Guide: How to Easily Turn Your AMD Radeon 6950 into a 6970

Manual Method

Step 1:

Make sure that the position on your HD 6950’s BIOS switch is set to the 1 position (the default position on most cards).



Step 2:

Download ATI Winflash

And then the Radeon HD 6970 BIOS.

(The Sapphire 6970 BIOS are recommended because they function with cards from any manufacturer).

Step 3:

Just in case something goes wrong, backup your HD 6950 BIOS by running ATI Winflash and clicking Save.

Step 4:

Open up ATI Winflash and hit Load Image and select the HD 6970 BIOS that we’re going to use (but keep Winflash open).

Step 5:

Hit the Program button inside Winflash to begin the flashing process which will reboot your computer.

Step 6:

Check to see if the flashing process worked using GPU-Z (at least version 0.5.0 or it won’t display correct specs). If the process worked, it should show a shader count of 1536 instead of 1408 one.

In case of error (which is what happened to me), such as an ID mismatch or "Could not erase ROM", you can try this fix:

- Unpack the Winflash download onto your desktop in a folder called "winflash"

-Save the 6970 BIOS in your Winflash folder and name it unlock.bin

- Click Start Button

- Type "cmd"

- Right click the entry and select "Run as Administrator"

- Black command prompt windows opens

- Type "cd %USERPROFILE%\desktop\winflash"
- Type "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" <-- the 0 means first adapter, if you have multiple cards, physically uninstall all but the one you want to flash

- Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 unlock.bin"
- It should complete the flashing process with a message saying something with "verified".

(Source: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=2134576&postcount=19)

However, this particular fix did not work for me, and I was forced to use the automatic method to complete the process. We detail this method on the next page...