6950 BIOS Unlocking (At Users Risk)

Keep us posted please , I am dying to find out the results. I am currently leaning towards Asus as well, the alternative is Powercolor 6950 PCS++ but I can't find the later anywhere in stock (shame, it has a really nice price , almost 60$ less than Asus).

 

stay away from pcs++ its a god awfull card seriously, only has 2 pin fan so no fan control, doesnt clock well and no matter what they say these cards arent 2 bios cards, 1 with 6950 1 with 6970, its bs mate they were just riding the hype I started and they failed hard, most have been rma'd for 6970 replacements, that says it all for me, oh and the fact they wouldnt replace mine because I removed the cooler, despise that company.

 

Well I was going to go buy a 2xmolex to 8-pin connector tomorrow, but it seems many of them aren't real 8-pin connectors.

You can get 6-pin to 8-pin adaptors, which obviously has the drawback of it being really only 6-pins worth of power... kind defeats the purpose of going to an 8-pin plug in the first place. It would work no doubt, but would most likely affect overclockability and possibility even stability... (well, especially at higher clocks).

Many of the 2xmolex to 8-pin PCI-E adaptors look to be really only 6-pins worth of power too. You have to look closely at them and make sure all 4-pin in each molex is utilised, not just 3-pins (a lot of them are like that) or have4 pins but only 3 connected. Basically they loop the extra pin which seems pointless to me!

So, instead of hunting around for one of those proper connectors tomorrow, I bought one off ebay... basically because it was cheaper and its definitely a real 2xmolex 4 pin to 8-pin PCI-E.

The other alternative was to buy a new power supply, but want to put that off until I upgrade the reast of the comp later in the year so I don't buy old models and can make use of the flow on from the soaring Aussie dollar.

Of course, if I did that with the graphics card I would probably save a bit too, but who wants to wait around 3 months for that? The adaptor was only a couple of dollars.

 

Found I did have a PCI-E 8-Pin power plug afterall! :bang: I have a modular PSU, didn't realise I had another PCI-E cable in the packet.

Anyways

BIG BIG WARNING ABOUT SHADER UNLOCK:

On the newer non-reference 2GB cards, you CANNOT use the RBE shader unlock method. It does NOT work well, it will appear to, and flash, and post, but the ATI driver will blue-screen. I looked online, and other people have found this too - with a completely different brand!

The solution is to use Wizzard's shader unlock, which is the original unlock tool. I believe the issue with the RBE method is its looking for an exact position in the bios, and since its non-reference the postion has changed = an effectively corrupt bios.

On the other hand, Wizzards script I believe searches for the shader reference and mods it, therefore it works with non-reference bios.

Its available here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2137760&postcount=381
Big thanks to W1zzard for this simple but effective mod script, its much appreciated!

Shader unlock definitely works, check out the following pic. And yes, thats straight from gpu-z. I haven't tried overclocking yet . I have tried different driver versions, all work

 

I apologise for making another post instead of modding the last one, but I have a good reason:

Imagine the scenario where someone tries modding a non-reference bios with the RBE tool, and they only have a single bios... Since the RBE tool actually corrupts the bios, its possible they may not be so lucky in terms of the actual corruption caused. I would like the first post to be modified to reflech this, as it is potentially a very serious issue!

As it is, you have to start Windows in safe mode, delete the driver (and delete driver files), restart, so Windows used the standard VGA driver. Other cards may not be so lucky to even do that - if you can't get into Windows you're a step closer to being stuffed!

Anyways, for all those who have been unable to mod the bios, try the W1zzard script.
For all those who have used the RBE method and still have 1408, reget the original BIOS ASAP and mod that with the W1zzard script. You probably have corrupted part of the bios and are lucky so far that it hasn't affected anything you have noticed yet. You WON'T be able to just click back on HD6950 in RBE for the shaders, as although RBE will show HD6590 shaders upon reload, since its not the right part of the bios file its still corrupted. Likewise, if you have already corrupted the bios using RBE even though W1zzards script should work, its unadvisable since it won't repair the corrupted bios. Do so only on a clean, original, never modded version of your bios.

Note: all of the above applies to non-reference cards, reference cards are okay with RBE.

 

Refer to my above two posts i think that info is kinda critical!

 

mate thanks for being a test dummy..ma lawd I know how it feels to nearly kill a card in the name of saving a bunch of people a few quid (allways for them NOT for you, remember ) fantastic info I will have a very good look and check and verify for more reference in other forums/sites before updating the first post for new users.

Sorry id like to just update now as I think the sappy card prob is solved with this but have to triple check this is common prob before editing hope you understand, I want the guru unlock thread to stay number 1 as this is where it started...well xs flashed a 6970 to another one and I took it from there.. something press overlooked imo but meh .

Amazing this thread has lasted since december to be honest, page views have been goint consistently up for months, truly happy a whole bunch of you have had the balls to do it and succeeded

props to you all

 

No worries, thats completely understandable I'd be doing the same thing since its all about taking risk with a couple of hundred dollars worth of hardware!

I should also point out I wasn't knocking RBE, especially since it is mentioned in there that it may not work with non-reference cards.

 

yep I just had a look it is mentioned, thanks for the heads up Ive been so complacent about my own awesome card that I overlooked there may be a craze going for non ref/rev 2 cards and being truthfull here this IS the unlock thread and should be updated as such...when I type 6950 unlock into google it comes up with this so for new users a sheit load of pages of succeses and the odd bit of info is no good tbh, I hate threads like that personaly so will make drastic steps tommorow to sort the first post to be new user friendly as possible, heh may even generate more traffic to the site

 

I've also noticed with the Asus DCII that GPU voltage adjustment isn't available in MSI Afterburner or Trixx, but the Asus Smartdoctor it is. Smartdoctor allows adjustment up to 1.5V, which I think would be a little um, overenthusiastic.

In actual fact, the other two don't offer anything more over Smartdoctor, at least for the Asus DCII HD6950, just setting up Smartdoctor to load after boot isn't as user friendly.

 

thatguy91, cheers for the awesome info. So, the steps would be :

1. extract the original BIOS (what did you use to do that ?)
2. use W1zzard's script to mod it, you get a new mod BIOS file
3. flash the BIOS on to the card (what did you use?)

Am I missing something or misunderstanding something ?

A couple of questions :

1. Did you try to OC to see if it's still stable ? How much did you try ? (testing purposes only ofc, not like you need the OC now)
2. On the card there is a switch for DVI, but some users reported it would work as switch for dual bios as well. Can you use it and check again in GPUZ if the shaders still show 1536 ?


P.S. you need to change your PC specs ...

 

Those steps are correct, and I used atiwinflash to acquire and flash the bios

I'm not sure why the W1zzard method works and the RBE method doesn't, I only tried the W1zzard method after reading online someone else had a similar issue.

I've sent an email about RBE, hopefully if there really is an issue (which there very much seems to be) it can be easily fixed.

If anyone else has the issue of still having 1408 shaders after using the shader unlock, or Windows not booting etc, but having it work with the W1zzard method please post, so I can send the information via reply email back to RBE so the issue can be sorted.

 

I have the Asus 6950 DirectCU II, recommend it.

Flashed to the 6970 version (ati_.HD6970.2048.110106.bin) using atiflash on a bootable USB, the card handles the 6790 defaults 890/5500/1.175v easily.

Currently running at 950/5500, 40% fan - idle 32 degrees, 63 degrees under load.

 

Did anyone try the 113-C2160100-107 on the Saphhire HD 6950 insted of the -106?

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/94143/Sapphire.HD6950.2048.101212.html

 

I used Atiwinflash and atiflash_386 (DOS) and both gave me the same error - "Cannot erase ROM" in Atiwinflash and error code 0FL01 in atiflash_386 .

Can it be possible that my VGA BIOS is write protected?! I did not find any jumper on the card so this should not be the case, I have the Sapphire HD6950 2GB with the custom cooler:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=000101&pid=1082

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

So, what have people found in regards to this?

 

sorry guys Im leaving this thread now to all of you as Ive gone nvidia for a change (bored lol), hope you all continue to be helpfull, cheers

 

Cheers Dave... good luck with team green

 

hey thanks fasteddy have fun with your unlocked cards (h20 aswell, nice )

 

I am now the happy owner of a Sapphire 6950 2Gb. This exact model:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=000101&pid=1082

No dual-BIOS, yet I'm not interested on squeezing it for a small gain. At least not yet . I'll be reading this whole thread to learn what I can do and what I should not do . I've always used Nvidia video cards, so as for the software I've just installed the Catalyst driver and monitor the temperature with GPU-Z. If anyone has suggestions for me, I'm all ears!