Flashing R9 290x bios?

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XViper

Gawd
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Aug 24, 2012
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I've been reading and it appears if I flash one of the other bios on the cards, I can lower the heat and increase hash rate. There isn't a lot of info out there on this.

Is it reversible?

Can I save the old bios so I can reflash it later?

Hopefully someone on here knows more about it.
 
It's fairly easy, but you need to do it precisely as described.

Make an e.g. Win98 bootable USB drive. Requires Win98 & a tool to make the bootable flash drive.
Copy new BIOS & ATIFlash onto usb drive (name the BIOS short 7 char name since you can't see longer names in DOS e.g. 290xA.bios)
Set USB drive as startup in BIOS
Backup original BIOS on usb
Flash new BIOS

reboot.

The thing is that it seems to have a negative effect on gaming.
One of my cards was stable, the other wasn't. I tried a couple BIOSes.

See the Stilts thread.
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12830.0

BIOS flash howto:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-use-atiflash.57750/

Windows DOS USB tool
http://rufus.akeo.ie/

A guide:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1353325/tutorial-atiwinflash-how-to-flash-the-bios-of-your-ati-cards

Go read up on it and then feel free to ask more specific questions.
 
I have 2 Sapphire R9 290x's that I want to do this to. The Asus reference 290's, I'm going to keep for gaming and the occasional mining but I'm going to watercool them.
 
Was the asus 290 directcu BIOS posted? I'm on a tablet and its hard to use google magic on something like that
 
mkrohn said:
Was the asus 290 directcu BIOS posted? I'm on a tablet and its hard to use google magic on something like that
Click to expand...

If you mean an optimized BIOS from Stilt just for the DCII then no, I haven't seen one yet (or else I'd be using it for mine). I see some people have had success with his BIOSes on Windforce and Tri-X but those are both reference boards I believe (Tri-X is at least). The DCII is very much not a ref board. I would experiment with this myself on my DCII but I'm already getting a solid 890 hash just by OCing the memory (Elpida).
 
edge929 said:
If you mean an optimized BIOS from Stilt just for the DCII then no, I haven't seen one yet (or else I'd be using it for mine). I see some people have had success with his BIOSes on Windforce and Tri-X but those are both reference boards I believe (Tri-X is at least). The DCII is very much not a ref board. I would experiment with this myself on my DCII but I'm already getting a solid 890 hash just by OCing the memory (Elpida).
Click to expand...

I just got mine yesterday and haven't had a chance to tune them yet. What settings are you using for that? I spent my time wiring up a dell server PSU and just haven't had a chance to properly tune these 290's yet. I'm trying to find a way to get all of my cards operational but I ran out of speaker wire.
 
It took me awhile but I have all three of my 290s at 900 kh give or take 10. The 2 references cards are using Stilt's BIOS (V34) and those helped a ton. On stock BIOS I could only get ~850 after tons of tweaking (and crashes). Now they are running stable for 4 days.

My DCII I just set to the "old" best settings before Stilt's BIOSes came out (1000/1500) but I had to bump voltage +25mv to get it stable. The extra heat isn't a problem for the DCII as long as you keep it open-air. Ironically, GPUZ reports line-in power all over the place. My lowest ASIC card (74.4%) pulls the least amount @ 240W while the higher ASIC reference card (80.8%) pulls around 300W and the DCII is right in the middle around 260W (forgot ASIC score).

Other settings for the DCII are TC = 20481 (32768 seems to be the same result), fan speed set to 60% and temps never above 84C in a ~19C basement. Oddly, my VRM temps on the DCII are higher than the reference cards (all at 60% fan speed) around 98C.
 
Flashed the Stilts bios to my brothers 290x. Took a few minutes, definitely worth the trouble.
 
Have Stilt's BIOS dropbox been disabled?
When I click to get the one for my 280X, dropbox returns with "Nothing Here.... Deleted or Moved"
If anyone has a new dropbox location for these I would appreciate it.
 
Core32 said:
Have Stilt's BIOS dropbox been disabled?
When I click to get the one for my 280X, dropbox returns with "Nothing Here.... Deleted or Moved"
If anyone has a new dropbox location for these I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Which one you need? I might have all of the ones for the models I've had around here. A while back he moved things for housekeepign on his end
 
has he gone through and made even better ones? I might have to reflash some cards
 
I don't think it's "better" per se. Just matches the specific card.
I just can't get the links to work.
Anyone?
 
A bit off topic, but is there a list of optimized BIOS cards?

I have a Powercolor 7950 (i know, i know...) which I'd really like to try a BIOS on.
 
wand3r3r said:
It's fairly easy, but you need to do it precisely as described.

Make an e.g. Win98 bootable USB drive. Requires Win98 & a tool to make the bootable flash drive.
Copy new BIOS & ATIFlash onto usb drive (name the BIOS short 7 char name since you can't see longer names in DOS e.g. 290xA.bios)
Set USB drive as startup in BIOS
Backup original BIOS on usb
Flash new BIOS
Click to expand...


Or you just ignore all that hard work and use the latest ATI winflash. I've probably used it 30-40 times on several different machines recently and it always worked flawlessly and a lot more convenient. And since all these cards have dual BIOS, even if it does go wrong, you just flip a switch and boot up just fine.
 
Sooo, all of this posts, and one simple before and after results on same settings was to hard to be done? :(
 
mkrohn said:
leave it to a few Dbags to ruin something great
Click to expand...

Reoccurring theme in the crypto community. Seen this story play out in the kernel dev community before. Free money attracts a lot of tards.

Edit: Good god, I caught up on the posts I had not read on his 290x bios thread. I'd quit to.
 
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Sorry to bring this back but I found out that one of the used cards I had bought actually had a different bios on it. It does not throttle back as it should. I'm pretty sure I'm more interested in gaming than mining with it.

I read the thread on flashing however it's in the same position as my brand one I bought and it's definitely running hotter and won't adjust like the other one does.

Do I have to switch it to the other side when flashing or can I leave it in the current position and flash it back to stock? TIA.
 
Keep the switch position to the BIOS you want to overwrite. Always save the current BIOS (regardless if you want to use it or not) first before flashing. Use GPU-Z to do this. For the 290X I know there is a Peformance (Uber) and Quiet position. I believe the position closest to the power connectors is Uber. You can always look at TechPowerUp for your exact model and download the stock BIOS (uber or quiet) for it.
 
I have a very wierd card. Ok, I did exactly as specified and flashed the stock however, it will not downclock and won't accept me telling it to go down to 920mhz. It still runs fine but runs hotter than the other one. It overclocks no problem though.
 
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