Anyone know how or what flashing is?

hey guys thanks for reading :)

SO i was talking with one of my friends today about the 7970 from radeon. A basic conversation however he said that he was able to play battfeield 3 on ultra with three monitors and average 70 fps. Quite an impossible thing, as we saw in logans video on the gtx 680 4gb review 3 monitors punished that beast. 

How he was able to do this was through a thing called "flashing" this flashing he downloaded was manually put in the bios by himself and gave the card this extra boost, and did not increase tempatures alot. I wish to know if this can be performed on a gtx 670 since only some cards alow "flashing" can anyone help me with this techonolgy?

 

Flashing generally refers to flashing a BIOS, this can be done on a motherboard, but also on graphics cards.

Normally, you only flash a graphics card if the manufacturer releases a new one, or to unlock sharders (like in the good old days).

As far as I know, unlocking any more shaders on a 7970 is not possible because it already has everything unlocked, so I think he's just playing with you ;D

so for example i would flash a 660 ti when a 660 comes out ?

no. to my knowledge, the 660 and 660 ti have different hardware.

 

a good example is the AMD 6850, the 6850 was basicaly a 6870 that was "detuned" and sold for a cleaper price. you could then flash the cards firmware to be the same firmware on the 6870, esentialy giving you a 6870.

companies do this for various reasons. its cheaper to manufacture one pcb and detune the cards. usualy, the card is made, and then it is tested to see if it meets specification for the higher end model, if it doesnt, it becomes a lower end model card.