SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 Video Card Review @ [H]

Awesome, I just picked up this card for my dads new build. I need to try to unlock the shaders :)
 
sethmo said:
Awesome, I just picked up this card for my dads new build. I need to try to unlock the shaders :)
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If you just got this card, I would like to know where you bought it from. It's sold out everywhere in the states. As far as unlocking the shaders, if you read the article you would know the process of unlocking the shaders is as simple as switching the bios switch on the card to the second position. The first bios runs at the default 1408 shaders and the second bios runs at 1536.

So basically make sure you don't wear yourself out unlocking those shaders :D
 
I picked it up last week on NewEgg. I didn't get a chance to read the entire review, but that's far easier than flashing the BIOS on my MSI 6950s :)
 
sethmo said:
I picked it up last week on NewEgg. I didn't get a chance to read the entire review, but that's far easier than flashing the BIOS on my MSI 6950s :)
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Okay cool, and above all congrats on getting such a great card. If you can, please start a thread with pics to show off the card and to give your impressions on the card and it's build quality. I know it's for your father but I'm sure the community would appreciate the thread. Also if you can get the newer bios the review mentioned fixes the throttling issue flashed on the card or confirm it came on their backed up I would be interested if you were willing to share that file with me. PM me.

:)
 
Brent_Justice said:
If you would actually read the review, you would see that all of our apples-to-apples tests were, and always are, done at 1920x1200 4X AA.
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MY question was , why use a overclocked golden apple vs a regular apple?

And I feel as though it should have been mentioned that a gtx570 at the same price overclocked will give you the same results, without the (not garaunteed) unlock.


"Overclocked 1536 BIOS Performance Summary


Wow, what can you say? AMD's Radeon HD 6970 market ranges from $340 to $380. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 market ranges from $420 to $600. Our SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 sells for $269.99. After overclocking the 1536 BIOS, it also out performed both of the price superior cards. A much cheaper price and comparable performance, very impressive!"


Basically you could repalce the "Sapphire Toxic HD6950" and inserted gtx570 like this.............

Wow, what can you say? AMD's Radeon HD 6970 market ranges from $340 to $380. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 market ranges from $420 to $600. Our gtx570 sells for $269.99. After overclocking and without the worries of unlocking, it also out performed both of the price superior cards. A much cheaper price and comparable performance, very impressive!"
 
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Lord_Exodia said:
Okay cool, and above all congrats on getting such a great card. If you can, please start a thread with pics to show off the card and to give your impressions on the card and it's build quality. I know it's for your father but I'm sure the community would appreciate the thread. Also if you can get the newer bios the review mentioned fixes the throttling issue flashed on the card or confirm it came on their backed up I would be interested if you were willing to share that file with me. PM me.

:)
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I can do that, I may make a thread, if not, I will PM you with my findings.
 
happymedium said:
MY question was , why use a overclocked golden apple vs a regular apple?

And I feel as though it should have been mentioned that a gtx570 at the same price overclocked will give you the same results, without the (not garaunteed) unlock.
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This is where you went astray. (underlined)

On this product the bios switch guarantees the unlock. It comes from the factory with a tested and working 2nd bios setting which has the 1536 shaders unlocked. You could say the overclock isn't guaranteed and that would be true.

I agree with your stance that overclocked should be compared vs overclocked IF the reviewer manually overclocks one card for it to be a fair apples vs apples test.

I think you have been reading too many canned benchmark anandtech reviews because the 6970 or in other words a 1536 shader Cayman Pro GPU at 6970 speeds can beat a GTX 570 in real world performance tests most of the time except for nvidia biased games whether at 2560x1600 or 1920x1080
I think that's what everyone is saying here.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
This is where you went astray. (underlined)

On this product the bios switch guarantees the unlock. It comes from the factory with a tested and working 2nd bios setting which has the 1536 shaders unlocked. You could say the overclock isn't guaranteed and that would be true.

I agree with your stance that overclocked should be compared vs overclocked IF the reviewer manually overclocks one card for it to be a fair apples vs apples test.

I think you have been reading too many canned benchmark anandtech reviews because the 6970 or in other words a 1536 shader Cayman Pro GPU at 6970 speeds can beat a GTX 570 in real world performance tests most of the time except for nvidia biased games whether at 2560x1600 or 1920x1080
I think that's what everyone is saying here.
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I was just going by what Kitgruru said in there Toxic review.

"While Sapphire aren’t focusing on this aspect, the card ships with an ‘alternative’ bios, which may, or may not unlock extra shaders
"The image above shows the bios switch. Simply turn off the computer, and change the position. Sapphire have already pre-programmed the bios for ‘unlocked shaders’, although there is a possibility it may not work on some cards from the production line. We can consider this an ‘extra’, rather than a selling point as this feature may not work on all cards."

As far as the 6970 beating a gtx570 @ 1080p, it depends on what games are used and what site is doing the review. Canned benches or not.

You do realize that Anandtech only uses canned benchmark when there is a benchmark built into the game right?
I talked to the video card reviewer Ryan, and he said he uses both methods.
Same goes for many other sites, you need to get out more. :)

Edit: and Steve a 41 year member here at Hard forum recommends this nice review over at Pure overclock, it pretty much backs up everything I said about 1080p resolution and the gtx570 vs the 6970/ 6950 Toxic.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037698860&postcount=1
 
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Well, just managed to get one. Hit F5 on the page when I got back from lunch, and to my surprise, it was showing Add to Cart.

Was trying for two, but when I got to the cart, there was only one left. Figured I'd better snatch that one up, at least.

And, of course, no auto-notify e-mail from Newegg. That feature sucks.

edit: Huh, it's no longer showing the free Deus Ex code with the card. Didn't show up on my order, either, so I called 'em up and they're sending me one. Yay!
 
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I found out AFTER I came back in the office that this was back in stock for about 30 minutes. Ive been refreshing since yesterday and it happened to be back in stock right when I couldnt buy it. Dammit.

I noticed it stopped showing the free Deus Ex. If that's the case, Im sort of glad I didnt get to order. Its one of the reasons I want it at this price.I wonder if they'll give it to anyone that calls them or if you just got lucky?
 
I'm so pissed. I was depending on the auto-notify feature to alert me. I was at my computer during that time too. ARGGGH
 
I just flipped the switch on my Toxic 6950 and it did not unlock or change anything. Do I have to flash a BIOS over? If so, where can I download the BIOS from? I had to flip the switch and flash my MSI ref 6950s, but all I did was download the BIOS off the cards with RBE and change the amount of shaders.
 
sethmo said:
I just flipped the switch on my Toxic 6950 and it did not unlock or change anything. Do I have to flash a BIOS over? If so, where can I download the BIOS from? I had to flip the switch and flash my MSI ref 6950s, but all I did was download the BIOS off the cards with RBE and change the amount of shaders.
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Hmm, one of the BIOS settings should have all of the shaders unlocked. Might want to contact Sapphire if it doesn't.
 
I am not too worried about it, it's not my PC.

I downloaded the BIOS from RBE and by default it was set to 6970 shaders, but GPU-Z only shows 1408. Hmmm.
 
So some testing:

Flipped switched to the left: GPU-Z shows 1408 shaders, BIOS in RBE shows the 6950 shaders box checked.
Flipped the switch to the right: GPU-Z shows 1408 shaders, BIOS in RBE shows the 6970 shaders box checked.
 
sethmo said:
So some testing:

Flipped switched to the left: GPU-Z shows 1408 shaders, BIOS in RBE shows the 6950 shaders box checked.
Flipped the switch to the right: GPU-Z shows 1408 shaders, BIOS in RBE shows the 6970 shaders box checked.
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Maybe try re-flashing it with a different unlocked 6950 BIOS.
 
Note when flipping the switch you must flip it with the computer completely turned off, power supply off, everything. Flip it, wait a few seconds, then boot up. We also re-installed our drivers once we bios flipped it.
 
I had the power off, but not unplugged. I saved the stock BIOS, set the max oc to 950 and turned the shaders button to 6970 and I got a BSOD going into Windows. Flipped the switch back to stock and no problems. I will have to boot off of a USB key with ATIflash and flash the switched BIOS back to stock and play around with it some more.

Probably wont happen though, I won't see my dad's computer for awhile.
 
amdgamer said:
Considering that the success rate has been 80-90% for the reference style 6950's in the past, those are some pretty good odds right there. I also can't help but wonder whether Sapphire is specially buying cherry picked 6950 GPU's for this video card.
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The success rate for non-reference Sapphire 6950s (not the Toxic) is like <20% based on what I've seen on various forums. This may be due to laser cutting of the shaders.
 
Spare-Flair said:
The success rate for non-reference Sapphire 6950s (not the Toxic) is like <20% based on what I've seen on various forums. This may be due to laser cutting of the shaders.
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I should have clarified my post as yeah, I meant reference style 6950's and not the revised ones.
 
amdgamer said:
I should have clarified my post as yeah, I meant reference style 6950's and not the revised ones.
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Yes and my point is that the reference cards were not made by Sapphire. Sapphire merely put their sticker on them.

All the post-reference cards actually manufactured by Sapphire have had little success unlocking. This card is a post-reference Sapphire manufactured card.

Therefore you can't base the success rate of how unlockable these Toxic cards will be based on what reference cards achieved and Sapphire themselves does not guarantee the unlock here. We will have to wait until there are more owners to get a new sample size.
 
sethmo said:
I had the power off, but not unplugged. I saved the stock BIOS, set the max oc to 950 and turned the shaders button to 6970 and I got a BSOD going into Windows. Flipped the switch back to stock and no problems. I will have to boot off of a USB key with ATIflash and flash the switched BIOS back to stock and play around with it some more.

Probably wont happen though, I won't see my dad's computer for awhile.
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If you adjust the clocks in the bios at all it will BSOD. You are only allowed to set voltage, fan, shaders. Sadly overclocking must be done via software. The manufacturers like sapphire can set a overclock at the factory but not us :(

That card should run at 880mhz 5400mhz memory at stock on both bios settings. BTW after you flipped the switch you then turned the system off OR rebooted right. The bios needs to be initialized upon post for you to see 1536 shaders.
 
What I want to know is where can I get a hold of those high airflow brackets.
 
So it looks like they extended the MIR on newegg until 9/15 which makes me happy seeing as I haven't been able to grab a card yet. However, I'm not sure whether or not Deus Ex will be included still.
 
PC-HAngover said:
So it looks like they extended the MIR on newegg until 9/15 which makes me happy seeing as I haven't been able to grab a card yet. However, I'm not sure whether or not Deus Ex will be included still.
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I JUST saw the same thing. It doesnt look like Deus Ex is included, however, which to me, at least, is a pretty big deal.
 
Does it always come with BIOS flipped to 1408? I want to first install the card with 6970 BIOS so I don't have to reinstall drivers and fiddle around with it.
 
Chihlidog said:
I JUST saw the same thing. It doesnt look like Deus Ex is included, however, which to me, at least, is a pretty big deal.
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It's included with just about every other 6950, so I bet if you called them up and asked after placing the order, they would send you one.'


On another topic...

What's the deal with the "dual cooling fan" on the front of the box? Was that just an artwork SNAFU? 'Cuz the card's pretty clearly only got one fan.
 
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Parja said:
It's included with just about every other 6950, so I bet if you called them up and asked after placing the order, they would send you one.'


On another topic...

What's the deal with the "dual cooling fan" on the front of the box? Was that just an artwork SNAFU? 'Cuz the card's pretty clearly only got one fan.
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Maybe "dual" as in pushing the air out in addition to cooling the card.
 
I keep missing these, and Newegg's auto notify feature seems to be broken.

Any helpful tips/ideas?
 
happymedium said:
"Highest playable settings. Common sense would state that if a card performs exceptionally well at 2560x1600 it will perform even better at a lower resolution. If people are incapable of figuring that much out then they really shouldn't be building computers at all."

I think most of us know that AMD cards have an advantage at 2500x1600.
A gtx570 and 6970 will trade blows depending on the game at 1080p.
A 6970 will even best a gtx580 in a few games at 2500x1600 but a gtx580 will easily beat a 6970 @ 1080p.
A 6950 @ 2500x1600 will trade blows with a gtx570 in some games.
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I used a single 6950 at 5040x1050 for awhile pretty well. Amd starts to blow away similar settings on nvidia at higher res. Otherwise id be on a 590 over 6950 crossfire
 
First off, the review done by hardocp was so thorough, I joined the forum just because of that. Everything the guy says is true... I purchased my 6950 toxic...flipped the switch... 6970 shaders unlocked. Also the PCB is identical to the 6970 from sapphire...where as other 6950's are different from them. Changing the AMD overdrive to +25~ power gets me a 20% performance difference. Good job on the review..I saw many reviews for the card not noticing the power flux thing and saying how great the card was..when it was performing 20% under what it should.

^^b thanks for the review.
 
Descend said:
First off, the review done by hardocp was so thorough, I joined the forum just because of that. Everything the guy says is true... I purchased my 6950 toxic...flipped the switch... 6970 shaders unlocked. Also the PCB is identical to the 6970 from sapphire...where as other 6950's are different from them. Changing the AMD overdrive to +25~ power gets me a 20% performance difference. Good job on the review..I saw many reviews for the card not noticing the power flux thing and saying how great the card was..when it was performing 20% under what it should.

^^b thanks for the review.
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You should contact sapphire for the bios fix mentioned in the article that fixes the need to force +20 powertune. Once they give it to you please let me know via PM. I would like a copy of that bios. TIA
 
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