AMD 10.12 vs 11.1 vs 11.1a tested ... interesting read

[Copenhagen69]

Got a link?

Hopefully some of you find this useful, its an abbreviation of the content in the 20+ page thread on TPU, below articulates some of the issues and damages that could occur from the flash.

Just something to be aware of:

There is a very very large number (20+) of people claiming they have artifacts that started a few days after the flash. They claim the artifacts have not gone away after returning to their stock 6950 bios ie permanent damage.
​

As of now I am not sure if those of us without issues are not saying anything or if there is a majority of issues.

Safe alternitive to 6970 bios:

If you want to be safe there is an alternative to the 6970 bios, Inside the TPU thread there is a .bat file is linked to that will copy your original 5950 bios, and unlock the extra shaders (Link). This does not change any voltages, and therefore is thought to not damage the cards like the 6970 bios is accused of.
​

Why the bios mod is being accused of causing damage:

The theory on the large number of damaged cards seems to be that aftermarket companies used different ram chips than amd specs, so when you flash to a different 69xx bios you may damage the card after extended use. Personally I think its a bit of a which hunt at this point.


​

What I did:

My card is running fine as a 6970, I used the ASUS bios in the database, I have for the time being downclocked it to 6950 speeds. But let me say, Everything on Quality in the bios, maxed out settings in game, and I get like 55 fps in Battlefield BC2.
Also my fan curve keeps the card below 80 (ish) c...that gets noisy. I wondor if the other users may have burned out their cards by leaving their fans on auto.
​

59x0 resources:

Here is a poll of people who have issues, when they got them and what they were doing, take it with a grain of salt.

Official Unlock thread @ TPU

6950 Unlocked Shaders script ("safe")

6950 --> 6970 Flash script ("less safe")
​

 

[evolucion8]

Could the issue be related to fan speed or memory voltages? Seems that the Asus BIOS is the safest route. An unlocked HD 6950 at stock speed still faster than any OCED GTX 560 though.

 

[Skurge]

Could the issue be related to fan speed or memory voltages? Seems that the Asus BIOS is the safest route. An unlocked HD 6950 at stock speed still faster than any OCED GTX 560 though.

Yes, I think everyone knows the 6950 uses different memory from the 6970. 5gbps vs 6gbps and the 6950 memory is set 0.1V lower than 6970 memory.

 

[badb0y]

Hopefully some of you find this useful, its an abbreviation of the content in the 20+ page thread on TPU, below articulates some of the issues and damages that could occur from the flash.

Just something to be aware of:

There is a very very large number (20+) of people claiming they have artifacts that started a few days after the flash. They claim the artifacts have not gone away after returning to their stock 6950 bios ie permanent damage.
​

As of now I am not sure if those of us without issues are not saying anything or if there is a majority of issues.

Safe alternitive to 6970 bios:

If you want to be safe there is an alternative to the 6970 bios, Inside the TPU thread there is a .bat file is linked to that will copy your original 5950 bios, and unlock the extra shaders (Link). This does not change any voltages, and therefore is thought to not damage the cards like the 6970 bios is accused of.
​

Why the bios mod is being accused of causing damage:

The theory on the large number of damaged cards seems to be that aftermarket companies used different ram chips than amd specs, so when you flash to a different 69xx bios you may damage the card after extended use. Personally I think its a bit of a which hunt at this point.


​

What I did:

My card is running fine as a 6970, I used the ASUS bios in the database, I have for the time being downclocked it to 6950 speeds. But let me say, Everything on Quality in the bios, maxed out settings in game, and I get like 55 fps in Battlefield BC2.
Also my fan curve keeps the card below 80 (ish) c...that gets noisy. I wondor if the other users may have burned out their cards by leaving their fans on auto.
​

59x0 resources:

Here is a poll of people who have issues, when they got them and what they were doing, take it with a grain of salt.

Official Unlock thread @ TPU

6950 Unlocked Shaders script ("safe")

6950 --> 6970 Flash script ("less safe")
​

A lot of people reported false positives because BFBC2 was artifacting on many cards from both vendors. There ewere also some bugs with Crysis and Unigine and many people realized that these bugs/graphical issues were probably always there but they never noticed them because they weren't looking fkr them.

Of course there were some cards that outright got damaged, the voltages on the memory are different.

 

[brencat]

[/INDENT]What I did:

My card is running fine as a 6970, I used the ASUS bios in the database, I have for the time being downclocked it to 6950 speeds. But let me say, Everything on Quality in the bios, maxed out settings in game, and I get like 55 fps in Battlefield BC2.
Also my fan curve keeps the card below 80 (ish) c...that gets noisy. I wondor if the other users may have burned out their cards by leaving their fans on auto.
​

59x0 resources:

Here is a poll of people who have issues, when they got them and what they were doing, take it with a grain of salt.

Official Unlock thread @ TPU

6950 Unlocked Shaders script ("safe")

6950 --> 6970 Flash script ("less safe")
​

@Copenhagen... so just to verify, you are currently running the 6970 bios on your 6950 card, but at the standard 6950 800 core /1250 mem clocks? Have you also lowered the core voltage to the 6950's 1.1v or are you still at the 6970's 1.175v ?

Reason I ask is I have done the shader-unlock only mod on my 6950 and I am running stock clocks 800/1250 @ 1.1v, with added +10% Power control in CCC. Also have my custom fan curve set up too. I want to be sure everything is perfectly stable with the unlocked shaders before pushing the core up. So far, I have played ~ 6 hrs BFBC2 @ 1920x1200 maxed and it's been great -- no problems or issues with the unlocked shaders.

When I start pushing up the speed, I'm probably going to limit the mem to 1325 which is the official max for the 6950 but push the core to 880-900ish. What voltage is needed do you think for this combination? 1.15, 1.175, or higher?

 

[Copenhagen69]

@Copenhagen... so just to verify, you are currently running the 6970 bios on your 6950 card, but at the standard 6950 800 core /1250 mem clocks? Have you also lowered the core voltage to the 6950's 1.1v or are you still at the 6970's 1.175v ?

Reason I ask is I have done the shader-unlock only mod on my 6950 and I am running stock clocks 800/1250 @ 1.1v, with added +10% Power control in CCC. Also have my custom fan curve set up too. I want to be sure everything is perfectly stable with the unlocked shaders before pushing the core up. So far, I have played ~ 6 hrs BFBC2 @ 1920x1200 maxed and it's been great -- no problems or issues with the unlocked shaders.

When I start pushing up the speed, I'm probably going to limit the mem to 1325 which is the official max for the 6950 but push the core to 880-900ish. What voltage is needed do you think for this combination? 1.15, 1.175, or higher?

Yup 6970 bios, 900mhz core, 1250 memory.
1.175V (Stock 6970) is my voltage, I have not yet, and do not plan on increasing the voltage. I am running 900 core completely stable. I can set it up to 940-950, but it is not stable I get hard crashes. If I set it around 930 I will get driver crashes but my games do not even crash.

 

[brencat]

Yup 6970 bios, 900mhz core, 1250 memory.
1.175V (Stock 6970) is my voltage, I have not yet, and do not plan on increasing the voltage. I am running 900 core completely stable. I can set it up to 940-950, but it is not stable I get hard crashes. If I set it around 930 I will get driver crashes but my games do not even crash.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like the memory on the 6950 doesn't like to be pushed much and is likely the weak link in the proper overclocking combinations of core/mem people are trying.

What happens if you use 900 core / 1325 mem (the official max of the 6950 mem) @ 1.175v ? Is it still stable ?

 

[Copenhagen69]

well the 6970 uses different mem. so yes if going that way it is the weakest link.

unstable for me ... artifacts

 

[Copenhagen69]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like the memory on the 6950 doesn't like to be pushed much and is likely the weak link in the proper overclocking combinations of core/mem people are trying.

What happens if you use 900 core / 1325 mem (the official max of the 6950 mem) @ 1.175v ? Is it still stable ?

have you tried it? if so let me know ... I am curious to see if it is just my card:thumbsup:

 

[brencat]

have you tried it? if so let me know ... I am curious to see if it is just my card:thumbsup:

Sure thing. Played BFBC2 for another 3 hrs last night and everything is running great. There is another fellow in one of these threads who is running a shader-unlocked Asus 6950 @ 900/1400 on stock volts (1.1v) apparently.

I'm going to go 840/1325 tonight with mine on stock volts (1.1v) and see how that plays. Going to try a bunch of different core/mem combinations. May take me a few days though. Will report back when I can.

 

[brencat]

I'm going to go 840/1325 tonight with mine on stock volts (1.1v) and see how that plays. Going to try a bunch of different core/mem combinations. May take me a few days though. Will report back when I can.

840 core / 1325 mem @ stock volts worked great -- played another 3 hrs BFBC2 no issues and it was super smooth.

Going to try 880 core / 1325 mem tonight @ stock volts... not inclined to push the mem beyond the official spec. Just going to focus on the core speed.

 

[Copenhagen69]

awesome!

lemme know how that goes for you ...

 

[evolucion8]

840 core / 1325 mem @ stock volts worked great -- played another 3 hrs BFBC2 no issues and it was super smooth.

Going to try 880 core / 1325 mem tonight @ stock volts... not inclined to push the mem beyond the official spec. Just going to focus on the core speed.

Good! I think that the card will be more GPU bound than bandwidth bound.

 

[bargetrav]

awesome!

lemme know how that goes for you ...

To be honest, the flash success rate is far higher than you are making it out to be, just because you were one of the few who actually had problems, the vast majority did not, and that poll of 20 people who supposedly had problems, maybe half truly did, and that's out of many hundreds, if not 1000's of people who flashed.



My car has been running fine and stable at 925core / 1410mem for two months without any issues, that's OC'd even for a 6970!


It's a Sapphire card running a Sapphire 6970 stock bios.

 

[bargetrav]

An overclocked 560 can surpass a 6970
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2138790

A lot of people on various forums have been complaining about artifacting when trying to overclock an unlocked 6950. Probably because a true 6970 has an 8 pin + 6 pin power connector while the 6950 only has 2 6 pin connectors. Buyer beware.

It's been shown that the additional 2 pins on the 8 pin are GROUNDS.

 

[badb0y]

1.3v 1000 core/ 1400 memory and I play some of the most demanding games out (BFBC2, Metro 2033, Crysis). I crank my setting to the max too so my card works it's ass off in all the games above. I have had this card for about a month now so thats 4 weeks with 0 problems thus far.

I am only shader unlocked .

 

[Wreckage]

It's been shown that the additional 2 pins on the 8 pin are GROUNDS.

6-pin can supply up to 75W of power while 8-pin power connector can supply up to 150W.

 

[Copenhagen69]

To be honest, the flash success rate is far higher than you are making it out to be, just because you were one of the few who actually had problems, the vast majority did not, and that poll of 20 people who supposedly had problems, maybe half truly did, and that's out of many hundreds, if not 1000's of people who flashed.



My car has been running fine and stable at 925core / 1410mem for two months without any issues, that's OC'd even for a 6970!


It's a Sapphire card running a Sapphire 6970 stock bios.

I wasnt making it out to be a huge deal. I was just saying some people have reported problems so you should keep an eye out for it and be aware :thumbsup:

 

[brencat]

6-pin can supply up to 75W of power while 8-pin power connector can supply up to 150W.

So how can the GTX 560s or 570s with 2 x 6 pins possibly get enough power then if that is true (since they use way more at load than the 6950)? A card that draws 30A would imply 360 W of power... so even 2 x 8 pins wouldn't be enough. I'm calling bullshit on that one, sorry.

 

[Wreckage]

So how can the GTX 560s or 570s with 2 x 6 pins possibly get enough power then if that is true (since they use way more at load than the 6950)? A card that draws 30A would imply 360 W of power... so even 2 x 8 pins wouldn't be enough. I'm calling bullshit on that one, sorry.

The 560 actually draws less power than a 6950
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce-gtx-560-ti_4.html#sect0

Also you do realize that power also comes from the PCI-E port.....right?

Are you saying AMD put the 8-pin power connector on the 6970 just for poops and giggles? I'm sure they have a reason for using it.

 

[bargetrav]

6-pin can supply up to 75W of power while 8-pin power connector can supply up to 150W.

Actually with dual 6pins you can supply up to 225W, but anyway, I someone in some forum took a look at the connectors and they were grounds on that 8pin the 6970 had...

regardless, obviously the card gets enough power, as i run my overclocked with a 6970 bios with no issues...

 

[Skurge]

PCI-E slot provides another 75W of power.

 

[MrK6]

6-pin can supply up to 75W of power while 8-pin power connector can supply up to 150W.

Would you like to explain how adding two extra ground wires allows the connector to magically supply another 75W of power?

Anyway, reading through the fanboy nonsense most people can see that the 6950 is an incredible deal. 2GB models <$260 AR on Newegg right now and there simply is no reason to get any other high-end card.

 

[Wreckage]

Would you like to explain how adding two extra ground wires allows the connector to magically supply another 75W of power?

So the 6970 has an 8 pin connector just for looks?

Anyone can see that the 6970 requires more power than a 6950 and a bios hack won't fix that.

 

[3DVagabond]

6-pin can supply up to 75W of power while 8-pin power connector can supply up to 150W.

A 6pin connector is spec'd at 75W. Nothing stops it from supplying more, which they will do no problem.

Are you saying AMD put the 8-pin power connector on the 6970 just for poops and giggles? I'm sure they have a reason for using it.

No, they do it to meet pcie specs.