Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Guide

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Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Guide

Post by Apoptosis »

Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Mod Guide

Thanks to an insecure restriction method, the AMD Radeon HD 6950 video card can be unlocked and turned into an AMD Radeon HD 6970 with just a few minutes work. Today we break down the process on a reference designed card and we run performance benchmarks along the way to see if the process is worthwhile or just a waste of time. Read on to see what happens to our retail ASUS EAH6950 graphics card as we perform the operation!

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Article Title: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Guide @ Legit Reviews
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1608/1/
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by DoctorK6 »

If you're going to post an article on almost five-month-old news, I would have hoped you'd at least do the research to post on how to do it correctly. All you had to do was copy techniques and programs already described by Techpowerup and others and you still dropped the ball. Really? Flashing a 6970 BIOS to a 6950 eventually fries the card as the memory on the 6950's can't handle the higher voltage. This has been well documented and has caused a lot of grief, and by now it's common knowledge across most tech boards. The only safe way to unlock your 6950's is by modifying a 6950 BIOS to unlock all shaders/TPU's. I'm posting this here so that your readers hoping to do this to their cards are warned. Maybe if you read your email, you wouldn't get called out in public.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about34382.html

And you wonder why no one takes you seriously? :roll:
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Apoptosis »

Not sure you sent the e-mail to, but I've heard of a bunch of people running this mod and they didn't fry their cards...

HardwareCanucks -
I hears about ''fired'' memory when the 6950 is ran at 6970 speeds. Is it rumors or it happened ?
It didn't necessarily fry memory, but it was completely unstable in some cases. Which is why people only unlock the shaders now and test clock speeds on the vram/shaders/core separately.
Overclock.net -
Dont forget though the memory is rated at 5GB/s where the 6970s memory is rated at 6GB/s. Frying memory is alot easier than frying a core.
Well, the 6950 runs at 5GB/s and the 6970 runs at 5.5GB/s
I pretty sure the 50 can OC to 5.5GB/s. Even if they don't, its not the mem speed that brings most of the performance increase.
I also don't see any issues about frying memory in the TechPowerUp article. Sounds like some people are getting bad overclocks due to the card they are using not being able to handle the overclock. No two cards are identical as I'm sure you know. Did you blow up your 6950 when modding it to a 6970 or are you just bored and looking to stir the pot?

But, thanks for joining and trying to be a prick about an article. Yeah, we know the news isn't new, but that doesn't mean we can't write about it. Not everyone in the world reads Techpowerup, so it's okay if we do an article on the same thing in our own way.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Kaos Kid »

All you had to do was copy techniques and programs already described by Techpowerup and others
..and then you would have joined just to complain about plagiarism? :roll:

If Nate missed your emails then perhaps you could have been a bit more mature about it by posting "check your email and PM's please" instead of showing your @ss and being a dong online. Please come again... :roll:
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Major_A »

Ah, the good old days of getting something for free. I remember having to unlock my extra pipelines with RivaTuner after a driver update on my 6800nu. Too bad the Vertex shader on my card was defective.

I'm surprised that AMD hasn't shut this down. But on the other hand I'm not surprised at all. AMD has been more accepting of overclocking and tweaking for a lot longer than Intel/nVidia.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by DoctorK6 »

Apoptosis wrote:Not sure you sent the e-mail to, but I've heard of a bunch of people running this mod and they didn't fry their cards...


And that's your basis of validation? "I have a friend of a friend?"
Apoptosis wrote:HardwareCanucks -
I hears about ''fired'' memory when the 6950 is ran at 6970 speeds. Is it rumors or it happened ?
It didn't necessarily fry memory, but it was completely unstable in some cases. Which is why people only unlock the shaders now and test clock speeds on the vram/shaders/core separately.
Overclock.net -
Dont forget though the memory is rated at 5GB/s where the 6970s memory is rated at 6GB/s. Frying memory is alot easier than frying a core.
Well, the 6950 runs at 5GB/s and the 6970 runs at 5.5GB/s
I pretty sure the 50 can OC to 5.5GB/s. Even if they don't, its not the mem speed that brings most of the performance increase.
Hardware Canucks isn't what I would call a legitimate review site either, but that's besides the point. I'm not sure why you included either of those quotations as neither addresses the problem. The 6970's memory is rated for a higher speed AND runs at a higher voltage (1.6V I believe, as compared to the 1.5V of the 6950). Contrary to the popular platitude, speed DOESN'T kill (hardware), voltage does; this is Overclocking 101.
Apoptosis wrote:I also don't see any issues about frying memory in the TechPowerUp article. Sounds like some people are getting bad overclocks due to the card they are using not being able to handle the overclock. No two cards are identical as I'm sure you know. Did you blow up your 6950 when modding it to a 6970 or are you just bored and looking to stir the pot?
Actually I have an unlocked 6950 @ 1030/1400MHz because I modded it the correct way. But again, not the point. If you're going to post how-to's you should do your research and understand the hardware you're talking about and you DEFINITELY shouldn't put your readers hardware at risk. Negligence like you displayed makes a headache for people like me who fix hardware. All the information I just discussed is in discussion/forum section of the TPU article, which was discovered after people were permanently damaging their 6950's from running the 6970 BIOS. It's now common knowledge that you should only unlock your own 6950 BIOS to get the extra shaders/TMU's as this leaves everything else at its appropriate setting.
Apoptosis wrote:But, thanks for joining and trying to be a prick about an article. Yeah, we know the news isn't new, but that doesn't mean we can't write about it. Not everyone in the world reads Techpowerup, so it's okay if we do an article on the same thing in our own way.
My tone is this acerbic so you don't make the same mistake again. You have a responsibility when you post for/run a tech website to double and triple check your **** because others are depending on its accuracy. And it's not just TPU, I said "and others" to signify that this has been investigated across many tech communities and is now common knowledge. There are new users every day getting into this stuff and people more than appreciate writers like you who take the time to make helpful guides. The guides aren't helpful though when they risk damaging hardware - that's the take home message. Feel free to delete my posts and account, no offense taken.
Kaos Kid wrote:
All you had to do was copy techniques and programs already described by Techpowerup and others
..and then you would have joined just to complain about plagiarism? :roll:

If Nate missed your emails then perhaps you could have been a bit more mature about it by posting "check your email and PM's please" instead of showing your @ss and being a dong online. Please come again... :roll:
Where did I mention anything about plagiarism? How about you get off his dick and let the men talk, hmm?
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Apoptosis »

Do you have any links to your sources here on these un-named communities that have all this detailed information on the right way to do a mod like this? I'd love to read about all the fried and blown up cards from doing this mod.

You've lashed out at LR for checking sources, but where are yours?
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Kaos Kid »

Where did I mention anything about plagiarism? How about you get off his dick and let the men talk, hmm?
:lol:

Where have you been? Is it normal operating procedure for you to copy other sites' info? That is what you were suggesting that Apop do, but at least he's doing his own reviews and not just jumping on other sites' tech nutsacks. I'm on your ass, not his dick. And from the smell of it others have been there earlier and often. Do they even make tic-tacs for assholes like you? And as far as men goes, you proved yourself a child when you posted as you did. So go find your sexy girlfriend, long duc. If you were indeed a man you would call Nate on the phone or leave him a number to call you to discuss this instead of posting your crap here. Jackass.

Oh, wait. Its LEET Jackass, so sorry for the misnomer--I want to give full credit where it's due.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by DoctorK6 »

Kaos Kid wrote:
Where did I mention anything about plagiarism? How about you get off his dick and let the men talk, hmm?
:lol:

Where have you been? Is it normal operating procedure for you to copy other sites' info? That is what you were suggesting that Apop do, but at least he's doing his own reviews and not just jumping on other sites' tech nutsacks. I'm on your ass, not his dick. And from the smell of it others have been there earlier and often. Do they even make tic-tacs for assholes like you? And as far as men goes, you proved yourself a child when you posted as you did. So go find your sexy girlfriend, long duc. If you were indeed a man you would call Nate on the phone or leave him a number to call you to discuss this instead of posting your crap here. Jackass.

Oh, wait. Its LEET Jackass, so sorry for the misnomer--I want to give full credit where it's due.
You mad, bro? Maybe you should get back on his dick so the rest of us don't have to read your bull****. You're not doing Apoptosis any favors by coming off as his clueless butt buddy.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by DoctorK6 »

Apoptosis wrote:Do you have any links to your sources here on these un-named communities that have all this detailed information on the right way to do a mod like this? I'd love to read about all the fried and blown up cards from doing this mod.

You've lashed out at LR for checking sources, but where are yours?
Are you that lazy?
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Apoptosis »

You came to the forums and took the stance that we didn't do our homework and that we are going to harm people.

You could have come with the attitude where you showed us something that we might not have known about and linked to wtf you were talking about.

The reason we have a forums is to help people and not to flame them.

I contacted AMD about this and they said this:
I don’t recall the memory voltage being different, but they are different parts between the 5.0Gbps device on the PRO and the 6.0Gbps device on the XT.
It was also implied that by flashing a Radeon HD 6950 to a Radeon HD 6970 you aren't going to put the card at higher risk than a typical overclocking scenario. There are also people on some of those threads that Have no issues at all after ~6 months of doing this - http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showt ... 287&page=8

I'll look into this more and be sure we get a warning added to the article about this, but as with anything like this there is always a risk taken.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Kaos Kid »

DoctorK6 wrote:
Kaos Kid wrote:
Where did I mention anything about plagiarism? How about you get off his dick and let the men talk, hmm?
:lol:

Where have you been? Is it normal operating procedure for you to copy other sites' info? That is what you were suggesting that Apop do, but at least he's doing his own reviews and not just jumping on other sites' tech nutsacks. I'm on your ass, not his dick. And from the smell of it others have been there earlier and often. Do they even make tic-tacs for assholes like you? And as far as men goes, you proved yourself a child when you posted as you did. So go find your sexy girlfriend, long duc. If you were indeed a man you would call Nate on the phone or leave him a number to call you to discuss this instead of posting your crap here. Jackass.

Oh, wait. Its LEET Jackass, so sorry for the misnomer--I want to give full credit where it's due.
You mad, bro? Maybe you should get back on his dick so the rest of us don't have to read your bull****. You're not doing Apoptosis any favors by coming off as his clueless butt buddy.
Butt buddy? :lol: I consider Nate a friend and I'm there for friends. Maybe even like a son. Do you have any friends that you would stand up for?

Oh, and you are doing him favors by coming here and being a dick? As far as "the rest of us" it is only you, your first post showed your true colors. Don't act like the rest of this board is standing behind you on this. There were many ways you could have handled this but you chose to show that you were only here for the ego trip. Had you actually meant to help others when you posted you would have worked with Apop on this and then he would have most likely thanked you and gave you due credit, and you would have been considered a positive influence by "the rest of us". Too late for that now. Go swing your e-peepee somewhere else, young man, this old guy has no more time for your ego.

Nate, I'm out of this. Have fun.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by DoctorK6 »

Apoptosis wrote:You came to the forums and took the stance that we didn't do our homework and that we are going to harm people.

You could have come with the attitude where you showed us something that we might not have known about and linked to wtf you were talking about.

The reason we have a forums is to help people and not to flame them.

I contacted AMD about this and they said this:
I don’t recall the memory voltage being different, but they are different parts between the 5.0Gbps device on the PRO and the 6.0Gbps device on the XT.
It was also implied that by flashing a Radeon HD 6950 to a Radeon HD 6970 you aren't going to put the card at higher risk than a typical overclocking scenario. There are also people on some of those threads that Have no issues at all after ~6 months of doing this - http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showt ... 287&page=8

I'll look into this more and be sure we get a warning added to the article about this, but as with anything like this there is always a risk taken.
Then I apologize for coming off as an asshole and will start over.

The problem is that there is a definite pattern where 6950's are killed from being flashed to a 6970, specifically, it seems to be the memory (or part of the memory subsystem) which goes. If you look through the Google search there, there's more than enough information, including pictures. Has a site done a definitive diagnosis of the problem and pinpointed where it goes wrong? I don't think so, or at least I haven't seen it. However, one has to remember that there are inherent differences between the 6950 and the 6970 on the hardware level (especially in the power circuitry) that flashing will not overcome.

The main goal here is to unlock the "extra" shaders and TMU's on the 6950 GPU to get a fully working Cayman core. That said, the BIOS hack, which conveniently has been integrated into RBE now, does just that and only that. While I'm sure there are examples of people flashing 6950's to 6970's and their cards are fine, just as I'm sure there are examples of people flashing a 6950 to modify the shaders only and the card died immediately, and probably everything in between, I'm pointing out a trend that will help avoid backlash.

It's your article, do what you want with it, but for the sake of your readers and creating extra work and headache all around, reconsider how your article is presented. It's true that there's a certain risk with all modifications to hardware, but on a scale of what can be done, the 6950 shader unlock only is pretty safe and easy to do as long as it's done properly.
Kaos Kid wrote:Butt buddy? :lol: I consider Nate a friend and I'm there for friends. Maybe even like a son. Do you have any friends that you would stand up for?

Oh, and you are doing him favors by coming here and being a dick? As far as "the rest of us" it is only you, your first post showed your true colors. Don't act like the rest of this board is standing behind you on this. There were many ways you could have handled this but you chose to show that you were only here for the ego trip. Had you actually meant to help others when you posted you would have worked with Apop on this and then he would have most likely thanked you and gave you due credit, and you would have been considered a positive influence by "the rest of us". Too late for that now. Go swing your e-peepee somewhere else, young man, this old guy has no more time for your ego.

Nate, I'm out of this. Have fun.
While I'm at it, I'll apologize here too for being insulting. Also, no need to drag another soul into this. As I said, feel free to delete my posts and account.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Apoptosis »

Not going to delete your account or anything like that... This is a community and I give every one a chance to voice their thoughts.

Another engineer at AMD said this:
HD 6970 boards are built with 6Gbps rated GDDR5 devices (and they run at 5.5Gbps)
HD 6950 boards are built with 5Gbps rated GDDR5 devices (and they run at 5.0Gbps)

There is no guarantee that an HD 6950 will be able to run 10% above the DRAM’s rated clock speeds, so an end-user’s mileage may vary. As AMD we can’t recommend that end users flash HD6950 boards with a HD6970 BIOS.
Another engineer:
In general terms, it can very from product to product, sometime yes, sometimes no. However, the one thing that is the case is that 99% of the time there is a technical reason why the ASIC is a PRO and not an XT.

Trying to get actual AMD engineers feedback on this rather than feedback on others forums... We all know the most upset people are the ones that post online, so usually stuff is greatly sku'd to one side.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Major_A »

Apoptosis wrote:We all know the most upset people are the ones that post online, so usually stuff is greatly sku'd to one side.
This is the truth. People who are satisfied rarely leave feedback. It's always the people who love it or hate it. Look at most of the reviews on Newegg, mostly 5s and 1s. And when looking at product reviews I tend to look more at the 4s and 2s as they are more of a real opinion.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by SinnerSmile »

Hello dudes, a few month (maybe 3-4) ago i was interesting in this subject, mostly on Ru forums (kinda THG) and truly im tired cos nobody seems just don't have enough knowledge or exp about this card overlocking.
the poin is, that I'm talking not about 1st rev of 6950 2gb (inf about its overlocking to 6970 easy to find), I'm talking bout kinda 2nd revision (perhaps its the same one type of card, that was mentioned in this post's overlocking review, as 2nd 6950 card, that truly wasn't participating in test) i have exactly this videocard(from HIS). it contain one cooler at the middle of the card and no BIOS switch (but there is kinda points on exact plate for 1 n 2 BIOS but just without switch). is that possible to overlock this card to 6970, someone done it? where can i read bout it? is cards new middle cooler cool it enough?
And finaly what bout that memory burning?
as i understand, memory speed and voltage, that can burn it, is not so important for performance, then, where i can read how to unlock everythin from 6970, excluding that memory things.
Hope for your help and understanding.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by anuparockz »

Nice guide. Too bad for me who is an NVIDIA fan just for the sake of PhysX!
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by zoniezx6 »

I have the ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Radeon HD 6950 which I understand to be a “non-reference” card, how ever I receive conflicting information on that. From research this BIOS flash only works on “reference” cards. Your post refers to that as well. Your post also states the card tested is discontinued and the ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Radeon HD 6950 is it's replacement and that it is a "reference" card.

Questions are:

Is the newer ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Radeon HD 6950 a “non-reference” card, or is it a “reference” card with an ASUS custom cooling solution?

If this is a “non-reference” card, wouldn’t it be safer just unlocking the stream processors to the 6970 and increasing the core clock to 950MHz at stock voltage?

With those questions asked, I believe 950MHz is the highest clock speed this card set to obtain, which I guess is another question. ASUS also doesn’t state that the EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Radeon HD 6950 is a dual BIOS card. My understanding is that the switch is a dual lane DVI switch which assigns some bandwidth from one of the HDMIs to DVI so you can run beyond 1920 x 1200 on that port (which leaves hdmi1 disabled).

I have also read and have seen an AMD logo on the main chip of "reference" cards, which is not seen on the ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Radeon HD 6950. I have indeed seen the logo on other cards. You will see what I am referring to toward the bottom of the page in this link.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/asus-12-p1.html

Any advise on the newer ASUS card would be appreciated.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by Apoptosis »

If you'd like to remove your HSF and post pictures of your video card front and back I'm sure we will be able to help you out.

With so many versions and revisions we really need to see pictures.
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Re: Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 - BIOS Flash Gu

Post by zoniezx6 »

Thanks for the response, but I’ll have to put a lot of thought into disassembling the entire assembly to take pictures. Mainly because if the card can accept the full BIOS flash, about the only thing I would really gain is the ability to increase the core clock further.
Your response leads me to believe I have a “non-reference” card which is what I am guessing especially since I just purchased it new. Certainly the manufacturers have caught on by now. I just like to play with these things, so figured someone might know.
I doubt they will tell me but I’ll shoot an email off to ASUS and see what they say.
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