Major Thanks

dont celebrate yet, we still have to go over tweaking your computer. How to flash the graphics cards into 6970's, learning overclocking, and learning how to navigate the EFI bios

 

Well, Owainn now has both his graphics cards flashed into 6970's and running in Crossfire, processor is overclocked to a mild 4.32GHz, RAM is overclocked to DDR-1650, EFI bios is the latest version (came that way actually)

Now whos next?

 

i7 2600k
Megahalem heatsink

 

If you sent it in flashed then the company probably would not warranty it, however AMD put a little switch on the graphics card to change between different bios' on the card. If anything at all were to happen, you can simply flip the switch to go back to the factory default state, flash the 2nd bios back to original, and you will be perfectly fine.

AMD put the switch on there and left the bios unlocked so that overclockers would be able to get more bang for their buck and sell more product. ATI had done this in the past with the famous 9800 PRO that is still talked about to this day, AMD was just pulling the same stunt again.

The 6950 cards are exactly the same as the 6970 cards, the core in the lower cards just couldn't quite meet the TDP requirements and thus were slowed down and sold as lower version cards. So the card itself was designed to run at the higher speeds in the first place. Therefore, running the cards with the 6970 bios will not harm them. The card will just take 5-10 watts more than your normal 6970 would, which isnt really a big deal and just means the card will run 1 or 2 degrees hotter. AMD they cant sell them that way because it is over the thermal design power they market it as, that is all.

 

Why do you say graphics cards are susceptible to failure? Maybe Nvidia cards are since they were using silicon they knew to be defective and would die early, but I have not seen evidence that graphics cards have high failure rates other than in that case. Can you explain why you think such?


If the failure were a bios related problem as to why it wouldn't boot, that is easily fixed by AMD adding the switch to change bios' back and forth as I said. If you have some bad memory, a core that is dying, or some other chip going out that causes instability, then you would still be able to flash back. There are only a few scenarios where you wouldnt be able to force flash back even on a graphics card that barely works/doesnt work. Those scenarios being related to blown out voltage regulators or mosfets. Both of which are VERY unlikely.

To date, I am the only person who I have known to blow out a voltage regulator on a graphics card. And it took me a year at 24/7 usage (computer never turned off during this time) of heavily overclocked and huge overvoltage to the card to blow a regulator. By huge amount I mean 25% overclock for the whole time, and 30% higher voltage for that long. On regulators (for that card I had) already know to be almost at their maximum limit at stock speeds and voltages.