/f2ggc/

Used the registry edit to remove and increase the limits in CCC and then OC'ed it to 880MHz and 1375MHz with 10% power, but I have seen one person in the Overclockers forum run tests that shows the overdrive power doesn't do anything, he can keep it at 0 or 20 and there is no change in FPS or score, but reducing it drops a lot of score and FPS.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/9448r/

Going to play BFBC2 in Eyefinity now and see how well it plays from before when it was stocked.

[Reflex1]

How do i know if its a rev1 or rev2 when ordering? anyone knows shops that definitely sell rev1 cards?

[IronWarrior]

How do i know if its a rev1 or rev2 when ordering? anyone knows shops that definitely sell rev1 cards?

Depends on the shop, some show in the description that it's Rev 1, like overclockers.co.uk

The other way is to message them and ask, but if they don't have the BIOS switch on them, it's not a Rev 1 card.

[BababooeyHTJ]

How do i know if its a rev1 or rev2 when ordering? anyone knows shops that definitely sell rev1 cards?

As far as I know Powercolor and XFX are the only ones selling the 2GB cards without the dual bios. Just avoid those two and you should be fine.

[RnegadeVyp3r]

Hey Guys, Had a good read through some of the pages, however I am having serious troubles flashing my card. Here is the info:



I have tried a bunch of Bios files downloaded from the net however non seems to be working. I am using ATIWinflash and I get the "CANNOT ERASE ROM" Error. Any thoughts?

All I really want to do is get past the 840Mhz OC Limit

Thanks.

System Specs:
Intel i5-750 @4GHz @1.375v Noctua P12
GSkill DDR3 1600Mhz 4GIG
Gigabyte P55M-UD4P Rev1.0
Gigabyte ATI Raedon 6950 2GIG
Coolermaster 650W Mod PSU
Kingston SSD Now 128GIG

[RnegadeVyp3r]

I just followed the directions on this link HERE and I got the same error! GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I DID NOT DO ANY OTHER MODS OTHER THEN RUN THE BATCH FILE.

[BababooeyHTJ]

You need to run ATIflash via commandline. The directions are right on the Techpowerup guide.

[RnegadeVyp3r]

You need to run ATIflash via commandline. The directions are right on the Techpowerup guide.

Ah, did i miss the "via commandine" option? I didnt read anything about that. It says nothing about commandline in this link - http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159

HOWEVER, I just used THIS option, but instead of using a 6970 BIOS, i just used the "modded" file that created by the batch file, and that worked.

Now to see if I can get some decent OCs from this sucker

[RnegadeVyp3r]

Ah, it seems I am the lucky one who gets to do this:

If you get an error like ID mismatch or Could not erase ROM, then you'll have to do some extra work in a Windows command prompt (or DOS): Run atiwinflash -unlockrom 0 followed by atiwinflash -f -p 0 bios.bin where bios.bin is the path and filename of the HD 6970 BIOS you downloaded.

For the people who need to unlockrom and fail at command line:

- Unpack the Winflash download onto your desktop in a folder called "winflash"
- Save the 6970 BIOS in your Winflash folder and name it unlock.bin
- Click Start Button
- Type "cmd"
- Right click the entry and select "Run as Administrator"
- Black command prompt windows opens
- Type "cd %USERPROFILE%\desktop\winflash"
- Type "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" <-- the 0 means first adapter, if you have multiple cards, physically uninstall all but the one you want to flash
- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

Will give this a try now.