6950 Shader Unlock

salvage-this

salvage-this

Active Member
Hey everyone. I just ordered the MSI 6950 2gb.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127575

It is off of the reference PCB so it should be unlockable. I am having a bit of trouble figuring out what I want to do. I hear a lot of good stories of the strait flash to the 6970 BIOS works perfect and will not have any performance issues. On the other hand I heard of a few cards that the memory took serious damage from the timings not matching from 6970 BIOS. So I did a bit more research and I read that you can just mod the 6950 BIOS to enable and use the extra shaders that would be used on the 6970 without changing the timings or the voltages from the 6950.

I know that was a long description but does anyone know how to do this? I was hoping not to have to flash a separate BIOS to this card.

Thanks
 
Thanks for the link. I was looking for that for a while.

I would like to take this one step further. I would like to save my own bios and modify it so that it will unlock the shaders and leave everything else alone for my card. I did not want to return it to the stock settings for the 6950.

I found this on the Tech power up site and I was wondering if this could work on my 6950 bios

...Run atiwinflash -unlockrom 0 followed by atiwinflash -f -p 0 bios.bin where bios.bin is the path and filename of the HD 6970 BIOS you downloaded...

but instead of using the 6970 BIOS I could use the BIOS that I saved from my card.

Anyone know if that is possible?
 
Yo dude, send me a pm.. You dont wanna mess with voltages and freqs, unless you wanna blow up your card in 3 weeks. The 6970 has one 6 pin pcie and 1 8 pin pcie. The 6950 has 2 6 pin pcie. That 8 pin must be there for a reason. I have the files for bios and unlocking tool. Will leave stock volts and freqs, but unlock all those extra shaders...... hit me up
 
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Honestly, i dont like that msi card. I dont see the bios switch. Heres a much better one, guaranteed to unlock. http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/graphiccards/HD 6000series/6950Standard.aspx

Reason i show you this because this 6950 has a bios switch, switch to the 2 position to have a permanent stock bios that cannot be altered. Switch to 1 to modify bios to your liking. Screw up your bios flash? No problem, simply place the card on 2 position. If you get a card with one bios, then jack up the bios flash, your screwed.
 
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I ordered it last night. I read some reviews that stated that it was unlockable. The switch is by the 6 pin power connectors not by the crossfire connections. Even if I am not able to unlock any of the shaders I can most likely get a better overclock without having massive temperature problems like some of the ones with standard cooling. If nothing else the 6950 is a beast of a card anyway :D

I'll PM you here in a bit
 
Voltage tweaking is really only useful when you put your cards under watercooling. I had my 580's running stock before I upped the Vcore and put them under water.
 
or if you have a good cooling system that allows for that kind of voltage. I just wanted to make sure that I was not going to be using the 6970 speeds voltages and timings. I might overvolt later if I want a higher OC.
 
salvage-this said:
or if you have a good cooling system that allows for that kind of voltage. I just wanted to make sure that I was not going to be using the 6970 speeds voltages and timings. I might overvolt later if I want a higher OC.
Click to expand...

In my experience, if you up the voltage to set higher clocks on air cooling, you just end up having to set the fan profiles to "horrendously loud"

This is shortly followed by a BSOD.......
 
I have looked at a few reviews of this card and the other version of this cooler and it is usually ok to bump it a bit for overclocks over the 1GHz mark. I would not be bumping a lot and certainly not if my cooler could not handle it. I have heard that this cooler ever on high speeds is significantly quieter than the reference cooler on a much lower RPM.
 
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