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ups and downs to unlocking amd gpu?

P

popswala

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 14, 2008
Messages
163
I was wondering, whats all involved to unlock if possible on a 6950? say to try making it a 6970 if possible..

What would I gain?
What would I lose?
would it need more power being unlocked?

I never messed with amd so I'll be getting my feet wet slowly.

yea i'm an nvidia fan boy but i figured i see what all the hype of amd is lol
 
You simply need to flash your 6950 bios to a 6970 bios.

You gain more shaders, gpu speed, and memory speed.
You possibly lose stability and the card can run hotter/louder.
It will need/use more power. Set the power limit +20% or whatever is the max.

Alternatively you can just unlock the shaders with an 6950 unlocked bios that enables all of the shaders. This way you maintain the 6950's core and memory clocks, which you can just overclock later and find what is stable.

You should also read a few reviews or guides. In some games the extra shaders may not help that much. Overclocking the card usually has more significant results.

Its also best if your card has a dual bios switch so you have a back up if anything goes wrong.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/159
 
There are no downs as far as I can tell.

What you will be doing likely is just unlocking the shaders. The GPU is already designed to run with those shaders. It is just a software block preventing them from being used. There is no reason for this except to make the card cheaper.

The memory and GPU and memory stay exactly the same with the shader only unlock. Never use a full 6970 bios. The 6950 cannot handle the same voltages as the 6970 in the memory. What I did was shader unlock, then overclock the memory/gpu.

You lose nothing. You gain speed. More power is only needed if you plan to overclock quite a bit.
 
That don't sound to bad. I have a HIS IceQ X 6950 1GB on the way. Looking at that card. Do you all think that the stock cooler will handle a slight oc? I may not oc to the max but possibly a slight jump.

Whats all involved in unlocking either the full card or just the shaders? is kinda hard for a noob? lol
 
popswala said:
That don't sound to bad. I have a HIS IceQ X 6950 1GB on the way. Looking at that card. Do you all think that the stock cooler will handle a slight oc? I may not oc to the max but possibly a slight jump.

Whats all involved in unlocking either the full card or just the shaders? is kinda hard for a noob? lol
Click to expand...

From what I know, a shader unlock usually doesn't work on the 1GB cards. When you talked about making it a 6970, I assumed you meant the 2GB version. You cannot flash the bios from a 6950 1GB to a 6970 2GB.

You may be able to unlock the shaders, but even that is not a sure thing.
 
I figured I wasn't gonna get alot out of this card. I just wanted a card to play with and learn about amd. Never messed with them. Thanks for all the help.

What about the cooler though? Should I leave it or change it? I know normally stock coolers are loud and I've heard that amd's are really loud. Would that stock thats on there now be suffice or should I change it to a dual fan of some sort to handle a slight over clock?
 
I have a Powercolor 6950 2GB. card with the non-reference cooler that I unlocked the shaders on and bumped the clocks up a bit. If you had the 2GB model I wouldn't recommend flashing a 6970 BIOS on it because the 6950 and 6970 use different memory (speed) and I have read of some reports where people flashed the 6970 BIOS and the cards die later, usually after pushing the memory clock too high. I would just snag RBE, back up your current BIOS and then mod a copy of the BIOS for the shader unlock (option you set in RBE). If it unlocks then I would test for stability then start the overclocking.

Once you find clocks that work for you I would use RBE to edit a copy of your modded BIOS and set up a fan profile that works for you. I set my fans to max speed at 85 deg. C where the default was something like 105 deg C, rather high to just be getting the fans up to full speed. Monitor your idle temps and fan speeds to determine your baseline temps. Once you have those, edit the BIOS to set the Min/Max fan speeds for the temperature range you need.

Good luck!
 
I'll prob just do the shader unlock and then a slight oc a lil later. I will do the bios backup so I can adjust the fan to my liking. Thats for all the info Dr.
 
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