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Problems Flashing 6850's

F

FireBean

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2010
Messages
994
I'm trying to flash my Visionshit 6850's with some new BIOS to try and bump up the voltage. They are water-cooled, and I can support the increased heat load. Now, I cannot but up the voltage via software because this is a non-ref board. The CHiL chip is not there. Hell, even the mosfets are in different places. Visionshit went so far to cut costs (and have the highest prices) that even the chocks aren't even the solid variants. Even with these disabilities, I'm determined to get more out of these cards.

I have been using ATIFlash and the RBE tool to modify the BIOS. I cannot get anything other than the original BIOS to work. I cannot even change the freqs without getting a BSoD during boot. Also, both cards look identical but have different BIOS chips in them as well.

Am I doing something wrong, or did I just buy some shit boards?

FYI: I have not even broke 45c on either one of the cards at 900Mhz
 
FireBean said:
FYI: I have not even broke 45c on either one of the cards at 900Mhz
Click to expand...

Then they're not all bad :p
You'll typically find BIOS flashing a problem with non-reference cards. Make sure you find one that's written to work with the Visiontek brand.
 
samuelmorris said:
Then they're not all bad :p
You'll typically find BIOS flashing a problem with non-reference cards. Make sure you find one that's written to work with the Visiontek brand.
Click to expand...
I saved the BIOS off of the cards themselves and modified them.
 
Pretty sure. I followed the RBE guide to the letter and have about 2 hours of experimenting in there as well. I have about 30 BIOS images all with 1 small change on each one to see what is making it jack up.
 
FireBean said:
Pretty sure. I followed the RBE guide to the letter and have about 2 hours of experimenting in there as well. I have about 30 BIOS images all with 1 small change on each one to see what is making it jack up.
Click to expand...

Have you tried only the voltage increase on the 3d clocks without changing the clock frequencies for gpu and ram?
 
No... I just tried the boot voltage w/o freq increase. Hmmm... you got me thinking!
 
Hmm, lets try something a little more aggressive yet still on the safe side.

Download driver sweeper
Remove your drivers, and reboot
Go to safe mode
Run driver sweeper and remove all traces ATI/AMD (be careful if you have a amd chipset)
Flash the bios on the card and then reboot
Install the drivers after the system reboots into windows.
 
Just curious. What's the advantage of flashing? I have no means of overclocking my card, so should I be interested in flashing my HIS 6850?
 
What I'm trying to do is give my gpus some more voltage so that I can push them near 1.1Ghz godliness. Since i'm underwater, i can give them up to 1.3v from what I've read. Although, I do need to ziptie a fan to the sides of them. I think some of the other components are getting a bit too warm.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Hmm, lets try something a little more aggressive yet still on the safe side.

Download driver sweeper
Remove your drivers, and reboot
Go to safe mode
Run driver sweeper and remove all traces ATI/AMD (be careful if you have a amd chipset)
Flash the bios on the card and then reboot
Install the drivers after the system reboots into windows.
Click to expand...

Ok, I tried this. I was able to boot into window both both 1.2 and 1.3 volt settings. I was not able to confirm this in windows though because there were no drivers. Now, when I installed the drivers, and rebooted, I got the BSOD.

It was a System Service Exception caused by atikmdag.sys
Address Stack: atikmdag.sys+27752
From: fffff880`05805000
To: fffff880`06213000

Now, I don't know how to read this or even begin on how I can fix this... Funny how it will boot without the drivers...
 
To fix that go into safe mode and take out the drivers, flash to the original bios, boot back normally and presto, been there, done that ;-)


Are you sure that the profile method wouldn't work for you?

I mean, doing something like this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114562

That is how i prefer to work out the speeds and voltages on my card, safer than flashing (and also my non reference ASUS DirectCU doesn't really play nice with flashing either). I propose this solution a lot because of how safe it is.


EDIT TO ADD:
When you edit the profile that you make there is an option with core voltage in mv, so for example 1.1 = 1100. i wouldn't recommend you going higher than 1250, so dont try that 1.3 again (1300)
 
Last edited:
I'd like to know how you do that with ECC. I found the profile.xml but when I make a change on it, it does not translate back to the video cards. hmm....

But I am going to try and remove ECC only and try to flash that way,
 
nada, same error during boot. I still don't understand why it can boot without the driver...
 
The drivers have the powerplay calls, and what you modified on your flash was powerplay states, maybe the specific bios of your card, like mine, isn't really perfectly compatible with the standard settings of RBE and thus the numbers that you inputed dont correspond to what the program expected.

And well, remember that first you have to make a profile, then you modify it, and last you need to actually load//activate the profile. I use it for stability and to force full 3d speed if i may alt tab and check a webpage with hardware accelerated flash or videos.
 
IC, well that makes alot of sense then.

Now, I cannot seem to create profiles in ECC, and I don't remember what the last version had CCC. and Tips?
 
Still cannot get the voltage to bump up past 1.15. I have to figure out why the drivers do not like the voltage increase when I'm booting. It's weird!
 
Still looking for help on this. I cannot seem to crack this, and I REALLY don't want to do a volt-mod.
 
Bringing up an old thread to see if anyone has some insite. Flashing just causes to the video drivers to crash under boot. Also, I cannot seem to modify the voltage via software either. For example, If I give ATI Tools a custom voltage number and apply it, it reverts back to 0.95v. 1.15v is the highest it will do, which is the stock voltage for 3D.
 
Addressing volt mods, I did some pretty extensive volt mods to my old 7900GS. I volt modded the core to increase voltage by 0.25v using a conductive ink pen and shaded a resistor with a pencil to increase memory voltage as well. It seemed daunting but everything worked perfectly and I was able to take a stock 450MHz card up to about 740MHz. I know it's not your preferred method, but I have done it and as long as you are careful, it works well.
 
Maybe, just maybe, your visiontek board doesn't have any way to regulate voltage and that is why it can't be changed?
 
dealmaster said:
Addressing volt mods, I did some pretty extensive volt mods to my old 7900GS. I volt modded the core to increase voltage by 0.25v using a conductive ink pen and shaded a resistor with a pencil to increase memory voltage as well. It seemed daunting but everything worked perfectly and I was able to take a stock 450MHz card up to about 740MHz. I know it's not your preferred method, but I have done it and as long as you are careful, it works well.
Click to expand...

I've been thinking of doing this. I know I cannot solder this, because it just too damn small and having shaky hands from PTSD does not help.

Revdarian said:
Maybe, just maybe, your visiontek board doesn't have any way to regulate voltage and that is why it can't be changed?
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking.


If I'm able to get pictures of the voltage controller chip, do you think anyone here would be able to help me identify what I need to shade. I have no clue!
 
I couldn't get voltage to change on mine either, I gave up on it long ago, but just thought I would say your not the only one.

I never tried on my Gigabyte, but the Powercolor never would anyway.
 
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