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Out with 5870's in with 69's

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Graphics card Expert

O.k. well both of my 6950's came in yesterday and finally got around to installing them tonight. I got the ASUS 6950 Direct CUII models and getting two 3 slot cards into a ATX case isn't easy.


I had to do some re-arranging but they fit.


They run cooler than the reference 5870's obviously on average of about 20 degrees Celsius under full Crysis load (2560x1600, 4AA, V-sync off. They also run about 10-12 cooler at idle (35C)

FPS is another story though. I lost about 25 frames in F1 2010 (40 on average with high of 102FPS with the new cards) on the same settings as Crysis. Hopefully drivers will pick this up though as we move on. No impact in CODMW2 of course maxed at 91 FPS. Crysis I have yet to a FPS comparison but will update later as I do it.

More to come guys and I am running 11.3. No installation or X-fire issues yet. Overclocking is coming as well.

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Graphics card Expert

You cannot flash the ASUS CU II's. Voltage differences prevent that. However the ASUS is designed to be ran at 950Mhz core were it runs on par with a reference 6970.

I would venture to think eventually the shaders could be unlocked though.


Update. I am OC it to 900 Mhz on the core and 1300 on the memory and it is only running a tick hotter 37C at idle and the same at full load as the fans just spin higher now. Gained back about 10 FPS in F1 2010. Will go to 950 tonight and see what that gets me.

iam2thecrowe said:
haha, you have an i7 at 4.8 ghz! your cpu is bottlenecking your setup, you need 5 ghz for 6950's :p  are you thinking of BIOS flashing to 6970's?


I dont think this system is cpu limited running at 2560x1600, 4AA. The last review here shows cpu limits really only appear when running xfired dual GPU cards - and then at low resolutions.

You have done nice z....
Graphics card Expert

vvhocare5 said:
I dont think this system is cpu limited running at 2560x1600, 4AA. The last review here shows cpu limits really only appear when running xfired dual GPU cards - and then at low resolutions.

You have done nice z....



I think there was a bit of sarcasm in there.


Update: OC'ed to 900 Mhz core and 1300Mhz memory and gained 10-12 FPS back with no real obvious change in heat. Fans did kick it up a notch though but nothing noticeable. Gonna mess with 950 tonight.

Hopefully someone will get a Bios to unlock the shaders only for the CUII. As far as I know the ones out there will not work on the CUII's
Graphics card Expert

Well its been a long day.

Tried doing any overclock over 900Mhz and everything is a no-go. I must have gotten a pair of duds.

So I said WTF I will go ahead and unlock the shaders. Well one eventually finally came unlocked to 1536 but the other one just would not do it. I tried every combination as well as procedure. No luck.

I ran my 6950(6970) by itself on F1 benchmark mode and got fantastic results. 80FPS average with a low of 70FPS. (2560x1600 4AA and no vsync) That was on 873Mhz core.

When I threw the other 6950 in there and X-fired the frames fell to 50FPS. WTF AMD you are supposed to fix this crap!

Rumor had it that 11.4 fixed some X-fire issues but no dice. Still 50FPS

Frustrating day as I have a 6970 and a 6950 now that are supposed to Crossfire well but do not.
Graphics card Expert

Minimum FPS is almost 40FPS between single card and crossfire. In both Crysis and F1-2010 I get 70FPS on a single and 30FPS in a crossfire setup. Using afterburner I can see both cards being utilized at 80-100 percent in both games but the performance is just not there.
Graphics card Expert

I have went ahead and disable X-fire until AMD pulls their head out of their collective asses. A shader unlocked/Oc'ed 6950 pulls some great FPS's for sure.
Graphics card Master

iam2thecrowe said:
haha, you have an i7 at 4.8 ghz! your cpu is bottlenecking your setup, you need 5 ghz for 6950's :p  are you thinking of BIOS flashing to 6970's?


you have got to be kidding me, there is no way this setup is bottlenecking his gpus
Graphics card Expert

O.k. for craps and grins I went ahead and re-enabled X-fire and I am better than the 5870 setup finally. Guess it needed time to burn in. LOL

F1 2010 2560x1600 4AAS no Vsync I get 95 FPS Avg with a 80FPS minimum. That is about 5-10% higher than the 5870's and I have 4 monitor support with one card. So I can run X-fire with my 4 monitors.

I remember even with the 5870's X-fire can be tricky like that. When my FPS's started to get low for some reason I would disable X-fire and then re-enable it.

I am a happy consumer now.
Graphics card Expert

bystander said:
While you may not be able to, or want to flash those cards to 6970's, but have you considered unlocking the shaders (this can be done without a flash)?



Got one to do it but the other just wont budge for some reason. You have to flash even to just do the shaders. What is weird about this is the modded bios is in the card because I can get the bios from the card and it show 6970 shaders unlocked but GPU-Z says only 1408 are actually unlocked.
Graphics card Master

jjb8675309 said:
you have got to be kidding me, there is no way this setup is bottlenecking his gpus

lol, i was definitely kidding you. an i7 at 4.8 is insanely fast of course
Graphics card Master

yeah I mean my p2 at a little above 4 ghz will not see much of a bottleneck with that setup imo and they are comparatively a good deal slower than the 2600k for example but up to a certain point there are diminishing returns obviously
Graphics card Master

z06psi said:
Got one to do it but the other just wont budge for some reason. You have to flash even to just do the shaders. What is weird about this is the modded bios is in the card because I can get the bios from the card and it show 6970 shaders unlocked but GPU-Z says only 1408 are actually unlocked.


Actually to unlock the shaders does not require a flash at all. There was a script on page 16 of the how to flash guide that you run and it'll just alter the bios to unlock the shaders, leaving all timings alone

Check this link. It's on this page by W1zzard: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1371...
Graphics card Expert

Yeah I tried that as well and no luck.

I tried the script
I tried the command prompt method
I tried the ATIwinflash

all without success on just one of the cards. I will tinker some more today.
Graphics card Master

z06psi said:
Yeah I tried that as well and no luck.

I tried the script
I tried the command prompt method
I tried the ATIwinflash

all without success on just one of the cards. I will tinker some more today.


I had a thought, is the bios switch on the card in the #1 or #2 position? One of the two options is locked.
Graphics card Expert

Well here is the deal on that. ASUS advertises in their literature that those switched on the DIrect CU II cards are for the DVI outputs. That is true but if I try to boot the computer with the switch in the position farthest from the back of the card it will not boot and the MB is saying a VGA fault. This would lead me to believe that they are somewhat associated with the Bios function. Only ASUS can answer this and they wont because of money loss.

I have another project ongoing and as soon as I get that done I will try a couple of more things.
Graphics card Expert

Update on OC'ing

Able to run up to 950 core and 1280 on memory on both cards.

Use CCC to overclock and smartdoctor to voltage tweak (and then I close it) and Afterburner to control the fan profile.

Can't someone just make a competent card adjustment program that will work even after a reboot?
Graphics card Expert

Well I cannot get it to hold a steady overclock and also it will not do voltage tweaking at all.

I tried to run Afterburner exclusively but it did not pan out.
Graphics card Master

what the hell is smart doctor btw never heard of it and I also can't do a voltage tweak in afterburner, tried editing the config files and a few different versions to no avail...
Graphics card Master

z06psi said:
Not sure about the ASUS only products. However ASUS does both NVidia and AMD cards so I would think it would work with either.


It only works with ASUS products. Even if you flash to an ASUS bios, it will still not work. I'm not sure how it detects what card you have.

z06psi said:
Well here is the deal on that. ASUS advertises in their literature that those switched on the DIrect CU II cards are for the DVI outputs. That is true but if I try to boot the computer with the switch in the position farthest from the back of the card it will not boot and the MB is saying a VGA fault. This would lead me to believe that they are somewhat associated with the Bios function. Only ASUS can answer this and they wont because of money loss.

I have another project ongoing and as soon as I get that done I will try a couple of more things.


The more reviews I read on the Asus DCII 6950's tend to keep pointing out the "dual bios switch", not sure what it actually is anymore...

An intresting review on the DCII 6950's
Graphics card Expert

Well I have only had one freeze after putting 11.3 on. 11.4 was a pre release anyways.

So far 11.3 and X-fire have had no issues so I think your safe.
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