How to unlock shaders on 6950

I recently purchased 2 XFX 6950’s. They are great cards, and doing some research, I found this forum post :

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=137136

It talks on how to unlock the shaders on the reference 6950 cards. I have an XFX so I used this modified bios :

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=2137536&postcount=343

These are my personal numbers :

before :

[zp src=”xfx-stock.gif” album=”vivi/6950″ width=”500″]
[zp src=”xfx-stock2.gif” album=”vivi/6950″ width=”500″]

after (unlocked shaders, NO OC):

[zp src=”xfx-flashed6950-1.gif” album=”vivi/6950″ width=”500″]
[zp src=”xfx-flashed6950-2.gif” album=”vivi/6950″ width=”500″]

Now for fun, this is the spec of my new computer :

i5 2500k
Asus P8P67 Pro
Corsair 600T
Corsair 1000HX
2 x XFX 6950 2GB in xfire
2 x Asus DVD/CD/RW/R
Corsair H70
OCZ Solid 2 120GB SSD

[zp src=”P1000014.JPG” album=”vivi/600T” width=”500″]

Specific How To for XFX 6950 Shader unlock :

What you’ll need to download before we start :

GPU-Z : http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1921/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.5.0.html
ATI WinFlash : http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1919/ATI_Winflash_2.0.1.13.html
VGA BiOS to unlock : http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?page=1&architecture=&manufacturer=&model=HD+6950&interface=&memSize=0

This is the one I used for my XFX : http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/89673/XFX.HD6950.2048.101206.html

They have other BIOS’s listed, for other manufacturers, but i’ve read that they should all work with the HIS BIOS.

1 – Grab ATI Winflash (32 & 64-bit).
2 – Download HD 6950 BIOS (we’ll be using the specific XFX bios). It should work with other vendor’s, but this one is specifically for XFX 6950 REFERENCE cards.
3 – Make sure the BIOS switch on the card is set to the 1 position (pictured further down if you don’t know where it is).
4 – Run ATI Winflash, click Save to save your BIOS, so you have a backup in case something goes wrong.
5 – Load the HD 6970 BIOS into Winflash by clicking Load Image, followed by Program.
6 – Let the flashing process complete and reboot your system.
7 – Check the shader count using GPU-Z, it should show 1536. Make sure you use version 0.5.0 or newer, the official 0.4.9 version does not support HD 6900 Series properly. If you see a shader count of 1600, your GPU-Z version is outdated.
8 – To ensure maximized performance open Catalyst Control Center, go to the Overdrive tab and set the PowerTune slider to the +20% setting. The “Testing” section of this article has more data on that.
9 – Check stability in Windows desktop applications and games, with an application like OCCT/Prime95

I modified the how-to a bit, but this is the article that helped me get started : http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159