Make an ATi HD6950 into 6970 for FREE!!!! I am :)

[Gavac220]

I have spent the last 2 months looking at a graphics card upgrade. I had decided on a ATi HD 6870 or a GTX 560Ti. These cards were incredibly close on performance terms with only 3-5fps difference either way, depending on which game was benched. Then I read this:-

The picture above shows the disabled HD 6950 shaders in red. When unlocked, these deactivated units become active, resulting in a substantial performance increase.

AMD has two methods of locking the shader count on all of their recent GPUs. The first one relies on fuses inside the GPU, or on the substrate - a mechanism similar to Intel's multiplier locking. It is not reversible as far as we know. The second mechanism is the one we are interested in, AMD can configure the VGA BIOS in a way that it disables extra shaders, in addition to the ones disabled via the on-die fuses. This method is mostly used to create engineering samples or reviewer cards that match the target specifications. Usually production cards come with the shader count configured in the fuses, so that it can not be changed.

Apparently currently shipping Radeon HD 6950 cards from all manufacturers - which actually are all the same card with different sticker - have their shaders locked via the BIOS method, so we can exploit it easily.

Source:-http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/ove ... idcard/159

These cards ship with 2 Bios options! This means there is minimal risk, if any at all, and you get a 6970 for the price of a 6950! WOOHOO!

So, after researching this over the last week, I picked up a new HD6950 for £155 delivered! Absolute bargain! This was what the 560Ti's were coming in at, and slightly o/c'd 6870's. It also has custom cooling, which will help with the extra loads and more extreme overclocking in the future.



Delivery on the 5th of December

[CrAp]

sweeeeet

[Gavac220]

Worked an absolute treat, but beware as it is getting harder, and may even need a little luck. As all the manufacturers move away from 'reference' board designs the bios locks have got better and there is even talk of laser cutting to prevent the change on certain boards. I used RBE to modify my own Bios, and unlocked all the extra shaders. A simple o/c and a 20% power boost in CCC and now running smoothly with a HD 6970 for £155.



p.s Got Dirt 3 free too - bonus