Help!... bricked HD4850

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dealmaster said:
Yes, steal from a store and screw over the next person who accidentally buys the bricked card. Good advice.
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man, I can't believe your telling him to steal from a store and screw over the next person. Now that's shitty advice.

:rolleyes:
 
JimmiG said:
I was going to flash my card to se the idle clocks right, but I'm worried now. Also, the latest Sapphire BIOS at http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/16834/Sapphire.HD4850.512.080602.html still shows 500 MHz for idle instead of 160 MHz. Can I just use another one like the MSI BIOS instead? The information looks almost identical but there are some small differences.

I normally don't flash videocards, but this time I think it can really reduce power consumption and increase the life span of the card - 160 MHz is more than enough for 2D/Aero stuff. My mobo has integrated X1200 graphics, so as long as the card doesn't die completely, I can re-flash the old BIOS using that.
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To bad there isn't a good option for connecting through the X1200 and having the 4850 shut off in 2D. If AMD did that they would be the gods of power efficient gaming.
 
His is not the first 48XX to get killed by monkeying around with it. I saw GoldenTiger post in another thread that he killed his by overclocking it too much and that was a few days ago.
 
milkweg said:
His is not the first 48XX to get killed by monkeying around with it. I saw GoldenTiger post in another thread that he killed his by overclocking it too much and that was a few days ago.
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Yeah overclocking too much with the stock cooler is one sure way to kill the videocard. It's single-slot and designed to keep the temps within spec. at stock clocks.

It's strange that the card should die completely from a failed flash, though. One would think the card would still be able to recieve a BIOS at least. There should be a way to force a flash some way..
 
JimmiG said:
I normally don't flash videocards, but this time I think it can really reduce power consumption and increase the life span of the card - 160 MHz is more than enough for 2D/Aero stuff. My mobo has integrated X1200 graphics, so as long as the card doesn't die completely, I can re-flash the old BIOS using that.
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If you do decide to flash your card, make sure you flash the 48xx and not the x1200. You can check which adapter number the 48xx by typing "atiflash -i". Flash from dos, never from windows.
 
Pkirk618 said:
man, I can't believe your telling him to steal from a store and screw over the next person. Now that's shitty advice. :rolleyes:
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Re-read his post - he was saying "buy another 4850, use it to re-flash your borked one, then use both in Crossfire... FTW!" This was already addressed a few posts ago.

To the OP: Do what everyone else is saying: get another graphics card ($5 PCI one, or another 4850, etc) and re-flash your borked card from genuine DOS using ATITool from a bootable floppy or USB stick.
 
JimmiG said:
I was going to flash my card to se the idle clocks right, but I'm worried now. Also, the latest Sapphire BIOS at http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/16834/Sapphire.HD4850.512.080602.html still shows 500 MHz for idle instead of 160 MHz. Can I just use another one like the MSI BIOS instead? The information looks almost identical but there are some small differences.

I normally don't flash videocards, but this time I think it can really reduce power consumption and increase the life span of the card - 160 MHz is more than enough for 2D/Aero stuff. My mobo has integrated X1200 graphics, so as long as the card doesn't die completely, I can re-flash the old BIOS using that.
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I successfully flashed my Sapphire 4850 with the MSI BIOS, and it works. Card idles at 160/500. Of course, there is the risk that this will happen, so you'll have to make the call.
 
defaultluser said:
I successfully flashed my Sapphire 4850 with the MSI BIOS, and it works. Card idles at 160/500. Of course, there is the risk that this will happen, so you'll have to make the call.
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If Sapphire decides to update the BIOS for a future batch of 4850 cards, I suppose someone will upload that BIOS? Might be safer to wait...
 
SEALTeamSix said:
Re-read his post - he was saying "buy another 4850, use it to re-flash your borked one, then use both in Crossfire... FTW!" This was already addressed a few posts ago.

To the OP: Do what everyone else is saying: get another graphics card ($5 PCI one, or another 4850, etc) and re-flash your borked card from genuine DOS using ATITool from a bootable floppy or USB stick.
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Ha! you're telling me what I meant? lol.

plus, my response to the the guy hammering my response was indeed sarcasm.

heh, the joys of text without a face :(
 
JimmiG said:
It's strange that the card should die completely from a failed flash, though. One would think the card would still be able to recieve a BIOS at least. There should be a way to force a flash some way..
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That's cause the 4870 BIOS is of an unusual size, 128 kb vs 64 kb IIRC. They had to expand the size to fit all the instructions in, and when the smaller BIOS was put in, there wasn't enough instructions to fully turn on the card.
 
From the first post in the thread...

Any suggestions, or do I have to RMA this thing... Thanks.
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That is why people are giving you shit throughout the thread. You did something wrong, fucked up your card, and were considering RMAing it when this is 100% your fault. So before tossing around the "go fuck yourself" comments and such, consider that you are the first person in this thread to piss people off.
 
remmeh said:
Was trying to set idle clocks for core/mem to 160/500.



Heh, was thinking about that...

Would booting into Windows from an nvidia card (instead of an ATI card) make Winflash not even run at all?
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That could be it, I remember I couldn't flash my ATI card booting from Nvidia.
 
We are suppose to help out fellow [H] folks not say wack shit...come on if you have nothing good to say ...dont..:mad:

Now back to this OP...did any of the good idea's work so far?? :confused:

Please let us know..:cool:
 
what version of windows are you using? Vista no longer keeps video at HW level, it is in the user level now.....
 
xdivenx said:
Stop threadcrapping, and let people like Tiger or Pandora help him out, instead of acting like assholes.
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cuz people like OP who flash in windows shouldn't be touching things that aren't broken!

the term "if it ain't broke, don't touch it!" comes to mind
 
Stop threadcrapping, and let people like Tiger or Pandora help him out, instead of acting like assholes.
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cuz people like OP who flash in windows shouldn't be touching things that aren't broken!

the term "if it ain't broke, don't touch it!" comes to mind
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i thot it was "if it aint broke, dont fix it"

but ... how do you improve something if you dont touch it

touche ;)

good luck OP
 
artless1 said:
i thot it was "if it aint broke, dont fix it"

but ... how do you improve something if you dont touch it

touche ;)

good luck OP
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i know, you dont flash a brand new $200 video card! :D


if i wanted to improve something, i sure as hell wouldn't test it on my main machine, id use my old opty 165 with a x1650 :p
 
Beavis: "Help, I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing. I flashed the bios on my brand new video card in windows, never flashed shit before and now it's broke. If you can't help, I'll just RMA it and let everyone else pay for my stupidity."

General Concensus: "You're an idiot, you obviously don't know what you are doing. I don't think you screwing the bios up with a bad flash - under windows of all things, is covered under an RMA. It's unethical to say the least."

Mr. [Hardopc_Club]: "What is the matter with you people, he's a hardocp guy? Help him scam the company so everyone can eat it! Oh, I just killed my girlfriend, help me bury her? I'm a hardocp guy too, ya know."
 
Sojuuk said:
i only flash things from windows anymore never messed up yet O_O
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This post confuses the hell out of me. Here I am trying to gain knowledge from somebody's error, and then this guy comes along and acts all the advice everybody just said is not needed.
 
Kelv said:
This post confuses the hell out of me. Here I am trying to gain knowledge from somebody's error, and then this guy comes along and acts all the advice everybody just said is not needed.
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This forum, like most other internet sites are not exactly full of experts, now is it? Google and use other resources to come to your own conclusion. However, that said - I would hope you get the majority opinion of "never to flash in windows" out of this thread. Most people that have commented realize this.
 
This is getting ridiculous. We are a community that should be helping each other.

I bet almost all the people threadcrapping on the OP are hypocrites and would do the same if they were in a similar situation. They would earnestly come here asking for honest help or consider RMAing or returning to the store instead of swallowing the loss and chucking $200 in a perfectly good card (with a bad bios) in the garbage to go out and buy a new one on self-righteous principle.
 
remmeh said:
So anyone wanna tell me what I did wrong, instead of being pompous assholes?
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Yes. You came into a forum and openly admitted planning to RMA a card that YOU fried if you can't fix it (which is admitting a plan to defraud) and then accused folks who didn't agree with you of being "pompous assholes". That is what you did wrong. As for the card, your error was failure to consider than BIOS flashing videocards is usually an "at-your-own-risk" endeavour. I cannot imagine why trying to reflash the card while viewing the screen via PCI card doesn't work, unless there is something wrong with the card beyond the BIOS, and the fact that it showed up at the same time was a weird coincidence.

EDIT: reread and noticed atiflash couldn't find the card. I'd try using a regular PCI card instead of another PCIe and see if that works (something like an old S3 Trio or something); maybe the 8600GT is throwing atiflash off. And i'm not sure i'd mess with the 4850 BIOS, isn't the 4850 the card with the dual EFI/BIOS chip?
 
If you do flash, use DOS from now on.

Sure flashing from Windows can work but why take a risk? And if you knew Winflash was unstable, why'd you trust your hardware to it?


Anyway, do you have a PCI (not PCI-E) video card? Perhaps that might work and allow ATIFLASH to see it.

Make sure you're using the latest version of ATIFLASH too since that's the version that has 4850 support.
 
They'll notice you flashed the card with modified clocks, more than likely you won't get a replacement without coming out of pocket :(
 
Would just like to add that I have flashed in windows, with winflash, about 15 times today without any probs and if I had had an error I would popped in my Geforce 2 and fixed her right up. I trust my windows install more than I trust a floppy disk's data integrity.
 
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