OCing a 6950 to reach the performance of a 6970

[Templai]

Hey guys, I've got a XFX HD6950 2GB hopping to be able to flash it to a 6970 but I think I've got the newer model, as it is all black and its cooler is located at the middle of the card, the older model has a black and red color scheme and the cooler is located at the left hand side of the card if I'm not wrong. At first I was like, "WTF? This ain't the reference card!! I'm gonna kill that bi**h who sold this .*n' card to me! Motherf***er piece of .!" bu then I read some articles, forums and people said that you can still reach the performance of a 6970, or very close to it, by overclocking your 6950 if it's a 2GB version like mine is.

 

Look what this guys said:

I know you've probably read a bit about flashing these cards, but you should know that a fair amount of these cards are damaged as a result. It's not usually a problem with the GPU, but the video ram that is not able to handle the 6970 timings a great deal of the time.

 

There is another method to get the performance of a 6970 (or very close to it) with far less risk to damaging your card. One way is to alter your existing bios so it unlocks the shaders of the GPU, but leaves the voltages and timings the same as the 6950. You can then over clock the GPU core to 6970 speeds fairly safe.

 

As far as I can tell, and have seen all the 2GB cards can do this. The only advantage to the reference card, is that they have a bios switch with the default stock bios in one of two bios. This makes it so that if the bios flash failed and bricked your card, the bios switch can help you recover. (You should still be able to reflash the card if it failed by booting up on a 2nd card).

 

I'd definitely advise against flashing the bios with a 6970 bios. I'd highly recommend you alter the existing bios to unlock the shaders only, then OC it after.

 

So, is this really possible? Will I be able to OC my 6950 2GB version to then get a performance of a 6970 or very close to it like that guy said? If so, I'll need help to OC my 6950 after a few days from now because I'm still waiting for my case (HAF X) to arrive.

 

Thank you,

Templai.

[IVIYTH0S]

Overclocking will always close the gap, the card will overclock better locked

[Templai]

Overclocking will always close the gap, the card will overclock better locked

Humm, I couldn't make any sense of what you wrote there ("the card will overclock better locked")..

So, can you post a link or something about how to overclock a HD 6950 2GB version? I can only find guides showing how to flash the 6950's bios to a 6970's bios and that won't help..

Edited May 9, 2011 by Templai

[IVIYTH0S]

It's very easy, I just mean with the unlocked shaders, they may not overclock as high as running the one's that the card was made for.

 

When you get the card let us know and you'll see how easy it is to OC

[t0asty]

I wouldn't necessarily say it can't overclock as high when it's flashed. When I flashed mine to the 6970 bios, I was able to hit 940/1440 where as now with just the unlocked shaders and a little more piece of mind regarding the memory issues, I am only able to hit 880/1380, even with a voltage of 1.175.

 

Regarding the OP, from everything I have read so far, if it's not the reference model, it won't be able to be unlocked. I don't think it would hurt to try it, I am pretty sure winflash will just tell you it can't do it if the card cannot be flashed. I don't know for sure, so don't just take my word for it, I would research it just a little more just in case. Regardless if you can't, it's still a beast card, and enjoy the new fan design, because I am sure it's much quieter than the reference one...

[Speedway]

If you are wanting to see how close you can get to the 6970, then try a DX11 benchmark like 3dMark11, and see how you rank against other similar cards