Noobs guide to turning a 6950 into a 6970 ?

[DecoySA]

Hi. Thread title should read 6950 into 6970...

Just got a XFX Radeon 6950 2GB graphics card which is great and a big upgrade from my 4890 card however i have heard people saying you can turn it into a 6970. I have a few questions..

1. Does doing this give a notable performance increase or is it just a few fps difference ?
2. Is it risky and does it make the card more unreliable and prone to failure
3. I am computer retarded and have never overclocked anything in my life before and the prospect of doing so scares the **** out of me, checked out a few guides and was thoroughly confused. Is it easy for a computer retard like myself to do and if so is there a proper basic guide for simpletons explaining step by step what to do ?

Any help or advice would be appreciated !

 

[Mojo]

It's a noticeable change: it's not just the clock speed that gets a bump, but an extra processing core cluster is unlocked, bumping you up from 1440 to 1536 stream processors. It's a nice jump in speed. However, the main reason that so many have done it is that the 6950 has a second backup bios, meaning that if you mess up the flashing process or the card doesn't like it it can be reset painlessly, with no damage done to the card itself. There is a guide on how to do it on the front page of the graphics card forum

 

[Marshy]

Hi. Thread title should read 6950 into 6970...

 

[Awahwah]

It's 'free' performance.

Apart from benchmarks and F1 2010 all other game I could max out without it but why wouldn't you?

And, you may want to change the thread title

 

[GJ02]

As above free boost
It's really quite simple if you read and follow step by step
And if it goes pear shaped we will be here to help you out

 

[DecoySA]

sorry for poor choice of wording

It's a noticeable change: it's not just the clock speed that gets a bump, but an extra processing core cluster is unlocked, bumping you up from 1440 to 1536 stream processors. It's a nice jump in speed. However, the main reason that so many have done it is that the 6950 has a second backup bios, meaning that if you mess up the flashing process or the card doesn't like it it can be reset painlessly, with no damage done to the card itself. There is a guide on how to do it on the front page of the graphics card forum

Ok, i basically have no idea what you just said apart from that its a noticeable change which sounds good to me !

Does it void the warranty ? Is someone who is useless with computers able to flash it without breaking something ?

 

[DecoySA]

ok just checked the guide, looks scary lol

going to mull it over and see if its worth doing.

mainly looking for a performance increase in Arma 2/OA and Crysis 1/Warhead (i've got CCC visual mod applied which rapes performance but makes it look tight)

 

[DecoySA]

Does it void the warranty ? Is someone who is useless with computers able to flash it without breaking something ?

anyone able to answer the warranty question ? im on verge of doing it but i just have a horrible feeling im going to mess something up !

edit: just read some of the stickied thread and its completley put me off doing it, lots of people talking about stuff and issues which are way over my head !

 

[unknownsock]

Yes it will void the warranty but if your card does break, just reflash it back to the original bios. Doubt they'll ever know.
And it's impossible to fudge the bios flash up. There's two sets of bios.
And even if you somehow managed too, its still recoverable.

And doesn't Arma run better on Nvidia cards by quite a large amount? It may be better to look down that route?

 

[skotish|]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18221844

Follow this thread and you will be fine

 

[Mojo]

And doesn't Arma run better on Nvidia cards by quite a large amount? It may be better to look down that route?

That is an incredibly good point.

Crysis Warhead favours ATI cards but if you went for, say, a gtx480 instead of a 6950 both would provide playable framerates. Arma2 certainly favours Nvidia, as well as faster quad core cpus.

If those are your two games, I would suggest a Gigabyte GTX480 instead. Plus, you don't have to worry about flashing/unlocking the card, all you have to do is twiddle with some knobs (figuratively) to overclock it.

 

[Avathar77]

I think OP has already got a 6950.

 

[Mojo]

oh right, ok. Don't worry about bricking your card mate, if you follow the tutorial you won't brick it, and even if you do the backup BIOS will allow you to reset it easily and painlessly.

 

[tommybhoy]

anyone able to answer the warranty question ? im on verge of doing it but i just have a horrible feeling im going to mess something up !

If you bought the card from oc then gibbo said that they will honour the warranty, if you bought it elsewhere, you could always reflash it back to the original bios and 're-lock' it with a command.

edit: just read some of the stickied thread and its completley put me off doing it, lots of people talking about stuff and issues which are way over my head !

Very easy, you can either use wizards version in the sticky or you can manually do it in about 2 mins with this Asus unlocked 6950 shader version with tweakable voltage and higher ccc oc settings:
http://hotfile.com/dl/113346849/b64c6e4/Shaypers-hd6950flash.zip.html

Not risky at all, in the slim chance you were to ar$e it up, you can flick the switch.

The file has everything you need to flash the 6950 to unlocked shaders, this way you won't be applying stock 6970 timings which have gave people problems as their memory can't take the clock. You can then overclock just the gpu core to 6970 speeds(and beyond) and leave the memory on stock 6950 settings if needed. There is full simple instructions to do it included.

 

[Ashfield]

If you have 2 cards installed what's the way to go flashing them both to unlock the shaders?

 

[tom91x91]

I have mine unlocked but running at stock as i was getting problems with BFBC2 starting at 880mhz

 

[tommybhoy]

If you have 2 cards installed what's the way to go flashing them both to unlock the shaders?

Everything you need, and how to do it is in the files above.

 

[DecoySA]

If you bought the card from oc then gibbo said that they will honour the warranty, if you bought it elsewhere, you could always reflash it back to the original bios and 're-lock' it with a command.





The file has everything you need to flash the 6950 to unlocked shaders, this way you won't be applying stock 6970 timings which have gave people problems as their memory can't take the clock. You can then overclock just the gpu core to 6970 speeds(and beyond) and leave the memory on stock 6950 settings if needed. There is full simple instructions to do it included.

Hi

thanks for the response. i downloaded the files from hotfile and just did all the steps and i think everything has gone ok.

im upto this bit

"27. Launch Catalyst Control Center

You should now have a default GPU clock of 810 MHz and a default Memory clock of 1250 MHz. Your OverDrive limits should now be 1620 for the GPU and 2500 for the Memory. Your GPU voltage will now be 1.175V, the memory should stay at the HD 6950 factory voltage/timing defaults.

I like to set my overdrive to 880 GPU, 1250 Memory, and 12% Power Control."


I launched CCC and went to information>hardware and it said my default cpu clock was 810 and memory clock at 1250mhz but i can't find anything about overdrive limits for cpu and memory and i also cant find anything mentioning my CPU voltage and if my memory is at the HD 6950 factory voltage/timing defaults.

Also what does the last sentence in the guide mean, do i have to change my settings to what he suggested, if so where do i do it ? or is it all done now and its now a 6970 ?

 

[tommybhoy]

Hi

thanks for the response. i downloaded the files from hotfile and just did all the steps and i think everything has gone ok.

im upto this bit

"27. Launch Catalyst Control Center

You should now have a default GPU clock of 810 MHz and a default Memory clock of 1250 MHz. Your OverDrive limits should now be 1620 for the GPU and 2500 for the Memory. Your GPU voltage will now be 1.175V, the memory should stay at the HD 6950 factory voltage/timing defaults.

I like to set my overdrive to 880 GPU, 1250 Memory, and 12% Power Control."


I launched CCC and went to information>hardware and it said my default cpu clock was 810 and memory clock at 1250mhz but i can't find anything about overdrive limits for cpu and memory and i also cant find anything mentioning my CPU voltage and if my memory is at the HD 6950 factory voltage/timing defaults.

Does your CCC look like this?:

If you haven't already ticked the padlock to unlock 'Graphics Overdrive' then do it.

If you have the gpu clock limit of 1620 and memory clock limit of 2500, then congrats you have a full shader unlocked 6950.

If you don't have the limits above, then you need to go back into smartdoctor and check the "Overclocking range enhancement" option again.

Also what does the last sentence in the guide mean, do i have to change my settings to what he suggested, if so where do i do it ? or is it all done now and its now a 6970 ?

You don't have to change your Power Control settings if you don't need/want to. You would change the slider in 'high performance gpu clock settings' to 880MHz (6970 core speeds (mine could do 1GHz+ on extra volts)) and then either leave the memory clock at 1250(stock 6950), or try overclocking it to 1350(6970 memory speeds) and beyond if your card can take it.

To see the volts, you would need to get AB(Afterburner) which is a very handy tool and you could do all your overclocking with AB.

 

[DecoySA]

Does your CCC look like this?:

If you haven't already ticked the padlock to unlock 'Graphics Overdrive' then do it.

If you have the gpu clock limit of 1620 and memory clock limit of 2500, then congrats you have a full shader unlocked 6950.

If you don't have the limits above, then you need to go back into smartdoctor and check the "Overclocking range enhancement" option again.



You don't have to change your Power Control settings if you don't need/want to. You would change the slider in 'high performance gpu clock settings' to 880MHz (6970 core speeds (mine could do 1GHz+ on extra volts)) and then either leave the memory clock at 1250(stock 6950), or try overclocking it to 1350(6970 memory speeds) and beyond if your card can take it.

To see the volts, you would need to get AB(Afterburner) which is a very handy tool and you could do all your overclocking with AB.

Hi

Checked the AMD overdrive settings and the limits are as described so happy days. Does that mean its now the equivalent of a 6970 or do i need to change the power control settings to what you described for it to become a 6970 in terms of performance ?

how much performance increase should i expect to see ? just tried crysis since i unlocked this shader thingy and not really noticed any boost in frames

sorry for all the questions

edit: tried changing the GPU and Memory clock settings but couldn't select 880mhz as the slider kept going up in random increments so left it on 875mhz, had same issue with memory clock settings so left it at 1345mhz