Hi!
I have this xfx 6950 1gb. I was wondering with if it's good to unlock shader with only 1gb. What do you think? That will increase the power consumption?
Another silly question are If it's underclock the memory clock will reduce the heat or the power consumption.
Thanks.
From what I have seen on other forums etc, unlocking the shaders IS possible on certain 1GB cards.....most that were purchased before the end of July 2011.
I have a pair of Asus DCU II 1GB 6950's and I missed the window unfortunately, as a budy of mine who bought from the same store, a month and a half earlier, from a different shipment of cards, could unlock the shaders on his Asus DCU II 1GB 6950's....but I could not on mine, as the later cards were laser cut, not only BIOS disabled.
With locked shaders, my 6950's get 375Mh/s which is fine with me. Unlocked, you can expect roughly 25Mh/s more, so 400Mh/s or more.
Power consumption does skyrocket though, as does heat (from what I have seen).
I also have a pair of XfX 1GB 6950's (695X-ZNFC v.3) and even at stock speeds, they run HOT AS HELL, although I run them overclocked to 900Mhz (stock being 800 on these). My only saving grace was underclocking the memory to 800Mhz, which dropped my temps on those cards by 10c.
Running at 900Mhz GPU/800Mhz MEM, getting 370Mh/s, they run at a steady 67-69c with less than 80% Fan Duty. With MEM at stock values and GPU @ 900Mhz, these 2 cards ran 76c-80c..... underclocking the memory was like a gift from God...lol
If you have old enough cards (or v1 PCB's) you might be able to unlock the shaders, but for the 25Mh/s increase in speed along with the added heat and power consumption (AND XFX CARDS RUN HOT TO BEGIN WITH) I'd say it's simply NOT worth it in the long run, especially if you pay for electricity out of your own pockt and want the cards to last more than a few months long....LOL
Good luck either way.
bitlane.
