If you'd been good this year, you might have been lucky enough to receive an AMD Radeon HD 6950 in your Christmas stocking. It sure is a lovely piece of work... but at the back of your mind you can't help wish it was the even lovelier HD 6970. It's a shame Santa doesn't do refunds.


Apparently there is another way you can upgrade your HD 6950 to a HD 6970 and all it involves is unlocking the extra shaders by exploiting the VGA BIOS.


According to techPowerUp!, both graphics cards utilise the exact same GPU silicon, with the model variant of the Cayman core determined once the die is already produced. While the practice of creating new SKUs from the same silicon has become common practice since the Radeon 9500 back in 2002, typically the shader count lock out is determined by fuses. With the HD 6950 card however, the shader count has been configured by the VGA BIOS: A practice typically reserved for the creation of engineering samples and reviewer cards.


The full instructions to unlock the additional shaders is available right here. The end result isn't quite on par with the HD 6970 but it sure is a damn sight better than the unmodified HD 6950. While we wont condone the exploit, it sure makes for an interesting read.