GTX 460 768Mb to HD6950 with (6970 Bios hack)

[Johannespaul]

460 GTX < Radeon 6850 < GTX 470 < Radeon 6870 < Radeon 6950 < Radeon 5870 < GTX 480, GTX 570 and Radeon 6970 < GTX 580 and Radeon 5890

This is about how they rank based on their average performance.

The GTX 560 is coming out on Jan 25th if the rumours are true and it should perform between the Radeon 6870 and Radeon 6950. Worse case it will perform on par with the 6870. This will give you another option in your upgrade decision.

If you are concerned with the buffer usage of your GTX 460 run eVGA Precision with the on screen display activated and it will tell you how much buffer you are using in game. In my experience anything under a gig is getting a little tight these days.

You can also double check if your PSU can support an upgraded card using the PSU calculator on the Antec website. I think 600W should be fine unless you are doing something crazy.

I personally would not try a BIOS hack. Anything that risks turning a GPU into a couple hundred dollar paper weight is not worth the risk in my opinion.

 

[oneseraph]

I agree, and by saving the original bios you are insured.

One question: After flashing the bios, is it ok to overclock the card? Or because you don't have the 8-pin connector like the 6970, that's just pushing it to hard?

OFF TOPIC - Realy nice oc3d avatar, great job!

It should not be a problem given that one 6pin and one 8pin provide >40 watts more than the peak load of a 6970. That said I doubt there will be very much headroom beyond making the 6950 into a 6970. Like I say I dont think there will be power problems if you do, its just that the 6950 chips were binned (6950) because they didn't have the headroom of the (6970 binned chips).

 

[oneseraph]

I don't think so. You ask for proof from the manufacturers about that. Giving a dead card with altered BIOS's isn't gona please them and your funds.

AMD aren't clever and stupid here. They know, always have, that the default BIOS will be changed to unlock the chip, They knew it isn't safe, they knew un-aware people will buy the 6850 to do that. Stupidity for money, nuf or too much eh? too much for an innocent. Play safe

560+ ftw

Its a shame to the dedicated AMD engineers, their marketing staff etc are infected with ignorant decisions for the 6950. "Splash the doe and make it proper"

Does th 6950 have the same components as the 6970?

Do you actually believe that AMD and All of they're channel partners are in collusion to rip off they're customers? What you seem to be saying is that AMD, Gigabyte, Asus, XFX, HIS, Powercolor, MSI, Saphire, Diamond and Visiontek are all trying to get you to flash your bios so your card will fail and then they can refuse the warranty on the card. What a complete load of poppycock. That make no sense from a business perspective, in fact no one in business acts like that and stays in business.

The fact of the matter is, the reason the bios switch is on the cards is as a convenience for enthusiasts. By having it in place the risk of damage from flashing the bios to the card is highly mitigated. This has born out in the extremely low return rate on 6950 and 6970 reference cards.

You claim to know intimate details of a conspiracy between ATI/AMD and they're channel partners. Yet you fail to see the irony that those same channel partners make graphics cards using Nvidia silicone. So please, tell us what sort of conspiracy does Nvidia have with them? Maybe your part of the "Big Nvidia Conspiracy"

That said, you could be right. If you are then here is a list of companies you will want to avoid when buying a graphics card with an Nvidia chip-set.

Gigabyte, Asus, XFX, HIS, Powercolor, MSI, Sapphire, Diamond and Visiontek ect... Basically all of them, because if you are right none of them can be trusted.

I find it interesting that you assert "playing it safe" and not taking risks when referring to ATI/AMD but you never seem to mention the risks of overclocking an Nvidia Product. Overclocking has risks, what you seem to imply is that those risks do not exist on Nvidia silicone. Of course the reason for this is obvious, you are a Nvidia fanboy. Now don't get me wrong there is nothing inherently wrong with that, the green team has made some very fine products. Heck I have friends that work at the Redmond campus.

Now then, I have seen the HD 6950 to 6970 bios flash done on six different PC'S. With cards from three different companies (Asus, XFX, Sapphire). None of them have had any problems. All of them bench-marked as fully functional 6970's after being flashed. I am not saying that things cant go wrong, overclock at your own risk. What I am saying is that in my experience the 6950 bios flash option has been 100% successful and without problems. I grant that six PC's is a very small sample size, still 100% success rate is nothing to sneeze at.

Oh and by the way, Flashing your bios does "not" void your warranty on any 58xx, 68xx or 69xx ATI/AMD graphics card. If it did, then it would be imposable to upgrade your bios when a new one is released.

 

[thewire]

Oh and by the way, Flashing your bios does "not" void your warranty on any 58xx, 68xx or 69xx ATI/AMD graphics card. If it did, then it would be imposable to upgrade your bios when a new one is released.

I think your right about that in the USA. I don't know about other countries.

 

[marsey99]

The success rate of BIOS flashing on the HD6950 is very high; there hasn't been any failures. Slap me if I'm wrong, this is coming from OCuK.

read about 2 or 3 guys who have had issues doing it but tbh i think psu issues are their reasons not the card.

op

not sure its a big enough upgrade to warrent the cost tbh

if you can sell the 460 and get the upgrade for a few quid maybe but not at the what? £100 you would need to cover. well not for me anyway.

edit

I think your right about that in the USA. I don't know about other countries.

your not just flashing the bios are you, you are flashing it with a bios from another peice of hardware to make it opperate outside of its spec.

 

[JezEngland]

hi oneseraph, this world is dangerouse. Trusting is picked with caution.

AMD is stupid. They might break your arm off for money. The retail card manufacturers sell AMD's reference cards and AMD's design fails so it'll fall from the user, to the retailer, to the card manufacturer and to AMD, the designer. The devil gambles everyone

evidence is there, the card isn't built to run the chip unlocked

 

[oneseraph]

hi oneseraph, this world is dangerouse. Trusting is picked with caution.

AMD is stupid. They might break your arm off for money. The retail card manufacturers sell AMD's reference cards and AMD's design fails so it'll fall from the user, to the retailer, to the card manufacturer and to AMD, the designer. The devil gambles everyone

evidence is there, the card isn't built to run the chip unlocked

Hey Jerome

I hope this finds you well. Thank you for your concern. Your excellent advice about the world being dangerous is well taken. Now let me see what I can do to ease your mind. Don't worry I am very careful about who I trust. As a rule I try not to believe hype about one product or another. I tend to avoid subjective information and gravitate toward objective metrics. I have to agree both AMD and Nvidia want not only an arm but they want a leg too. Ya, I said it they want an arm and a leg for their products.

You might be right about the card not being built to run the cayman chip unlocked. Given the way it does the job it might as well have been. If that is what you mean about AMD's engineers being stupid "they over engineered the 6950" then I have to agree with you completely. As it happens I found some evidence yesterday about 6950 to 6970 bios flash successes rates.

OK so here are some metrics on flashing the 6950 into a 6970

Manufacturer    Cards        Unlocks     Unlocks     Does 

tested       and         rendering   not 

works       errors      unlock

fine        

AMD               1            1            0          0

ASUS              10           10           0          0

Club3D            14           13           0          1

Diamond           4            4            0          0

Gigabyte          23           23           0          0

HIS               41           41           0          0

MSI               11           10           1          0

PowerColor        53           51           2          0

Sapphire          140          134          6          0

XFX               71           71           0          0

VTX3D             8            8            0          0

Totals            376          366          9          1

100.00%      97.34%       2.39%      0.27%

Total number of cards damaged as a result of flashing is 0 out of 376.

Jerome, I have spent several hours this weekend looking for some evidence that flashing the bios of a 6950 into a 6970 is damaging the cards. Honestly, I haven't found any, not one case of a card being bricked by the process. That does not mean there aren't any, it just means I couldn't find any. What I did find was shocking. The success rate of this procedure and a newer updated one are nothing short of remarkable. As you can see from the table above the sample size is large enough to normalize errors in the data.

Normally when I find data this positive I tend to get very suspicious. In general if sounds to good to be true, that's because it is. This is not a normal case, the data on the table above matches my own experience perfectly. As I said I have personally seen this done on several of my friends machines. The success rate I have seen is 100% with no errors.

 

[JezEngland]

OK. Well done, thanks.

Considering the 'silicone lottery' the chips that had problems could be dodgy chips

i heard the dual BIOS is for back-up, to help a stable BIOS update procedure

 

[oneseraph]

OK. Well done, thanks.

Considering the 'silicone lottery' the chips that had problems could be dodgy chips

i heard the dual BIOS is for back-up, to help a stable BIOS update procedure

Yeah, When they where first released the feature was sold sort of vaguely as a way to help enthusiast mod the cards bios. Who knew it would be able to unlock this kind of potential so reliably. Nothing is perfect though, so everyone should overclock/mod at their own risk.

Cheers