Unlocking The AMD Radeon HD 6950 to 6970 – BIOS Flash Mod Guide

By Dan Stoltz

Upgrading to the HD 6970 BIOS

This method uses available 6970 BIOS files overwriting your stock 6950 BIOS. The BIOS you will use is a third party supplied BIOS. The Sapphire HD6970 BIOS used in this example should work on any 2GB reference design 6950. If this BIOS does not work for you, you will need to find a manufacturer specific 6970 BIOS to use for your card. I strongly recommend using the Sapphire BIOS first, if it does not work you have several easy options to recover.
  1. Download the Sapphire HD6970 2048 MB BIOS.
  2. Open the Radeon Bios Editor.
    Radeon Bios Editor - Load BIOS
  3. Click the Load BIOS button and browse to the Sapphire BIOS downloaded above.
    Radeon BIOS Editor - Acquire/Flash
  4. Click the Acquire/flash button.
    Radeon BIOS Editor - Analyze

  5. Click the Analyze button.
  6. Say a small prayer to your chosen deity (just kidding!).
    Radeon BIOS Editor - Flash BIOS
  7. Ensure your card is selected in the list, check the Force flash box and click Flash BIOS.
  8. When prompted to reboot, do not. Do a full shutdown and pull power for roughly 30 seconds.
This is where things potentially can be a bit tricky. After shutting down and rebooting the card will be detected and Windows will install the drivers for the card. You may receive an error from ATI Catalyst Control Center stating that no valid ATI cards were detected. If you receive this error, reboot, let windows load to your desktop fully and if you receive it again power off completely and try again. During this time GPU-Z and other utilities will detect the card as only having 768 shaders as well as other possible issues. While this may not happen for everyone, it did happen in the course of this write-up so we figured it should be mentioned here.

Congratulations, upon success, you will now have upgraded your 6950 to a full 6970!

AMD Radeon HD6950 using a HD6970 BIOS

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