AMD Radeon HD 6950 Software Unlock to Radeon 6970 BIOS Flash Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,241 words · ~6 min read
0:00
all right guys this is a 6950
0:03
or is it there's been a lot of talk about a potential unlock from the 6950
0:09
to the 6970. now remember graphics card overclocking for a long time has been
0:15
kind of limited like you can here this is a 6970 so the one physical difference
0:19
between these cards is an eight pin connector here whereas this one has a
0:23
two six pin connectors so for a long time we haven't been able to properly
0:27
overclock a lower end card to a higher end card for example the gtx 570 has
0:33
fewer functional units on it than the gtx 580 you cannot even if you overclock
0:38
this 570 to the same speed as the 580 it
0:41
will not have the same performance now
0:44
a software unlocking of the the either usually their laser cut
0:50
or somehow disabled functional units software
0:56
re-enabling seems to be back there that was the most awkward way of saying that
1:00
ever but according to tech powerup the
1:03
6950 should be possible to unlock to a 6970
1:08
so i have a sample card here and i just
1:11
want to go through the process with you guys and show you how dead simple it is
1:16
so i downloaded the package from tech powerup which has
1:21
this in it okay so there's wind flash here i thought i was going to have to do
1:24
the flashing uh do the BIOS update through the uh through a bootable usb
1:29
but it looks like i don't even have to do that because of this little sort of
1:32
magic thing right here so this card has two BIOS's it is dual BIOS the 6950 and
1:38
the 6970 both are they're labeled one two so all i had to do was change it to
1:43
the two position okay that's the first thing i had to do and then i have to go
1:48
to flash to 69 70. all right then
1:52
there's some little instructions here i press any key to continue flashing in
1:56
progress please wait okay please
2:00
restart your system for the changes to apply
2:04
after reboot check the shader count using the GPU-z included in this
2:08
directory so i've already opened up gpuz because i
2:11
wanted to see okay so there's our shaders that's the functional units i'm
2:14
talking about more shaders potentially okay so guys check that out look closely
2:18
and we're going to reboot the computer and see if we have successfully
2:26
unlocked this 6950 into a 6970 and if it
2:29
really is that easy and takes only a couple minutes now here's something
2:33
really cool about the dual BIOS on the 6900 or rather the 69
2:39
yeah i guess all the 6900 series cards so far have this feature so the dual
2:43
BIOS allows you to go oh okay that didn't work like let's say we get a
2:46
bunch of artifacts all over the screen or it's not stable or whatever we can
2:50
flash it back as you can see there was a file included for that but we could also
2:54
just turn the computer off flip the switch to the one position and go back
2:57
to our original BIOS just like that no problem at all whereas with with other
3:02
cards you can run into issues where you can't um
3:07
you can't boot anymore because the BIOS didn't take and then you got to put in
3:11
another card and another slot and boot to that one and then manually flash the
3:16
other one and it can be kind of messy and a real pain in the
3:19
uh pain in something anyway okay so no
3:23
don't always ask me this so let's find out if we have more
3:27
shaders now hmm
3:30
no we don't okay maybe i did something wrong give me
3:35
time to figure this out then
3:38
all right i have found a different set of instructions on the tech powerup website that seems to be quite different
3:44
indeed so i've downloaded a bio so i'm going to
3:48
reset with the bioswitch in the one position instead and see if i can find a
3:52
way to make it work this way so stay tuned guys you're along for the ride on
3:56
this one i guess all right so now we're running winflash
3:59
manually or rather ati win flash manually
4:02
so the instructions say now to load an image so i'm going to go into the
4:08
whoops where are my downloads anyway i guess i better find those Linus
4:13
downloads there we are okay so
4:17
what's that under let's go with this no i don't think it's there
4:20
i think it was under yeah there we go
4:24
okay so okay we have the BIOS image there so click load image followed by
4:29
program so we're going to click program please wait flashing is in process
4:33
something something something erasing v okay this this looks like it took longer
4:37
so that's probably a good sign your v BIOS was programmed successfully
4:42
okay cool you have to reboot the system before the
4:46
changes take effect all right i guess we'll do that so i'll be back in a
4:49
moment all right here we have the moment of truth again
4:54
opening up gpuz here we go here we go
4:58
hey hey 1536
5:03
unified shaders check that out so it was that easy this
5:07
is not a cherry picked card in any way shape or form
5:10
and it is now according to GPU-z completely unlocked
5:15
to 69-70 spec so the only thing to do
5:19
now once you've unlocked your card is to
5:23
extreme benchmark chess is to find out if it's actually stable so the only way
5:26
to do that is to run some benchmarks run some games
5:30
and uh see if you see any visual artifacts i did do a video a little
5:33
while ago where i showed what an artifact was i don't know what it was called so unless you are
5:39
like a really avid viewer you probably won't know which one it is but hey if
5:42
you do remember the one please post it in the comments and guys please thumbs
5:46
up on that particular comment so that we can all see what an artifact looks like
5:51
so i'm just going to let you guys stick around while we run at least the first graphics test here and see if the card
5:56
did manage to unlock successfully so far it looks alright so that is a
6:01
pretty cool little tweak and i'm getting some funny looks from
6:05
someone else in the office here who thinks i'm standing here in my office talking to myself
6:09
so thanks for checking out my video on how to
6:14
flash the Radeon 6950 BIOS to the 6970
6:19
and uh yeah make sure the credit goes where it's due because i am not the one
6:24
who came up with this wizard at tech power up is truly a wizard and
6:29
we all owe him a great deal for his GPU zed tool all of his great reviews that
6:34
he does over there and this latest trick
6:37
which is pretty phenomenal don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips