Unlocking HD6950 to HD6970...

Some users @ XS are having success too, but a couple of reports are showing it not working for them.
 
Yeah, always a lottery. The unrewritable second bios will make it easy to just go back to vanilla though. Quite bulletproof
 
Very interesting. I have two 6950's heading my way so I'll have to see if I am lucky or not.
 
flash works well.
I might try which of my cards works since I artifact with 6970 bios even in windows.
for some its a easy mod ;)

one card of mine unlocks without any bigger issues, the other not so much.
 
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Kinda makes you wonder if these companies are doing stuff like this on purpose just because people like to buy the cards to tweak.
 
It's like core unlocking on their CPUs. They need to gain market share, so they don't stop people from doing this. They just don't market it and let the community do it for them. That way when it doesn't work, they're under no obligation since it's never officially allowed. People just tend to choose something that can give them more of their buck.
 
well this is awesome, I just ordered a xfx 6950. I sat there debating if I could justify spending the extra money for a 6970 but just didnt have the money. If I can unlock my 6950 to a 6970 to run my new eyefinity rig I'll be very happy
 
SicKlown42012 said:
They need to gain market share
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AMD already has a significantly larger market share than Nvidia so that's a wrong assumption.

This is a bonus for hardware enthusiasts. They purposely developed and integrated the dual BIOS switch for this purpose. Flash the secondary one with the 6970 BIOS and see if it works, if it doesn't just use the stock one and nothing is lost. Pretty awesome.
 
Lorien said:
AMD already has a significantly larger market share than Nvidia so that's a wrong assumption.
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Not in the add-in market. Their lead is only because of integrated chips on laptops and in cheap OEM boxes. They need and want more market-share in the enthusiast market, since that's where the high margins are at and no company is ever content with what they have now.
 
That's where high margins are, but not where the money is. The money is in the OEM / budget areas, because there is such huge volume.
 
DarkStryke said:
That's where high margins are, but not where the money is. The money is in the OEM / budget areas, because there is such huge volume.
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But getting high market share in that market will in no way harm the company. With a larger high end share, they can have the best of both. It's not a hard thing to understand.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Not in the add-in market. Their lead is only because of integrated chips on laptops and in cheap OEM boxes. They need and want more market-share in the enthusiast market, since that's where the high margins are at and no company is ever content with what they have now.
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I don't know where you get your information but you are really far off.
AMD has a greater than 3:1 lead in the DirectX 11 market and the largest percentage is covered by their high end and upper mid-range enthusiast add-in boards. For the HD5xxx generation percentages were 30% Juniper and 30% Cypress chips. They have sold over 25 million DirectX 11 chips so that's 15 million Juniper and Cypress based cards combined. And as it was mentioned already, the money comes from OEM contracts because they are long term, not the sporadic and unpredictable sales of higher end enthusiast products.

Take for example AMD's contract with Apple. They are the sole provider of graphics for the iMac(HD5670, HD5750), and Mac Pro (HD5770, HD5870). This will last a long time and is a huge volume of chips since they will be making them throughout the life of the iMac and Mac Pros. Apple upgrades their desktop products I think roughly every 18 months? So that's a nice steady stream of assured revenue.
 
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DriectX 11 is a very small part of the overall market, even for add-in cards. And Nvidia is making up ground fast and is out selling AMD with it's current lineup so the lead they built with Juniper and Cypress(only because of GF100 delays) isn't going to hold up forever. And again, getting more market share in the high-end market does nothing against their OEM sales, so it's a win-win. AMD is still losing money, and they need every possible sell to help pull out of their slump. And since the next CPU is months away, gaining more market-share in the high-end with GPUs with it's high margins is the perfect place to start.
 
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yang88she said:
hmm, why am I getting the feeling that 6970 owners got hosed
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how were they? They paid ~$50 more to have a guaranteed 24 SPs vs 22 SPs, and 8 more texture units...

its like core unlocking, though 2core->4core is a lot more benefit than 22->24 SPs
 
The only people who got hosed were 580 owners, and to a lesser extent 570 owners, who are using multiple displays or one 30".
 
Mine unlocked, testing it in futuremark benches next.....

g5a.png
 
Stock 6950
stockclocks.png


Overclocked 6950 840/1325
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Unlocked Stock 6950(Well 6970 now :) )
unlockedstockclocks.png
 
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Matrices said:
The only people who got hosed were 580 owners, and to a lesser extent 570 owners, who are using multiple displays or one 30".
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I wouldn't compare AMD to Nvidia in this situation. People unknown to this issue are still buying 6970s. AMD is hosing their own consumers by making this possible.
If I owned a 6970 I would feel some regret about buying it. It's a natural reaction. Most AMD customers are price sensitive, saving the extra cash to get the 6950 is common sense.
 
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I don't see how 6970 owners got screwed. Doesn't the 6950 only have 6/6-pin connectors? That's less headroom for overclocking. Plus this unlock isn't guaranteed to work on ALL cards.
 
Matrices said:
The only people who got hosed were 580 owners, and to a lesser extent 570 owners, who are using multiple displays or one 30".
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I don't feel hosed at all, still no 3D support among other things. Also I've not seen enough scaling numbers to know how the 69XXs perform in Eyefinity/CF setups.
 
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Bootleg Usher said:
What is the temperature difference between overclocking a 6950 and unlocking it?
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It seems like the fan profile isn't working as well. It seems to heat up to about 85-90 and idle is much higher about 10-15C at about 60C. I heard the fan kick it up a notch for the first time.
 
WorldExclusive said:
I wouldn't compare AMD to Nvidia in this situation. People unknown to this issue are still buying 6970s. AMD is hosing their own consumers by making this possible.
If I owned a 6970 I would feel some regret about buying it. It's a natural reaction. Most AMD customers are price sensitive, saving the extra cash to get the 6950 is common sense.
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You really are grasping at straws there trying to spin something positive as something negative. A better example of hosing customers would be the GTX480 and GTX470. The GTX480 was crippled to begin with and the GTX470 was a further crippled chip.
 
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96redformula said:
It seems like the fan profile isn't working as well. It seems to heat up to about 85-90 and idle is much higher about 10-15C at about 60C. I heard the fan kick it up a notch for the first time.
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This is why I'm in the belief that you should always create your own custom fan curve with a tool like Afterburner. I just don't trust the stock setting, especially when you start messing with clocks and voltage. But I'm a bit on the paranoid side when it comes to keeping hardware cool.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
This is why I'm in the belief that you should always create your own custom fan curve with a tool like Afterburner. I just don't trust the stock setting, especially when you start messing with clocks and voltage. But I'm a bit on the paranoid side when it comes to keeping hardware cool.
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Manual fan control isn't working in ATI CCC, I haven't given afterburner a try yet.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't feel hosed at all, still no 3D support among other things. Also I've not seen enough scaling numbers to know how the 69XXs perform in Eyefinity/CF setups.
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Then you haven't been looking around, because they blow Nvidia out of the water specifically in Eyefinity and CF setup. They basically looked at the 5 series weaknesses and fixed them.

Like 95% of other people here, I'm not interested in 3D that much.

When the 560 comes out and forces the 6950s to drop $20 or $30 in price, I'll buy two to replace my 470s.
 
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Matrices said:
Then you haven't been looking around, because they blow Nvidia out of the water specifically in Eyefinity and CF setup. They basically looked at the 5 series weaknesses and fixed them.

Like 95% of other people here, I'm not interested in 3D that much.

When the 560 comes out and forces the 6950s to drop $20 or $30 in price, I'll buy two to replace my 470s.
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Show me where 3x CF 6970 blows away 3x SLI 580. I've seen a couple benchmarks where it was close but no blowing away on either side and the 580 setup was still a bit faster. Plus I'll say it again, 3D. I have no intrest anymore in graphics solutions that don't support 3D.
 
I can now confirm fan control is working with Afterburner 2.1.0 Beta 5, there is no voltage control.
 
heatlesssun said:
Show me where 3x CF 6970 blows away 3x SLI 580. I've seen a couple benchmarks where it was close but no blowing away on either side and the 580 setup was still a bit faster. Plus I'll say it again, 3D. I have no intrest anymore in graphics solutions that don't support 3D.
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The blowing away is from a value standpoint. I doubt most 580 users would be happy to see that they spent an extra $150x2 or x3 for a miserable 5% performance gain in high resolutions.

I'll be interested in 3D when it can run on better quality monitors and without cutting my brightness and framerates in half and my monitor choice to small size.
 
Matrices said:
The blowing away is from a value standpoint. I doubt most 580 users would be happy to see that they spent an extra $150x2 or x3 for a miserable 5% performance gain in high resolutions.

I'll be interested in 3D when it can run on better quality monitors and without cutting my brightness and framerates in half and my monitor choice to small size.
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I don't see too many 580 owners complaining. As for 3D, 3x 23" 1920x1080 is greater resolution than 90% of the people even here on [H]. Yes, it would be nice have IPS monitors, those should be in the coming as Mitsubishi just lanched one but I do get the benefit of 120Hhz and a lot of people will take the higher refresh especially in gaming over IPS, that has a lot of benefit in 2D, no tearing even without v-sync.

As for the that miserable 5% performance gain, as you point out 3D is very demanding, I went from 3 480s to 3 580s to smooth out performance issues, that's wasn't a big jump but it did smooth out a lot of areas. The nature of 3D for the forseeable future is that it's going to be a big hit, it's doing twice much work as 2D, you don't get something for nothing. As for brightness, good 3D monitors compensate for that. 3D mode with the OptXs is AMAZINGLY bright, I never seen such brightness on a monitor, it's not a problem even is dark games like Batman AA.

You can wait and/or hack more or you can take the plunge and that's going to cost money. 3D was just something I wanted to try and I love it. When it works in a game is a different game to me. I understand that 3D isn't for everyone, but I think its a blast.

I got what I wanted and it works well, I have no idea why I should feel hosed since there's nothing else for less that delivers what I want.
 
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Lorien said:
You really are grasping at straws there trying to spin something positive as something negative. A better example of hosing customers would be the GTX480 and GTX470. The GTX480 was crippled to begin with and the GTX470 was a further crippled chip.
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I don't think you read comment of the person I was responding to. Also, I don't see anything negative with saying the 6950 is the better value.
That was known from the beginning and the unlocking potential makes it an awesome value.
 
Lorien said:
You really are grasping at straws there trying to spin something positive as something negative. A better example of hosing customers would be the GTX480 and GTX470. The GTX480 was crippled to begin with and the GTX470 was a further crippled chip.
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:D:eek::p

I'd suggest reading some reviews before you continue to embarass yourself publically on the internet.
 
I think the AMD fanbois are deluding themselves slightly if they believe AMD did this 'on purpose'. Let's not forget the purpose of AMD (and nVidia) is to make money. I can't believe AMD stockholders would like to hear a meeting like this ;

AMD rep "hey guys, so we've got our two new products, 6950 and 6970. 6970 is the better chip so we're charging more and profit margin is good, but I've just had an awesome idea. How about we add in an option to make a 6950 into a 6970, thus losing money because then no-one will want to buy 6970s but hey the customers will think we're AWESOME'

CEO : 'You're fired'

While it's a nice hack if it works, I sincerely doubt it's been designed like this on purpose.
 
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