6950 BIOS Unlocking (At Users Risk)

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by davetheshrew, Dec 26, 2010.

  1. chispy

    chispy Ancient Guru

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  2. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    GPU:
    Sapphire HD6950 2GB
    Download Sapphire TriXX and try to modify your fan settings there.

    --
    I just flashed my new Sapphire HD6950 2GB Dual Fan to HD6970 clocks.

    I have '1536 Unified' shaders, 875/1375/1.15V done by a RazorX register edit file and at full load (Heaven benchmark maxed out, 99% GPU load) the max. temp was 73 - 75 Celsius. It idles at 40-50. My fan settings are set to Auto.

    Is this safe enough to work with for the next 3,5 years?
     
  3. UZ7

    UZ7 Ancient Guru

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    Haha yeah you'll be fine, heck you can probably do 900/1400 if you wanted
     
  4. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    Thanks for the reply UZ7! I'm trying to keep my OC'ed HD 6950 as safe as possible so I'll keep my card running on 875/1375/1.15V for a while. Just did another heaven benchmark and my GPU #3 came near 80 Celsius. I changed the CCC cooler to 45% instead of auto, and now GPU #3 doesn't come above 69 Celsius with the same test.

    It's idling at 36-40 Celsius now and full load(99%) at 65 Celsius.

    I discussed with my brother about setting the cooler% manually in CCC, and he came with a good point. He said "what if the GPU reaches above 80 Celsius after a few hours of gaming. The cooler will not run harder because you manually have set it to 45%..".
    I totally agree with him, but how can I prevent this? I know I can make a graph with Sapphire TriXX, but CCC doesn't have anything such as that does it?
     

  5. BlackZero

    BlackZero Guest

    The auto settings will work much the same only difference being that the fan will ramp up at a slower delta with auto but the end result is still the same as the fan will hit 100% before the gppu hits 100c.

    The only difference is that you'll see slightly higher temps as the fan will run at lower rpm most of the time but you'll have lower noise and if the temps do get too high it will ramp up anyway. If the temps are beloow 80c while gaming then there's no need to worry about manual settings.

    ps. it's 'racerx'.
     
  6. UZ7

    UZ7 Ancient Guru

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    Usually the auto settings for fan is hardcoded into the BIOS so using a bios editor you can change that but only if you want it permanent. On Sapphire TRIXX you can customize a fan table under Fan Control -> Custom and you base the fan speed% with the temps. For CCC its either auto or manual set so you have to either edit the bios itself or use a program such as trixx, afterburner or riva tuner for custom fan tables.

    [​IMG]

    Just an example.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2011
  7. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    Thanks for the help guys! So auto settings are in fact as good as manual setting @50%? (I've changed it in the meantime)

    I will check the temps after playing Assassin's Creed Revelations for about a hour. Will tell it asap! (over about a hour)
     
  8. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    I reached 69.5 Celsius max temp @ Assassin's Creed Revelations.
    Although, I had some feelings that AC Revelations was a light game. So I played Skyrim maxed out.

    It runned fine, but I experienced some lag. I discovered that it was because my clock and memory rate drops. Why is this? This causes stutter in-game and is quite annoying. Can this be locked to my OC'ed clocks?

    My max temp @ Skyrim was 83 Celsius at GPU #3 with Auto Fan on ranning 35% and 82% GPU Load.

    I'd like to manually set my temp to 45%, because it doesn't make much noise and like I see in the log-files of GPU-Z while playing Skyrim, it looks like the auto fan control doesn't go above 35%.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2011
  9. UZ7

    UZ7 Ancient Guru

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    Well unfortunately games like Skyrim needs to be patch/fixed or maybe even have better drivers since the lag is software base and coming off as a port it wasnt optimized to fully utilize current hardware. Also I think there an fps limiter for AMD cards since coincidentally 6970/50 and 6870 all run with similar frame rates as nVidia cards run normally. But for the most part well from my experience I can play 90% of the game without much lag (as a single GPU). I do get up and downs of FPS in some areas but most of the time its playable but this is at Ultra 8x/16x.

    I would try 4x/8x or less, make sure FXAA is unticked (makes game blurry) have Object Detail Fade unticked and you may also want to check the Game Forums and look up the Skyrim thread as there are a lot of tips on how to tweak the game for better visual/performance. This is largely because the game is a port (from consoles) as well as the game only utilizing dual cores the most so higher clocks is advised to get higher fps. They did release another patch.

    But I'm not sure if that does anything as I havent been playing this week :p. As for the fan table, its probably 100% -> 100C or something so if the temperatures are around 80C~90C I would try to manually set it and keep an eye out while I play a game.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2011
  10. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    Hey!
    I now have set it manually to 45% fan speed, and the temps of GPU #3, that has the highest temps most of the time, didn't come above the 70 Celsius! I will keep it on 45%, because it isn't making much noise right now, and the cooling is perfect. I maxed skyrim out by the way.

    So finally, my safest/most stable overclock, is 850/1350/1.15V with 45% fan speed, 1536 unified shaders and 5% energy OD. Good enough for me!

    I will download that skyrim 1.3 patch. My gameplay is great, but it would be very nice if the stutter-moments are gone.
     

  11. AG-Arno

    AG-Arno Guest

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    I just got a black screen while playing Skyrim. I couldn't press ALT+TAB to open the task bar.. I have logged a file playing Skyrim with GPU-Z. It shows that my GPU load never comes above 65%, and the temps are not higher than 70 Celsius (GPU #3).

    Clocks were 850/1350/1.15V. Does this black screen depends on my overclock? I read some threads on the internet and I'm not the only one that's receiving a black screen. Maybe I accidently pressed ALT+TAB or something, but I don't know that. Can you tell me whether this depends on my OC'ed card or not?
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2011
  12. apacifico

    apacifico Guest

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  13. Carni4

    Carni4 New Member

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    GPU:
    Gigabyte GTX670 2GB
    I just unlocked my XFX HD 6950 1GB (HD-695X-ZNFC) with wizzard's script and Ati Winflash.

    Running smoothly @ 940/1400
    [​IMG]

    Just so you know :)
     
  14. zykk

    zykk Guest

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    GPU:
    HIS 6950 2GB unlocked
    I was running my HIS 6950 2GB reference for almost a year with 6970 bios without any issues whatsoever. It wasn't overclocked, it was running at standard 6970 clocks. I don't know why I swapped it with my unlocked 6950 bios. Probably was bored. Initially it was original one and then I have flashed it with HIS 2gb Fan Turbo bios for higher CCC limits. I ran some tests and .... long story short. 6950 with unlocked shaders and OC'd /880gpu and 1350 memory/ was slightly faster compared to when it was running w/6970 bios. On both I have set 20% power tune. I was quite surprised. So I was swapping bios quite a few times testing, checking temperatures and again 6950 with modded bios at the same clocks was faster. I've checked Furmark, OCCTP, Lost Planet 2 test, 3dmark11, Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, in all of those examples difference was at around 2 fps and at around 150 points difference in 3dMark11. My only guess is that it must have something do to with power tune. I've checked many variants 0, +10%, +15%, +20% on both bioses. It looks like it hits TDP wall faster on 6950 w/6970 bios even with the same clocks and voltages. What's eben more interesting when overclocked to 900GPU and 1450memory .... 6950 with modded/unlocked shader bios was even more faster then 6950 w/6970 bios. My 6950 w/6970bios was showing almost no increase in performance when overclocked to mentioned 900gpu and 1450 memory. Just my 2 cents .............
     
  15. berkos

    berkos Guest

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    i've got sapphire 6950 1gb dirt 3 edition unlocked stupid easy, just switched bios jumper, and voila 1536 unified shaders, im running it on 880/1375 with 1,140v and never hear the fans when set on auto.

    i had it for two months and never bothered to try and unlock it because experts on some forums claimed it's unlockable...
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2012

  16. Evillek

    Evillek Guest

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    GPU:
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    Is this for ASUS DirectCUII 6950 1GB? Could you write here step by step how to do it please?? :)
     
  17. beamer145

    beamer145 Guest

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    I have no luck either trying to unlock the shaders on my 6950 DCII 2GB (bought in 2011/10)
    While digging in the bins, I did notice that my original bins are different from the ones you find floating around everywhere.
    (format: offset: RestOfTheWorld -> MyCard )

    0x0007: 00 -> 04
    0xDE79: 2A -> 24
    0xDEBA: 43 -> 44
    0xDEBE: 79 -> 7A

    Note1 that the build date/time have not changed, which is rather dirty of asus
    Note2 these are the values for the default switch position 0 (pos1 has a similar pattern)

    evillek (and others for whom patching does not work) maybe you can check if you have a similar difference pattern wrt the other 'orig' files...

    Also strange is that if you apply the shaders patch via RBE it changes position 0x0007 (one of the different bytes).
    The w1zzard script changes position 0x21 (hard coded in the script).
    I don't know if this means RBE knows something w1zzard does not ?
    But unfortunately neither of them work

    If anyone has any ideas what the changed values might mean, shoot ....

    Other question : For the ppl that can unlock their shaders successfully, does the position of the switch matter ? On the asus DCII, AFAIK it just toggles between 2 biosses with different output port configurations, there is no 'this one is special and not flashable position'. As someone in one of the threads i read mentioned, it is as if asus has some hidden fallback bios that is automatically used when you do illegal stuff in the normal bios, but it is not controlled by the switch position...
     
  18. thatguy91

    thatguy91 Guest

    Um... don't know about that, I definitely successfully unlocked the bios but only with the w1zzard script. That said, the HD6950 Asus DCII cards actually run better with the HD6970 ASUS DCII bios!

    If you aren't comfortable with the HD6970 clocks, you can use the latest Asus GPUtweak.
    http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=GPU Tweak&p=9&s=13&os=30&hashedid=n/a

    You can set the 2D and 3D GPU clock, memory clock, voltage, fan speed. It also allows you to set the memory clock lower (something that the CCC doesn't allow), so you can run it at say, 5200Mhz instead of 5500Mhz (default 5000Mhz), and of course, a lower GPU clock. Let it autostart with Windows.

    Its also got GPU-z built in, so you can see there your 1536 shaders :)
     
  19. falcaraz

    falcaraz Guest

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    I just attempted the unlock a EAH6950 DCII to 6970 using the Asus EAH6970 DCII bios and it seems to have taken. Pixel fillrate, Texture fillrate, Bandwidth have all gone up to 6970 levels. But shaders have stayed the same at 1408. Did I do something wrong? or is my card locked at that amount of shaders.
     
  20. Torin_Othniel

    Torin_Othniel Guest

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    GPU:
    Dual ATI XFX6950Reference
    XFX6950 Referenced Card Fail and Recovery

    First, let me say that I wish I had ran across the post that stated that the XFX6950 Reference Cards could not be flashed. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2240773&postcount=2162

    This link also has one method for possibly saving this card from becoming a brick. The problem I had was that after I successfully flashed the BIOS to the 6970 from techpowerup, my computer would not boot. As soon as the computer tried to boot, the screen would stay black and one of the fans in my system would kick into high where the sound was extremely loud.

    Thankfully, I had an old GeForce 295 laying around that I was able to install. I removed the 2 ATI cards because I figured they were bricks now and I was hosed. They are 1G cards and I paid about 260 a piece for them 6 to 9 months ago.

    I then ran across the above post after searching Google for any possible hope of flashing them with the original bin file. "Yes, I was smart enough to know to backup my original bin file."

    The method I used to flash them originally was the ATI_WINFLASH program using the command prompt within windows.
    I installed my GeForce GTX295 card in slot 1 and one of the dead XFX cards in slot 2 on my motherboard. I connected one monitor to each card and connected the power as well. When windows first came up, I quickly went to device manager, display properties and disabled the ATI card.

    When I tried to use atiwinflash to flash the original bios, it failed because it said the bios was not accessable. I guess since the card was disabled, that the BIOS could not be read or flashed.

    So I got to thinking that since the two cards will boot up together, but fail once windows sees the difference in the two drivers, that I could probably use the original forum posting to recover my cards.

    Here were my setps:

    1. Installed GeForce 295 in the top GPU slot.
    2. Installed XFX 6950 in the bottom GPU slot. This card has the 6970 bios flashed.
    3. I had my USB Boot Disk and on that disk I had 2 files. Atiflash and my original bios. In Windows, I named the original bios file: ati.orig.bin. *Note that this filename changed after I booted up using the usb boot disk.
    4. After pressing F8 repeatedly, the boot selection options came up. I selected my USB drive and was presented with the C: prompt.
    5. Since I had 2 cards installed and powered, the GEFORCE and the ATI, I wanted to know which card to flash. The last thing I wanted to do was to flash over the GEFORCE card.
    6. I typed: "atiflash -i This displayed the ATI card and what slot it was in. It showed me that there was only one ATI card and it was in the 0 slot.
    7. With this information, I then typed the following at the command prompt: atiflash -unlockrom 0
    8. The system confirmed the unlock.
    9. The next step was to type in the following at the command prompt: atiflash -f -p 0 "name of your .bin or .rom file" Step 9 was where the file name changed on me. I named the file ati.orig.bin. But when I typed atiflash -f -p 0 ati.orig.bin: it told me that there was no file with that name on the disk. So I typed in "dir" at the command prompt to list the directory of the folder. My ati.orig.bin had been changed somehow to ati.ori~1.bin.
    10. So now I typed: atiflash -f -p 0 ati.ori~1.bin. The flash was successful and before I could test it I had to disable the GeForce card.

    I booted my system up with only the XFX 6950 plugged in and powered. My system booted into windows and ran stable with the original bios installed. Now it was time to flash the second card. Since I did not want to jinx anything, I simply removed the fixed ATI card and put in the brick ATI Card.
    So now, I have the GeForce Card and the Brick ATI card.

    I repeated the steps above for booting with the USB Boot disk. Then I unlocked and flashed the ATI card with the original bios. I still had to use the ati.ori~1.bin filename for some reason.

    I was fortunate enough to not give up and turn the cards into door stops or paper weights. I have them running in CrossfireX again and everything is running the way they ran previously.

    I did find a way to unlock all the shaders though. I am headed to bed and will update this tomorrow with the method I used to change the shaders from the 6950 to the 6970.

    I have not figured out how to put a photo into the txt box and I do not have an online location to store them so I cannot put a link to them either. But using ATIRBE_128 from Techpowerup website, I was able to successfully take my Shaders from 1408 Unified to 1536 Unified. Of course, my next step is to figure out exactly what those extra 128 shaders do for my card and my games.

    If anyone figures out how to upgrade these XFX 6950 cards, I would be very interested. I stripped one of the cards down and there is no BIOS Switch anywhere that I could find. I am not good with soldering so that will be out of the question also. I did not have to make any hardware changes to get the increased shader count.

    This is my first post and my first attempt at flashing my video bios so please be kind. I hope to contribute more in the future and hopefully I can learn the tricks to formatting things in here to make them a lot easier to read.
     

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