Unlocking Gigabyte HD 6950 1GB OC (GV-R695OC-1GD). Possible or what?

Few months back, I bought a couple of Gigabyte's HD6950 1GB OC cards to replace my HD5870 card. I was never a fan of multi GPU setups but I wanted to try it out. Besides, I had to buy something that would last long before the wedding, because I knew I will not be able to spend on toys as much as I used to. (It has nothing to do with getting my wife's consent, but more to do with higher cost of living.)

Anyways, it is a well known secret that (most of) the HD6950 2GB reference cards would unlock the full shaders of a HD6970. The success rates of unlocking 1GB cards is almost nil. These cards being non-reference makes it worse.

But I had my reasons for buying these cards.

1. They were the cheapest HD6950 cards from a known manufacturer.
2. They had a non-reference cooler which performance much better than the reference cooler.
3. They came with a ~10% factory overclock
4. I thought 1GB was enough because I didn't see myself buying a 1600p display or multiple 1080p monitors. (But still there are games that use more than 1GB VRAM even at 1080p)

New internet connection in action

A lot of things happened in the last couple of months. I will slowly reveal what happened, but for today, this should do.

I opened up Origin to see if there were any updates for BF3 or something, and instead of an update, I got the message that I can download the demo version of Mass Effect 3.

I went ahead with the download. Checked the download speed. A drop of tears came to my eyes….tears of happiness. 11.6MBps of awesomeness!!!