*** The Official ATI Radeon HD 6950 Overclocking Thread ***

[Blackhorse]

@TropicLightning
Yea one of my bits on the config was not right, it wasnt set to rembering the last known config, hece why i lost it on a restart.
I can see it kicking in load GPU and can see it changing itself to 910.

Powerplay!? Am i been really thick here, is this part of AB?
Ive enabled what you highlighted in the config, not sure if i need to do anything else?

 

[Phil2008]

I flashed my bios to the 6970 last night and got only about a 2fps increase so I put it back to 6950

 

[TropicLightning]

Powerplay!? Am i been really thick here, is this part of AB?
Ive enabled what you highlighted in the config, not sure if i need to do anything else?

No, PowerPlay is a feature of hardware and driver, not AB. You really shouldn't have to do anything else.


How is it alll working now? Is it Automatically downclocking when you leave a game? And starting up with no user intervention .i.e, UAC?

 

[Vipernet]

Been benching all night since I sold my car to pay for this setup and don't have any money to go out.

Anyway, got my setup benched stabled @ 975 on the core and 1400 on the memory. 1000mhz resulted in lock ups but I am only running at 1.1v

Here's my latest and best 3dmark Score: P9550 - http://3dmark.com/3dm11/637470

And heaven @ 1920x1080:

 

[Blackhorse]

No, PowerPlay is a feature of hardware and driver, not AB. You really shouldn't have to do anything else.


Edit.
Ok figured that part out myself!
Looking in the monitor section of AB it clearly shows the card stepping upto 910 and 1375 mem when a game is started (or needed), then dropping down to 250 and 150 mem when doing meanial stuff!

Looks like were all good!

I think i owe you a drink!!

 

[TropicLightning]

Been benching all night since I sold my car to pay for this setup and don't have any money to go out.

Hat off. Now here is a man dedicated to his sport.

Anyway, got my setup benched stabled @ 975 on the core and 1400 on the memory. 1000mhz resulted in lock ups but I am only running at 1.1v

Wow a 975 1.1V card, a pair of them no less!, just wow. I'm starting to feel a bit put off with my 910 card. You surely deserve it though after sacrificing your car to the OC gods.

No, PowerPlay is a feature of hardware and driver, not AB. You really shouldn't have to do anything else.

Edit.
Ok figured that part out myself!
Looking in the monitor section of AB it clearly shows the card stepping upto 910 and 1375 mem when a game is started (or needed), then dropping down to 250 and 150 mem when doing meanial stuff!

Looks like were all good!

I think i owe you a drink!!

You owe me nothing, but I appreciate the thought.

AB Beta 7 is so nice now that PowerPlay is working. I sure hope Unwinder can keep it going. Really almost no need for a BIOS flash with it working this way.

 

[TropicLightning]

Been benching all night since I sold my car to pay for this setup and don't have any money to go out.

Anyway, got my setup benched stabled @ 975 on the core and 1400 on the memory. 1000mhz resulted in lock ups but I am only running at 1.1v

After giving this a fair amount of consideration I have come to the conclusion that you have made a big mistake in selling your wheels for these cards. It's just not healthy. A young fellow like yourself should be mobile so as to partake in all the wonderful things the outside world has to offer. One should broaden their horizons and enrich their soul so that they might discover where true happiness lies.

In an effort to save a fellow soul, and at a great personal sacrifice, I would be willing to take those cards of your hands so that you might avoid a miserable fate and help you well on your way to a bright and happy future.

Please save yourself by selling me those cards and getting your car back as soon as possible.

 

[Laney88]

Ok got mine running @ 840 & 1325 but want more

You have to edit the config file in afterburner and change overclocking from 0 to 1, this'll enable you to clock higher in afterburner. I'll have a look and see if I can recall how to do this.

Edit: if you go into program files>msi afterburner>look for a config.file called MSIafterburner and open it with notepad, right at the bottom theres a file called "enableunofficialoverclocking"> change this value from 0 to 1> save and exit and you should be able to overclock past 840 on the core.

I did this but like a noob accidentally saved the file type as note pad and now after uninstalls and reinstalls the file is always notepad which is why I think it won't work. Or is it because i'm using afterburner 2.1.0 and in the config file it doesnt show "enableunofficialoverclocking" but it has "UnofficialOverclockingMode" which I changed from 0 to 1 any ideas?

 

[Laney88]

Got it running now as set in the screen shot below, stock cooler at 50~55% speed using afterburner custom fan profile maxing out at about 82c IIRC. Looks like I've got a good chip? pushing the memory further results in lower scores in unigine.

Pic is a bit small so here they are singularly

Does this look ok? I've not seen any ill effects when benching besides a few driver crashes now and then before I increased the voltage. Just don't want to over do it if I'm doing something wrong that I have not noticed

 

[pgi947]

So out of curiosity (i've yet to OC my 6950's) whats the average OC and at what voltage? I was thinking of bumping my cards upto TFIII standard of 850/1300 is this easily done?

Edit: oops, just revived a 5 month dead thread, eeep

 

[kmufc77]

I have just bought this : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-273-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

I have tried to unlock the shaders and the flash was successful and i rebooted,GPUZ still says the shaders are 1408,so i guess this card cant be flashed.

Oh well time to try and OC to 6970 speeds.

 

[pgi947]

Just tried out 850/1300 and it was perferct, no voltage change required and pretty much no change in temps, so I'm keen to know the 'stable' limit on these cards?

 

[pinkacidbootson]

Unlocked my shaders today and had a go at overclocking it.

Using Sapphire Trixx I can manage 950 on the core at 1.225v or 940 at 1.2v, temps dont go over 65 either way as I've got a Thermalright Shaman.
Memory goes to 1450 max.

Would anyone agree that I should keep the core at 940 with 1.2v to be safe?

 

[pinkacidbootson]

Card sorted now and back running at 950/1400 stable now so here are Heaven benchmarks at 1920x1080 and 1600x1200 for J.D

That's with a 2500K turboing to 3.4 which is the multiplier limit for my motherboard. Roll on P67 mITX!

With my 2500k at 4.5GHz and 6950 at 950/1450 I only get 1153:





I let the benchmark run twice and confirmed with GPUZ that the clocks stayed at 950/1450 the whole time.

Can anyone explain why my score is lower than others who are getting 1300+ ? I definitely don't have AA or AF forced in CCC or ATI Tool. For reference, I get 38500 in 3DMark05 and P6050 in 3DMark 11.

I have noticed that I have newer versions of Heaven, Visual C++ and display driver compared to the scores posted in this thread.

 

[pinkacidbootson]

anyone?

 

[Pete.Dakota]

REPRISED!

I just picked up this Powercolor 6950. I have it currently up at 905/1350 using MSI Afterburner. The core can't go much higher than 910 without freezing the system during Unigine and 1350 is the max I can go on the slider in the utility.

Am I at the limit now? I hear of some people getting 950+ on their core at stock volts...

 

[J.D]

REPRISED!

I just picked up this Powercolor 6950. I have it currently up at 905/1350 using MSI Afterburner. The core can't go much higher than 910 without freezing the system during Unigine and 1350 is the max I can go on the slider in the utility.

Am I at the limit now? I hear of some people getting 950+ on their core at stock volts...

I have one of the first 6950s and I can't hit 950Mhz on stock volts. 1.1v is stock 6950 volts so unless it's at the 6970 voltage of 1.175v I can't see it hitting 950Mhz on the core as an average but at 1.175v I could. You can't guarantee any overclock to be honest either . Just luck of the draw and when you have that mentality then your expectations will not bring you down .

You can increase your voltage up to 1.3v as long as you keep an eye on temps and artifacts but I wouldn't go past 1.225-1.250 as the gains are minimal the higher you go but you can push to 1.3v for a few benchmarks if you're curious.

 

[pgi947]

Another thread revival, didn't see the point in creating a new thread and it getting lost within all the 680 chatter

Whats a realistic OC to expect? my cards are non-ref so shader/clock flash isn't an option. I've never really experimented a great deal with GPU overclocking. My google skills have failed too, every 6950 OC topic turns out to be 50>70 flashing based.

Also what is the most beneficial, higher core clock or higher memory clock?

 

[Rooster212]

Whats a realistic OC to expect? my cards are non-ref so shader/clock flash isn't an option. I've never really experimented a great deal with GPU overclocking. My google skills have failed too, every 6950 OC topic turns out to be 50>70 flashing based.

Also what is the most beneficial, higher core clock or higher memory clock?

Well I've been experimenting all evening, the general consensus is that you get a lot more out of overclocking the Core clock, I got up to 960/1360 earlier on 1.19v so I think I have a monster clocker going to see how far I can take it tomorrow, but I think if you look through the thread here where I've been playing about that should help a bit!

 

[TropicLightning]

Another thread revival, didn't see the point in creating a new thread and it getting lost within all the 680 chatter

Whats a realistic OC to expect? my cards are non-ref so shader/clock flash isn't an option. I've never really experimented a great deal with GPU overclocking. My google skills have failed too, every 6950 OC topic turns out to be 50>70 flashing based.

Also what is the most beneficial, higher core clock or higher memory clock?

You really can't expect much from these cards. Max can be anywhere from 820-960, most will be 870-900. Be happy if you get one that goes 900. The high ASIC GPUs run much cooler but don't clock as well.

Core speed is much more important than the shader number.

All shaders enabled can pick you up another 3-5% though, clock for clock and no effort.

Some non-reference cards can unlock to. It just depends on which one you have. I would think worth the try. Some even have the BIOS switch but not advertised.

Well I've been experimenting all evening, the general consensus is that you get a lot more out of overclocking the Core clock, I got up to 960/1360 earlier on 1.19v so I think I have a monster clocker going to see how far I can take it tomorrow, but I think if you look through the thread here where I've been playing about that should help a bit!

That is true, core speed is much more of it. Read above here^^^. Is your unlocked?