This is my first thread on RTW (I'm a long time lurker). I'm planning on upgrading my trusty old Sapphire 4870 512MB to a shiny new 6950 2GB this weekend. I decided this card was an absolute bargain after reading on the internets that it is actually the exact same board and chip as the infinitely more expensive 6970, and there is an easy way to flash the 6950, transforming it in to a 6970, and unlocking all the extra shader goodness. This process apparently adds 15%-20% performance on some games.
I was curious as to whether anyone on RTW has actually performed this upgrade? It seems a little risky, but the apparent gains in performance are possibly worth the risk.
Well...I haven't personally done it myself, but I'm sure someone else here has.
As long as nothing has changed with the design of the 6950 then you have nothing to worry about. I've looked up tests where people have tried the bios flash on several different cards and it worked every single time, so there's really not much risk involved. It's definitely worth the performance gain.
On the other hand, however, I did hear somewhere that AMD was planning on changing the design on the cards so that the bios flash wouldn't be possible, and that an attempt to do so might cause damage to the card. I don't really know if this is true, however. I don't think I heard it through an official source or anything, so it's probably just a rumor.
