MSI r6950 2gb Issues Help?

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Edge2500K

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Apr 15, 2011
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Have a look at my other thread here if you would:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037218403&posted=1#post1037218403

My card is the R6950-2PM2D2GD5, listed with the rest of my rig's components at that link.

Basically I'm a little sketchy on how to go about setting up drivers with unlocking shaders, which to do first how to blah blah.

I'm not sure Tom's Hardware's policy on this sort of stuff, so if I'm breaking rules I apologize, disregard that part.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, I installed the 11.4 drivers issued to me via AMD's site for my GPU/OS (hd 6950 2gb reference / windows 7 ult 64x) and I encountered nonstop screen freezing and display driver crashing/recovery. Seemed to happen A LOT with firefox, and often with internet explorer, but it also occured with opening the CCC suite, and possible other stuff... It just kept happening. :cry:

There were also other issues, my desktop's graphics just didn't seem on par with what they should have been at 1920x1080 for that video card. I just got the feeling that I was using a weak video card at a resolution higher than it should be able to handle. You know that feeling. Everything doesn't happen as quick and crisp as it should.

What should I do? Is there a better version of drivers that will stop this? Did I do something wrong some how?
 
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First off, don't unlock your shaders yet, don do anything to the card or anything not normal. If you are having problems with your system, resolve those first. Make sure there is nothing defective with the card in it's stock setup.

Remove the drivers you currently have, do a clean sweep of the drivers, and install the drivers listed on the amd.com web site.

If your system is not stable at this point, try and find out what is wrong. You don't want to create a new set of problems before the 1st set are taken care of.

Once you get that fixed, I'll have a link for you to unlock the shaders without changing any voltages and you can use MSI afterburner to alter the clocks beyond normal max clocks (I'd recommend only changing the GPU core clocks).
 
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Alright thanks!

I didn't do anything abnormal yet, fired comp up, checked mobo bios settings, installed windows, installed the chipset drivers and some other stuff for my mobo, did some windows updates, optimized windows a little bit for SSD use, installed a couple of things like firefox/cc cleaner/spybot, and now I'm trying to set up GPU.

I installed the drivers from AMD, and had those issues... So I followed a guide to uninstall ATI drivers very thoroughly, seemed great, normally I use driver sweeper, but the guide said that could potentially cause issues. All in all it seemed like a very thorough uninstallation.

So this is where I stand now. I'll go ahead and download/install them again as you say, and post my results in a few.
 
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Do you currently have any issues? If everything is running good, then great, you can start with the unlocking of shaders. I thought I read you had some issues, maybe you meant your previous system.

Also, given that the MSI R6950's don't have the bios switch, you may incur some risk. I'll have to check to see if you can flash back if something goes wrong. It may just require you to have a 2nd card to boot off if things go wrong.
 
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I did have issues. Once I got everything up and going, windows installed etc, I went to install AMD's video drivers, ccc 11.4. After that is when I encountered all the video driver crashes etc. I thoroughly removed them, and issues have stopped. Though having awful graphics quality due to no installed drivers is the side effect. Installing the drivers again as you have instructed right now.

Also, my MSI card appears to have the bios switch? IDK if it works, it's a tiny little black switch with two settings, "1" and "2" it is defaulted on "1".
 
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Actually I just noticed that on amd.com I can choose either the package download tab and get the CCC 11.4 etc, or I can go to individual downloads tab and download it piece by piece and perhaps omit something that I do not want/need. It has display driver, opencl driver, uhmmm catalyst control center, uhmmm that's it. So I could get the display driver by itself. Or do I want CCC?
 
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You want the CCC, it includes features to adjust graphics quality. Since you do have the switch, then you should have no real fears of the instructions I'm going to provide.

1st, you'll want to save a copy of your existing bios. You can follow the bios flash guide steps 1, 3 and 4 to save your bios. This is just in case something doesn't work right (not all 6950 GPU's have fully function shaders). The flash instructions are here: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159
Just do steps 1, 3 and 4.

Next, download this: www.techpowerup.com/wizzard/Mod_BIOS_HD_6950.zip

Extract the script and copy over the original saved bios into the folder for this script. It needs to be named "original.bin"

Now run the script (it will tell you instructions) and follow the original flash instructions with the modified bios. ( http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159 ) follow steps 5 through 9 with the modified bios created with the script ( modded.bin )
 
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Everything seems stable and fine, no crashes or problems that I've seen. I haven't run any stress tests on cpu/memory yet though. Going to proceed with 11.4 ccc installation, be right back.
 
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ccc 11.4 installed, seems stable thank god.. no crashes yet, all appears fine, actions like minimizing windows etc seem a little less than perfect (what you would witness at 800x600 resolution) maybe that's normal and I just expected different, oh well. Ok let's see if I can get through these steps. You're sure this is the best way? I was looking around and was about to give these a shot:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=265787

and there's a giant quote here that gives steps to editing the registry to allow any program to overclock the 6950 beyond its normal limits. Looked pretty good:
(scroll about half way down)
http://www.overclock.net/amd-ati/954528-all-radeon-6950-only-flashing-shader-5.html
 
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I'd use your system a few days before diving in, if it were me. I'd also try to see about increasing the resolution. You might not have the settings correctly set. Right click the desktop and choose screen resolution, then see about altering it to fit your monitor.

Also, don't follow either of those guides. They can lead to damaged cards. A number of people who flashed their bios to a 6970 bios (which those are doing), end up with damaged video ram. The steps I gave above, only partially follow those guides, but instead of flashing to a 6970 bios, it uses your original bios, altered to unlock the shaders, and nothing else. So you have all the original timings.
 
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Are they really? Could have sworn they were just methods of altering the bios to unlock shaders and allow for higher voltage/clocks memory excluded. I suppose I could wait a day or two. Can you suggest a few really good bench programs to burn everything in and make sure it's stable. I have 3dmark11 that came with the card. Anything else?
 
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The first one, as far as I can see, has you flashing a modified 6950 bios. The potential problem with that, is that it uses some random 6950 bios, and not one specific to your video card. The timings may be different on your MSI R6950 compared to an ASUS 6950.

It may be safer than using a 6970 bios, but I would rather alter the original, but it's your call.

Either way, I wouldn't do either until you are certain your system is currently functioning properly.
 
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Something to push cpu, and something to make sure memory is good.

Also, while I got you. I have 2 ssd's. A 64gb 1 that I'm using as main boot drive for OS and core stuff, and a 2nd 120gb ssd that I want to use for my main apps/games, like office and all of my games etc, later I'll be getting a 1TB hdd for all my pictures/movies/music etc. How do you suggest I go about setting that 2nd SSD up to do that? First what's the best method of partitioning it so it's useable, and second how should I branch of the parts of the OS I want to be on there. I read a method that basically works like a shortcut, the system things your folder 1 is located on drive C, has a little shortcut icon on it, but it's physically located on drive E. That sound good? Or what.

BTW thank you for helping me out, much appreciated.
 
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Ok there must be something seriously horribly wrong with the new 11.4 ccc from amd because I can NOT get my graphics to stop crashing. I reformatted like twice, completely clean windows installation all nice and proper nothing abnormal, get it up and running, all is 100% stable and runs smooth as silk. Even made a backup image because it was done so nicely, THEN I install the ccc 11.4, and gg what a surprise I open web browser, 5 seconds later screen freezes for a few seconds, blacks out, and comes back. Didn't even install firefox this time, just an updated windows internet explorer.

I am clueless as to what I should do about this, I can't seem to get video drivers to stop crashing. Any ideas?
 
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Was this before or after you altered the 6950's bios?

I personally have no issues with 11.4.
 
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I did a fresh reinstall of windows today because I messed up some parts of the OS yesterday.

So... Step by step here's what I've done today.

Reformat SSD's
Install windows 7
install motherboard drivers etc
adjust windows 7 for SSD optimization, ie disabling defragmentation prefetch/superfetch etc, file indexing blah blah
install spybot protection
updated internet explorer
install cc cleaner & clean out temp files
create a backup image of windows on external hdd

installed ccc 11.4 from amd.com, rebooted, resolution automatically adjusted itself to the proper settings of my monitor, 1920x1080 @ 60hz

Curiously, I opened windows internet explorer, 5 seconds later screen froze, went back, then recovered. I adjusted the screen in ccc so that black boarder wasn't there anymore, basically stretching the displayed screen to the size of the monitor, not sure why it's defaulted to be like that with AMD's cards.

Graphics drivers are still crashing. :cry:
 
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The computer I'm actually on right now is using the 4670 with ccc 11.4 running at 1920x1080p @ 60hz and has no issues at all that I'm aware of, aside from being sluggish since that's a high res for this card.
 
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Yah, try either of those in this system that's crashing and see if anything changes. You may have recieved a defective 6950 as well. Oh, one more thing, you mentioned about having a bios switch on your MSI R6950. I'm not certain that is actually a bios switch. With some research, it appears that they made that a fan switch on their Twin Frozr models. Maybe you have it off and the cards over heating.
 
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