Sapphire 6950 Toxic Edition in stock @ Newegg

Newegg tracking makes it look like mine will be here monday, but I have been surprised by early deliveries before. I was seriously considering jumping on the Galaxy gtx 570 deal, but this is more appealing with a potential unlock and free games. Brings back memories of my Sapphire 9800 Pro that I flashed to an XT.
 
Direfox said:
Newegg tracking makes it look like mine will be here monday, but I have been surprised by early deliveries before. I was seriously considering jumping on the Galaxy gtx 570 deal, but this is more appealing with a potential unlock and free games. Brings back memories of my Sapphire 9800 Pro that I flashed to an XT.
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I ended up getting the Galaxy 570, couldn't wait for the Toxic to come back in any longer.. kinda wish I had waited now but we'll see.
 
digitalgunfire said:
I ended up getting the Galaxy 570, couldn't wait for the Toxic to come back in any longer.. kinda wish I had waited now but we'll see.
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I dont think you will be disappointed with the gtx 570, its an awesome card also. It looks like if they are both overclocked to their limits they will be close to equal. Only thing you missed out on is some free games. You also got a year longer warranty.
 
Does anyone own one of these with the new bios, that prevents you from having to force +20 powertune to keep the performance consistent?
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Does anyone own one of these with the new bios, that prevents you from having to force +20 powertune to keep the performance consistent?
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I think its too soon for them to have changed the bios on existing stock. [H]ardOCP let them know about the problem when testing the card for the review. When I get mine I will post what the bios on it is. My guess would be I will have to flash it with the new bios though.
 
Direfox said:
Newegg tracking makes it look like mine will be here monday, but I have been surprised by early deliveries before. I was seriously considering jumping on the Galaxy gtx 570 deal, but this is more appealing with a potential unlock and free games. Brings back memories of my Sapphire 9800 Pro that I flashed to an XT.
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you mean the 9800SE to 9800PRO? lol, i had one of those as well. i also had the 9600pro soft modded to a 9700..
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Does anyone own one of these with the new bios, that prevents you from having to force +20 powertune to keep the performance consistent?
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So I just received my card and checked it. First of all I do have the full 1536 shaders unlocked according to GPU-Z and the Bios version is the same as the one [H]ardOCP had when they tested the card. Bios switch was in position 2, closest to the back (exhaust end) of the card and that showed the 1408 shaders. I shut it down, flipped the switch and there were are, 1536 showing in GPU-Z. I did NOT have to flash anything, they were already enabled. I used the factory disk for drivers as others have suggested, I will update drivers later.

I'm going to play around with some games and see how it compares to my gtx 260 SC card. Not going to run any benchmarks, you can get plenty of those online, but I will give my impressions of how much better it is than my old card (and any problems if I have any.)
 
Still can't decide if I want to upgrade to this from a GTX275 or just wait for the next generation and price drops. I need to flip a coin or something.
 
greens said:
Still can't decide if I want to upgrade to this from a GTX275 or just wait for the next generation and price drops. I need to flip a coin or something.
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Well, I just updated from a gtx 260 SC which was pretty close to a gtx 275 because of the overclock. I have to say I am very happy so far with this card, getting better frame rates with all the setting turned up. If you are ok with the gtx 275 for now, just hold on. My 260 kept me going a long, LONG time. Longest I have ever had a video card. It was so good that I had a hard time justifying an upgrade, but I think I made the right decision with this one.

One thing I have noticed is people mention the heat of these cards, and its very true. Even though its running about the same temp as my gtx 260, the whole card is hot all the way across it. With my gtx 260 it was hot in a couple places with most of heat concentrated in two spots. This 6950 (6970-ish) card is dumping a lot more heat into my case. I have raised 3 degrees on my CPU cores and thats with the fan turned up a little. Hasn't affected my overclocks at all though. Also it cools down quickly when I stop stressing it. Guess its to be expected, its drawing about 100 watts more under load.

A couple things that many of you most likely know already... you have to watch your settings in some games like Batman, Arkham Asylum. I had my gtx 260 set up to take advantage of physx and until I turned it off my 6950 struggled with frame rates. Once I turned it off it was like butter. BUTTER!...mmmm butter....

One more thing, I downloaded Trixx from Sapphire and watched my core and memory speeds off to the side with Crysis in windowed mode. As soon as the game started they went straight to 880 core and 1300(5200) memory and it never dipped for me. This was without the +20 to powertune, so not sure why it didn't duplicate the effect in that game that [H]ardOCP saw, but I am running the same bios they recieved with their card. Of course I am no expert so maybe the results didnt show accurately with the monitoring software I was using.

All in all, this card is absolutely awesome! And I haven't even overclocked it yet (besides the factory overclock/unlock). If you can hold off, you might be able to get and even better card cheaper, but for me, I can't imaging needing anything more for a long time.
 
Direfox said:
One more thing, I downloaded Trixx from Sapphire and watched my core and memory speeds off to the side with Crysis in windowed mode. As soon as the game started they went straight to 880 core and 1300(5200) memory and it never dipped for me. This was without the +20 to powertune, so not sure why it didn't duplicate the effect in that game that [H]ardOCP saw, but I am running the same bios they recieved with their card. Of course I am no expert so maybe the results didnt show accurately with the monitoring software I was using.

All in all, this card is absolutely awesome! And I haven't even overclocked it yet (besides the factory overclock/unlock). If you can hold off, you might be able to get and even better card cheaper, but for me, I can't imaging needing anything more for a long time.
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Interesting, perhaps the game you launched and settings you ran didn't tax the card enough to throttle. To know for sure I'd run Furmark or Kombuster at the extreme burn in setting. Please let me know how it goes, you know already why I'm interested, Also funny note, my 6950s do not give me a +50 powertune option in CCC only the traditional +20. I even did a clean install of Cats 11.8. Does your card give you a +50 powertune option in CCC?
 
Direfox said:
A couple things that many of you most likely know already... you have to watch your settings in some games like Batman, Arkham Asylum. I had my gtx 260 set up to take advantage of physx and until I turned it off my 6950 struggled with frame rates. Once I turned it off it was like butter. BUTTER!...mmmm butter....
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This is because of PhysX's detection code. If it detects a Radeon GPU in the system, it runs PhysX on the CPU, and caps it to 20% usage of a single core, in order to keep the frame rate below about 20, low enough to force you to turn it off. Is just another example of nvidia's anti-opposition measures. The card isn't 'struggling' with anything, PhysX has just noticed you're running something other than a geforce and has capped your framerate because of it.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Interesting, perhaps the game you launched and settings you ran didn't tax the card enough to throttle. To know for sure I'd run Furmark or Kombuster at the extreme burn in setting. Please let me know how it goes, you know already why I'm interested, Also funny note, my 6950s do not give me a +50 powertune option in CCC only the traditional +20. I even did a clean install of Cats 11.8. Does your card give you a +50 powertune option in CCC?
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Mine gives me a +50 option with the Toxic 6950.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Interesting, perhaps the game you launched and settings you ran didn't tax the card enough to throttle. To know for sure I'd run Furmark or Kombuster at the extreme burn in setting. Please let me know how it goes, you know already why I'm interested, Also funny note, my 6950s do not give me a +50 powertune option in CCC only the traditional +20. I even did a clean install of Cats 11.8. Does your card give you a +50 powertune option in CCC?
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Yes, and its in both Trixx AND CCC. Thats an interesting observation... this card has a bios that lets it overvolt to +50% but it needs +20% to work correctly. Wonder if thats related.

I was running crysis (in windowed mode though) at highest settings so I would think that would tax it pretty well. It did warm the card up to 78 C.


magoo said:
Well, you flash it and see what happens. All of my 6950s flashed without a hitch.:D
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Thats the nice thing about this card, its already flashed to a 6970 bios. So far it looks like if your first position (flipped toward front of card) doesn't have 1536 shaders already it probably wont unlock.
 
Direfox said:
Yes, and its in both Trixx AND CCC. Thats an interesting observation... this card has a bios that lets it overvolt to +50% but it needs +20% to work correctly. Wonder if thats related.

I was running crysis (in windowed mode though) at highest settings so I would think that would tax it pretty well. It did warm the card up to 78 C.
.
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I currently have a 6970 bios flashed onto my card so I'm not sure it's a 6970 specific feature in the driver. I bet your card still picks up as a 6950 even though all the 1536 shaders are unlocked. You can check in GPU-Z it should say Cayman Pro instead of Cayman XT or 6950 instead of 6970. I think as I it's specifically the 11.8 preview. Is that the driver your using or did you download 11.8 from amd.com.

Also for shits and giggles, try using kombuster or furmark on extreme, if there is no throttling then I'll take you up on the offer and would like you to email the bios to me, perhaps your bios IS fixed. Maybe sapphire is using the same version but editing that bios with a small tweak that fixes the powertune and have already begun reflashing the cards.

dfedders said:
Mine gives me a +50 option with the Toxic 6950.
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I'm thinking this is because of the 11.8 preview driver. I haven't used that driver. I'm ussing the official 11.8 from amd.com that released after teh preview build. Can you confirm which driver your using?

In the hardocp review they also used the preview so my google research is leading me to believe it's a specific feature in that drivers. I'm hoping it'll let me overclock with more stability. It's irrelevant if it's only gonna be available in one preview driver though.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I bet your card still picks up as a 6950 even though all the 1536 shaders are unlocked. You can check in GPU-Z it should say Cayman Pro instead of Cayman XT or 6950 instead of 6970. I think as I it's specifically the 11.8 preview. Is that the driver your using or did you download 11.8 from amd.com.

Also for shits and giggles, try using kombuster or furmark on extreme, if there is no throttling then I'll take you up on the offer and would like you to email the bios to me, perhaps your bios IS fixed. Maybe sapphire is using the same version but editing that bios with a small tweak that fixes the powertune and have already begun reflashing the cards.



I'm thinking this is because of the 11.8 preview driver. I haven't used that driver. I'm ussing the official 11.8 from amd.com that released after teh preview build. Can you confirm which driver your using?
In the hardocp review they also used the preview so my google research is leading me to believe it's a specific feature in that drivers. I'm hoping it'll let me overclock with more stability. It's irrelevant if it's only gonna be available in one preview driver though.
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Your right, it still shows as a 6950 although with 1536 shaders.

Once I enabled furmark on extreme it immedietely throttled. (sigh) Bumped it up +20% and bingo, problem gone.

Drivers are original on disk...

Driver Packaging Version 8.881-110728a-122943C-ATI
Catalyst Version 11.8
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1178
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0855
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.11005
Catalyst Control Center Version 2011.0728.1756.30366
AMD Audio Driver Version 7.12.0.7702
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I'm thinking this is because of the 11.8 preview driver. I haven't used that driver. I'm ussing the official 11.8 from amd.com that released after teh preview build. Can you confirm which driver your using?.
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I downloaded 11.8 from amd.com. I never had the preview driver.
 
I can also confirm that I had the option to increase power control by +/- 50% with this card on the unlocked bios.

However, I used this registry modification to raise the core/memory clock limits in Overdrive and as a side effect it reset power control limits back to +/- 20%. Just a word of warning to anyone else who tries the registry mod.
 
dfedders said:
I downloaded 11.8 from amd.com. I never had the preview driver.
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Strange, can anyone confirm when the option for +50 appeared. I have never seen it, I've used 11.4, all the way through 11.8. I wonder why it doesn't show.

Artificiary said:
I can also confirm that I had the option to increase power control by +/- 50% with this card on the unlocked bios.

However, I used this registry modification to raise the core/memory clock limits in Overdrive and as a side effect it reset power control limits back to +/- 20%. Just a word of warning to anyone else who tries the registry mod.
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In the past I used asus smart doctor to enable overclocking range enhancements but have since done a clean driver install using driver sweeper. Perhaps I'll give it another go. maybe I'll search the registry for any AMD entries and delete those too so that everything is created new. I'm only curious to find out if +50 will boost my overclocking ability on the cards.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Strange, can anyone confirm when the option for +50 appeared. I have never seen it, I've used 11.4, all the way through 11.8. I wonder why it doesn't show.
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If I had to guess I'd say it's something specific to the bios of the 6950 Toxic. I had an unlocked Diamond 6950 in my desktop for a few days last week using the same 11.8 driver installation and only had the option to increase power control by +/- 20%. Before I removed the Diamond 6950 I uninstalled the 11.8 drivers, replaced the video card with the Toxic, then reinstalled the 11.8's and got +/- 50% power control. I've never had a prior version of CCC installed on my machine's current Windows install.
 
Artificiary said:
If I had to guess I'd say it's something specific to the bios of the 6950 Toxic. I had an unlocked Diamond 6950 in my desktop for a few days last week using the same 11.8 driver installation and only had the option to increase power control by +/- 20%. Before I removed the Diamond 6950 I uninstalled the 11.8 drivers, replaced the video card with the Toxic, then reinstalled the 11.8's and got +/- 50% power control. I've never had a prior version of CCC installed on my machine's current Windows install.
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So it could be a exclusive setting for the toxic. Interesting. And it makes sense.
 
Wow by luck I just hit refresh and was in stock for 10 seconds at newegg.

i didn't even get a auto notify email/ Yay
 
Waiting for this to go back in stock so I can pick one up. Hopefully within the next few days or so...
 
I've been waiting as well and I was refreshing the page all day at work and nothing changed.
 
Ugh, still not in stock. Hopefully it will be before the rebate expires... :rolleyes:

I noticed they had extended the rebate from the 15th to the 30th, probably because of these supply problems.
 
From what i hear the 6850 and 6950 are pretty similar, and 6850s are cheap these days.
 
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