I've just come into possession of a 6950. I'm very intrigued by the notion that these early models can be "unlocked" into a "6970": http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/ove ... idcard/159

There are of course some other differences between the cards, but does anyone think this "unlock" would be a bad idea?

WANT.

A while ago I overclocked a DDR3 HD4650 into a HD4670, so it could work. But personally, if I'd spent wonga on shiny new stuff (as I just have myself) and had no budget left, I'd be too afraid to break it by upping the clocks.

Well TBH I was going to flash the BIOS to unlock the extra shaders etc, but leave the clocks alone...

Sounds like it may be worth a try then, given the number of people who report success in the table. (But don't hunt me down if it doesn't work!)

I think it depends on when the card was made. Later production runs of any card tend to have a higher percentage of win, many of which are locked down and sold cheap to satisfy market demand.

If the unlocked shaders turn out to be fubar, can you just flash it back?

Will it make you upset if it bricks, or are you up for the thrill of getting something for nothing?

I think I'm going to risk it.

I've seen rumours of some "horror stories" of the vRAM getting fried at the increased clock rates, but I figure if I unlock the extra shaders but leave the clock rates alone I should be OK.

Now. time to start saving for a 7xxx Radeon .

Well ladies and gents, it would appear I now have a fully functional 6970 for the price of a 6950.

Although you won't know for sure until you've spent at least 240 hours strait gaming

+1, give it a good thorough testing with Furmark, Unigine Heaven, 3DMark, F@H GPU (great as it coughs out errors if something goes wrong) etc, just to make sure it is utterly stable. keep an eye on temperatures aswell, unless you changed the fan profiles when you flashed it, it may think your card runs cooler than it does, and not rev the fan up as far when it gets hot under load

I gave it 40 minutes in Furmark, it topped out at 89C and there were no artefacts to speak of. The chip should be safe - I've kept the thermal & power limits of the 6950 instead of increasing them to the levels of the true 6970, so should it draw too much power and get too hot (for a 6950) it will under-clock and cool down again.