Turn an ATI 6950 -> ATI 6970 with just a firmware upgrade, save £50

Lum

Dunno how much interest there will be in this around this forum, but as it's all about moneysaving, I figured I'd share the news for anyone thinking of spending their xmas money on a shiny new graphics card.

It turns out that the ATI 6950 (Cheapest price: £222.89 on Scan.co.uk) and the ATI 6970 (£275.76) are in fact the same chip on the same card, only the 6950 is gimped in software.

Therefore all you need to do is download a 6970 BIOS and flash it onto the card. Since these cards have two BIOSes and a physical switch to flick between them, it's pretty much risk free too!

Details here.

Disclaimer: If you !!!!!! up your card, I'm not responsible and neither are MSE.

exup

Lum wrote: »

Therefore all you need to do is download a 4870 BIOS
Details here.

Disclaimer: If you !!!!!! up your card, I'm not responsible and neither are MSE.

did you mean to put 4870 or was this just a mistype?

Lum

exup wrote: »

did you mean to put 4870 or was this just a mistype?

That was a mistype. I was thinking about buying a 6950 and flashing it to replace my existing 4870.

Fixed now.

globalds

This is a bit confusing now.

Could you tell me which card you are on about ?

4950 or 6950 ?

DatabaseError

he's talking about the 6950
shame the same isn't possible on the 5850, which I believe is hardware crippled
..but still works pretty well, thank you santa

poppy10_2

Not quite the same. Although the 6950 and the 6970 both use the same chip hardware and therefore the 6950 can be flashed with the 6970 BIOS to make it unlock the disabled shaders, it won't be quite as fast. The 6950 cards come with two 6-pin power connectors, while the 6970 has a 6 pin and an 8 pin - the limited power draw on the younger sibling means it won't be able to hit full pelt even with running the same chip and BIOS as the 6970. Plus the 6970 cards come with better cooling, whereas a flashed 6950 may well overheat as the housing was designed for a chip running at lower speeds.

Still, a nice upgrade for free, and definitely kills the market for the 6970s unless they drop the price to within £10-£20 of the 6950. Nobody's going to pay an extra £50 for it now.

Lum

They actually address that in the article. The card has a hard limit of 225W built onto it, which is not "upgraded" by this mod, however providing you have a decent enough PSU, you can turn this up by 20% in software and get close enough that it doesn't matter.

Of course, since this limit can also be turned up by 20% in software for the real 6970, that does make the 6970 the more overclockable card.

As for cooling, best to research the individual brand you intend to purchase, but given how similar the cards are I suspect many will be bundling the same cooler.