BIOS Hack Turns AMD Radeon 6950 Into A Radeon 6970...Mostly

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There are a lot of people out there for whom getting something for nothing is a thrill on par with nothing else. Whether they engineer a tiny television into a big screen, discover a way to modify a device into doing something it was never meant to do, some people just can’t get enough of making stuff do what it was never meant to do. And that’s exactly what’s just been discovered for the AMD Radeon 6950 video card–apparently, a few tweaks to the BIOS is all that stands between the AMD Radeon 6950 and its slightly pricier cousin, the 6970.

But don’t rush out to start your modifications just yet. While we do know that the two cards are both based around Cayman cores (specifically, the Cayman Pro and the Cayman XT), which essentially means that the performance loss to the lesser version is pretty much software driven, it’s that “pretty much” that makes the modifications dangerous. There’s one critical point in here that makes things a little dangerous to go modifying heavily–the power supply’s design.

While indeed, actually performing the mods is relatively simple (details at the via link), the important caveat here is (according to reports) that the 6975 uses both an eight pin and a six pin connector for auxiliary power. The 6950, meanwhile, uses only two six pin connectors, which could pose some problems if you’re working under heavy demand on the processor. You’ll be putting a load on it that it really wasn’t intended for, which will be risky enough in its own right.

Naturally, doing something like this will almost certainly kill your warranty, so proceed at strictly your own risk, but if you want a little extra juice out of your Radeon 6950, you can get it all the way up to a 6975 with some fairly simple work.