Hi read on a few other forums about the discovery you can turn a 6950 into a 6970 anyone tried this on here ?? http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159 so far 4 people have done it successfully on that link, a few more on other forums I have read.
Sounds good, but I wonder what the stability is like on those shaders. I can only assume its like the X3 unlocking to an X4, but that 4th core was disabled for a reason, while quite a large amount of people have no issues unlocking that extra core. Surely the sheer amount of shaders is increasing the risk of it not being 100% stable. Unless they have only been bios locked due to the fact that they are fine and it has only been done to meet demands for the cards....
It wouldn't be surprising if yields were quite a bit better than for the 5000 series, given the maturity of the 40nm process. So much of the graphics card business is about filling the right price/performance niche that it presumably works out better for AMD to cripple some of their cards to compete with the GTX460 than leave it the uncontested king of the £130-150 market. Makes a bit more sense of this report too. Edit: the 6950 is, of course, not in the same price bracket as the GTX460. I suppose it's competing with the 470, but the point still stands.
Yep, that is just what I was thinking about when I went down to make a cup of tea It is a very interesting way that the market is controlled and essentially the consumer is paying extra/less for almost the same product so that the manufacture can fill a certain price point.
The article is updated at the bottom to reflect user results by brand. So far there have been a total of 42 attempts, and a 100% success rate with testing. I was hoping to hold out on an upgrade for a bit longer, but this pushed me over the edge and I am now the owner of a new Sapphire HD6950.
I am about to get a new card and this is very tempting. Do all currentcards have the bios recovery feature?
yes all the 6950's have the dual BIOS, as they are basically all the same card no matter what brand you buy. This is why it seems the mod works on them all. Just find the cheapest then mod it to 6970 and save about £50-£70
I agree varkanoid - BUT I am the proud owner of the MSI Twin Frozr R6950 OC and this most definitely does not have the twin BIOS or Bios Switch so will be trying the MOD on this one with great care (back-up original and prepare a booting Mem stick with a batch file to restore if I need to). This card though is £249 at Overclockers and it does what it says on the tin, 920 Mhz on the Shaders, not much on the RAM but it will best a standard R6970 at these speeds so mod not needed. I now know why the RAM won't go any higher its HYNIX TC2 which is rated at 5GHz shame on you MSI you could have fitted the R0C. This will mean a Mod with lower Mem speeds methinks - If I do that. Will put up a review of this card with comparisons maybe to answer once and for all "which card should I buy?"
i did this 2 weeks ago. The card runs 10% faster which is in line with the 6970. (not that you will notice it visually) I think my psu probably cant cope for longer than 10 mins so i simply flicked the bios switch back to a 6950. As a 6970 the card runs notieably hotter although it can probably cope with it
There are a couple of threads on this already: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=200601 http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=201203 Worth a read if your thinking about it