alright guys. my system arrived yesterday and I've been tweaking away. here are my results.
first off, flashing your GPU is a risky thing if you don't know what you're doing. be very careful before you go ahead.
my method of choice was to use my existing bios and unlock the shaders and reflash it. to do this, i used the following (Google these and get the latest versions):
1) GPU-Z
2) Radeon Bios Editor
3) Ati Winflash
step 1. Fire up GPUZ and note your card details. My screen looked like this:
*img291.imageshack.us/img291/2295/1gpuz.png
step 2. as shown in the following image, click on the small button and export your current Bios to a folder of your choice. I named it 6950.bin
*img585.imageshack.us/img585/6421/2gpuz.png
step 3. Time to load the Radeon Bios Editor. After it launches, click on the Load Bios button, as shown. Load the Bios you'd saved earlier. Mine was the 6950.bin
*img718.imageshack.us/img718/3138/3rbeloadbios.png
Once I did this, my screen looked like this.
*img852.imageshack.us/img852/4169/4rbebiosloaded.png
Step 4. Click on Additional features, as shown in this pic:
*img805.imageshack.us/img805/4171/5rbeadvanced.png
This will lead you to a screen like this:
*img857.imageshack.us/img857/4108/6rbeshaderunlock.png
The circled area is where the magic happens. Select the "6970 shader count". Then go to the bottom of the screen, where the option to save the bios is located. I saved it with the name "6970". don't bother with file extensions.
Step 5 . Make sure you download the latest version of ATI Winflash. the reason I say this is, the older versions weren't compatible with windows 7 64 bit. Run the program and you'll get this screen:
*img62.imageshack.us/img62/2592/7atiwinflash.png
select load image, as shown, and then you go to the folder where you saved the modded bios. once you do that, the option next to load image, called "Program" is activated. this is the button that flashes your modified bios onto the card. Before you press this, make sure that the BIOS switch on the 6950 is at slot 1. if it is, go ahead and press "Program".
the flashing process begins and then asks you to restart. Cross your fingers, like i did and restart the system.
Step 6. Launch GPU-Z as soon as you restart and hopefully, you'll see the screen that i saw
*img268.imageshack.us/img268/3337/8success.png
Yes. I unlocked the additional shaders and my card ran 3d mark vantage fine without artifacts.
I am pretty happy with the results so far, and I don't think i will OC the card, as it handles everything barring Metro 2033, at max details. I don't want to risk frying my memory chip and can live with 4xAA
So there you have it. pretty easy process as long as you're careful.
and yeah, I go the rest of my system from Delta, but the graphics card was found in a small shop in Ritchie street after an afternoon of searching. the guy was friendly and told me that the card had arrived only last week. I double checked to make sure the price was right. 15K was what he charged in the invoice, but added 1.5K in VAT when he delivered. so yeah, i paid about 16.5K in total.
Still happy with my purchase though. I kind of trust gigabyte more than sapphire and powercolor to be honest.
oh, and quick question. how do you modify a thread title after creating one?
