Unlocking 6950 to 6970 and some other queries

[slashragnarok]

Can all 6950's be unlocked to 6970's. If not which are the ones that can be unlocked and which can't be unlocked.

What are the heating issues with Crossfiring two 6950/6970s?

And is it recommended to run 2 6950s in Xfire or 2 560Tis in SLI? Please state your reasons.

P.S. Sorry if my post sounds like an examination paper

 

[skeletor]

Recommended to run 2 HD 6950s in Crossfire. They outperform GTX 570 in SLI due to their frame buffer at a lower power consumption. AMD CrossFire Vs. Nvidia SLI and the scaling has only improved since Catalyst 11.4 was released (review is with an older driver). 2 HD 6970s in Crossfire? even better. But I doubt you need this performance.

Only reference HD 6950s can be safely unlocked - they also have dual BIOS recovery switch. Most factory overclocked designs are non-reference and they won't unlock.

Heating issues? none as such with both HD 6000 and GTX 500 series. But having a well ventilated cabinet is a must for all multiple GPU solutions. Get a decent PSU. No point in being on the edge.

Driver issues? yes, multiple GPU solutions are not hasslefree. Valid for both CF and SLI. When a new game is released, multi-GPU support is likely to be glitchy. You'll either have to wait for the game-dev to release an update or AMD/nVidia to release a driver update.

AMD has been releasing something known as CAP - Catalyst Application Profiles as a supplement to their traditional Catalyst driver for fixing scaling issues in new games.

 

[slashragnarok]

Thanks man but I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with reference and non-reference cards. Maybe you could point me towards an article or something explaining it.

And about the heating issues, I asked because a forum member told me that SLIing 2 GTX 560 Ti Hawks caused his GPU temps to skyrocket.

 

[Skud]

I am afraid you will be hard pressed to get a reference 6950 atm. The new MSI TFIII and old TFII both have remove the dual BIOS switch altogether. From the pics from the Sapphire website, it looks like they have given a similar treatment to their cards also. The PCB of the Sapphire 2gb looks very similar to my 6950 1gb one, which in turn was basically a 6870 PCB. Except powercolor, msi and sapphire (and HIS too) are not advertising this feature also (there's a SAPPHIRE HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 Dirt3 Edition which have the dual BIOS feature btw).

So my guess is these cards are not at all reference design and that's may be one of the primary reason prices have reached to such a level that the 1gb version becomes insignificant now.

But reference or not at 15k, you are getting a hell of a card, and if in future games really start to use more RAM you can pretty much make it last longer than expected.