[Phry]

I have shaders unlocked on my 6950. I hear that flashing to 6970 isn't good for your card, so yeah.

So is it worth it to overclock? Do I use MSI Afterburner or CCC? And what program would I use to stress test it?

Thanks.

 

[ghettosuperstar]

Use CCC for ease of use, use afterburner for advanced purposes. Do not for all purposes flash it 6970. The reason AMD gave a us a built in bios switch is so that we change the frequencies for memory and cpu. There is no need to flash a 6970 because all those shaders are locked anyway. As for stress test, start off with something quick like furmark. Then when you believe you have something stable, stress with 3dmark. If it can do 3dmark without crashing, play games (perferably crysis at max settings, haha)

 

[Casey Ryback]

It's well worth overclocking with mine I get 900/1375 (stock 800/1250) with stock 6950 voltage with unlocked shaders.

I had one overclock finish 1 hour of OCCT only to crash in 3Dmark11 so now i'm using games/3dmark11 to test stability, no problems yet.

Once you have the voltage unlocked you can get higher also,
my best OC so far 970/1500 @ 1.12 (stock 1.10)

There's a good guide on this site for all the unlocking etc good luck.

 

[Phry]

What do you use to OC your card? CCC and Afterburner only go up to 840/1325.

 

[Casey Ryback]

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

This is the guide I used. When it comes to unlocking the core speed you must go into msi afterburner program files and select the afterburner.cfg file.

Open as administrator, unlock unofficial overclocking from 0 to a 1

You may also have to type this in the Unofficial overclocking EULA -

I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

(this allows raising of core speeds) you must successfully save this changed file.

Go into afterburner settings and set unlock voltage to tweak voltage.

Good luck

 

[Awaz]

I unlocked shaders on mine and overclocked to 900/1350 on stock volts (it goes to 920/1400). I used a registry hack to increase CCC limits to 1600/2500. And it was overclocking galore. MSI Afterburner works great for one card. But Crossfire setup it gave me hissy fits. I just use it for monitoring now.