Yeah I'm on the edge too. And I heard the same thing about doing the +20 increase under Power Control settings. I was going to do some research and see if this is neccessary.
I don't know, if I get bored enough I may just flash it anyway just for the sake of it. I can always revert back if I don't like the results.
Ever since Adobe added in GPU Rendering, I have been using it. So thats one of the reason I unlocked the card and then OC it when i need the extra power sure its only a 2-6% increase in that and 5-15 FPS in games depending on the settings. I did my research I bought this card due to it being able to do it and hell saved me some bucks in the end.
So to be its each his own.
You can use this to just unlock the shaders using your existing BIOS. With the TechPowerUp Radeon Bios Editor it's what I plan on using.
For those interested in flashing to a 6970 here's a nice discussion here - How to enable additional shaders on Radeon HD 6950 - techPowerUp! Forums. I'm only on page 10 of 100+ :)
Anyway here's the how-to the discussion is based on - AMD Radeon HD 6950 to HD 6970 Mod | techPowerUp
Seems there is a of discussion on artifacting and power/heat issues. Again I'm only on page 10 of 100 but so far I've gleaned that.....
- Power Supply matters - can your power supply handle the extra current draw from the update?
- Type of card - reference vs none-reference board
- Stock clock speed of the card - 800/840/880
LOL I started to add that line but didn't :)Well said Sygnus21, you might add that sometimes we do it just because we can.
Well you can always revert back to your old BIOS you saved (hopefully)
No, if you damage the card you can't. It's in the VRAM that the 6970 has it set to a different voltage, so after a week you get artefacts and you can't revert back. It's permanently damaged.
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