HD 7870 XT 3GB (DS) - can it be flashed to a 7950/70?

[Assimilator1]

Firstly, it's no typo, this card does have 3GB with a 384bit bus, it seems this card is a developers sample, see here for more info on that. JFYI, I thought I was buying a HD 7950 at the time. Anyway!...

Can any of the Tahiti cards be flashed for an upgrade? I remember that many 6950s could be flashed to 6970s, & I wondered this morning if I could flash my hybrid card to a higher spec.
Or are all the Tahiti GPUs hardware locked?

 

[f2bnp]

It's probably locked, but seeing as this is a developer's sample, who knows? You could try it out and if you brick the card you can always reflash it using the iGPU of your processor or another card.

 

[Assimilator1]

Thanks for your reply, on going back to the ocnet thread I linked above, I see some people said & tried flashing them (I'd forgotten that ).
I don't have an iGPU, but apparently these cards have 2 bioses, so I can just switch back to the other bios if a flash bricks it.
Btw, the people who had flashed them had only gotten there cards upto 1536 shaders (7870 XT spec), which mine already has, I guess I'll just try it & see if it works.

Would be interested to know if anyone's had any luck with doing this on Tahiti cards.

 

[f2bnp]

I have never seen or heard of unlocked Tahiti cards, unfortunately. The card you have in your possession is a bit of a different story though. Being a developer's sample/engineering sample or whatever, it's a complete toss-up. How did these get in to circulation in the first place?

 

[Assimilator1]

Ah ok, fair enough.

According to 1 guy in the ocnet thread, he bought a job lot from someone who had salvaged them from a dead games developer, & someone else apparently got them from an AMD employee!
I haven't tried flashing the bios yet, I got side tracked by benchmarking Milkway@Home on it before trying to change it.
I don't hold much hope for going over 1536 shaders though, other folk in the ocnet thread didn't.
Btw, the default bios for these cards only allows 768 shaders!! And I noticed that's exactly what the default (no2) bios allows on my card......... which makes me think that someone has already flashed the bios on it & knew it wasn't right in the 1st place!
The current no1 bios on my card thinks it's a HD 7950 boost, which should have 1792 shaders, but it's stuck at 1536, so I actually already have my answer , flashing won't take it over 1536.