flashing your video bios!

i nor any one on this site is responsible if you break/ brick your video card by doing this guide.you do this at your own risk.

now that the warning is out of the way. you may ask why would i want to flash my video card that just dose not sounds safe. well there are a couple of good reasons to flash you card. i will list them.

1. you wont have to worry about ati drivers slowing your card down. or down clocking it.
2. your over clock will always be on that card no matter the machine.
3. you can some times achieve higher clocks by upping the voltage.(not recommended unless you really know what your doing.)
4.no third party software installed on your computer running to overclock the card.

Im sure there are many more good reasons but i cant think of any as of now.If you have made it this far into the little tutorial i will assume you are willing to at least gain the knowledge here so you can do this at some point.there is a software way to do this it is much simplar, but it will not work on the new 5800 series card or above. so this is the dos way of doing it.

this is not a 100 percent safe. things can go wrong.
1.you brick the card.
2. Warranty may be voided.
3. if it is a unstable over clock the card may get bricked. ( bricking means the card locks and is pretty much useless.)

things you need.
nvflash (nvidia)
atiflash (ati)
usb stick(fat 16 or 32 format)
the bios for your card.
rbe.
a dos disk. i use a win 98 disk.
i have only done this on ati cards not nvidea but it is sort of the same concept from what i under stand.


first you want to get gpu-z and save your current bios.

it will be in a .bin file.

then you want to open rbe
and load your bios.

now when you edit the bios you do not want to edit the voltage unless you know exactly what your doing with it. here is what i did. these are stock settings.

so far it is fairly simple. once you are done doing all the editing go ahead and save it. make sure you have the original as well as the modified one. name them something simple.

then format the usb drive to fat 32/16. add the atiflash.exe and the atiflash.chg to the flash drive. put your bios on there as well. no need for folders unless you want to organize everything i will not.
the next post will be about what to do once you have are in dos

now onto part 2.

make sure to uninstall any drivers or overclocking software before hand.

you are going to want to boot from the cd. so go into your bios and change the boot order to cd rom.

make sure the usb stick is plugged in before you enter dos.

i am using the win 98 dos cd so i choose start computer with CD-rom support the first one. yours may differ.

if you get a drive letter A:\> just hit C: then enter.
now from here on out i will post like it is is dos and pictures.

so far you should have ( if your using the win 98 boot cd like me)

A:\>C:

C:\>
now you want to type dir like this

C:\>dir

in the picture you can see where i typed dir and what came up. yours may be similar.
this is accessing your usb flash drive. your hardrives are not accessible right now.
now you want to make a back up of your current bios in case something goes wrong.

type in atiflash -s 0 backup1.rom ( make sure to always put .rom when backing up.)

hit enter and it will save your bios.

after you have saved the bios you will be putting the modified one onto it now.
when you do the flash you want to use the exact name of the modified file(this is why i said make it something short.) it dose not matter if it is .bin or .rom either one will work. make sure the file extension is the same as before.
if you are flashing a 5870 use this command

"atiflash -f -p 0 CYPRES~.bin" . (your name will differ from cypres~.bin. that is where you put the actual name of the modified bios.)
note that command works on all 5800 series cards. i tested it with the 5830 so far and have herd it works with the 5850 as well. a quick google search will bring up your specific card command line.

after you enter that in it will come up with some info and you will have to restart. if the screen stays black you bricked your card. hopefully you saved the back up bios like you was suppose. ive done this many many times thus far and have yet to have to recover from a bad flash. just make sure to always test the clock speeds before hand.

that means its complete and it is done. re install the drivers and you should be good to go.

as proof that it works.

again this was done on a radeon 5830 xfx card. if you follow the post and do your research nothing will happen.

you've got a lot of mentions about the bsod, but there isn't a single bsod in your entire post lol :D

this is a bsod (aka blue screen of death):

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

you've got a lot of mentions about the bsod, but there isn't a single bsod in your entire post lol :D

this is a bsod (aka blue screen of death):

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:facepalm: thank you. i was very tired when i typed this up.

lol no prob, happens to me all the time :facepalm: nice writeup though!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

lol no prob, happens to me all the time :facepalm: nice writeup though!

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thanks. this is only my second guide. i wish we had a overclocking section.

Heh, I've had that exact BSoD error, or more accurately, I've had to fix a friend's box with this error. Caused by a smelly little population of scummy spyware in this case.

Er ... flashing the vbios firmware is pretty standard fare, isn't it? Assuming you're using the proper OEM tools and ROM image. Same complexity as a mainboard BIOS flash. Flashing the mobo chipset or memory SPDs is where it gets crazy and exciting. (And nope, I haven't been gutsy enough to try those yet.) <g>

A question here, though:

Are there any extra steps involved in flashing multiple GPU cards? Do the cards need to be physically rotated through PCIe-0 or something to do it right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Konrad

Heh, I've had that exact BSoD error, or more accurately, I've had to fix a friend's box with this error. Caused by a smelly little population of scummy spyware in this case.

Er ... flashing the vbios firmware is pretty standard fare, isn't it? Assuming you're using the proper OEM tools and ROM image. Same complexity as a mainboard BIOS flash. Flashing the mobo chipset or memory SPDs is where it gets crazy and exciting. (And nope, I haven't been gutsy enough to try those yet.) <g>

A question here, though:

Are there any extra steps involved in flashing multiple GPU cards? Do the cards need to be physically rotated through PCIe-0 or something to do it right?

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yes if you have a multi gpu set up it is best to do it one card at a time. so the bios dosent get confused on witch card.

I wish we had an overclocking section too. As of right now, there isn't enough interest for us to have one as the CPU section suffices

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Trace

I wish we had an overclocking section too. As of right now, there isn't enough interest for us to have one as the CPU section suffices

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but but what about the tutorials ive written and the stuff to come? it all involves over clocking.

how many people do you have to have interested for one to start?

It's been mentioned before.

i know it has. some one should really like try again tho.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

you've got a lot of mentions about the bsod, but there isn't a single bsod in your entire post lol :D

this is a bsod (aka blue screen of death):

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Anyone who has used Windows has experienced a BSoD! No need to dredge up feelings of disappointment and anger...

Nice guide, Blaze.