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Would these custom BIOSes help overall performance?

Coldblackice

Coldblackice

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 14, 2010
Messages
1,156
A guy named Stilt has been custom-"correcting" memory timings in AMD card bioses, apparently to ecstatic results -- in the mining world. People exclaim hashing ~20% higher after a memory-timing adjustment on their BIOS.

Would these AMD card memory-timing fixes also improve general GPU/FPS performance in gameplay situations?

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0




I've heard rumors over the years of performance/FPS improvements from flashing other cards' BIOSes, revolving around some concept of "memory timings", but I've never found anyone with much concrete detail or knowledge on such. It's usually shrugged off as memory-overclocking, like the two terms are one and the same (timing <-> memory clock speed). I'm guessing this thread is the gist of what memory timings are about.

The question is whether memory timing adjustments would actually help....?
 
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No, these BIOSes are meant for mining because half of the ROPs are disabled, which would kill your gaming performance.
 
The reason they help mining so much is that mining is very sensitive to latency, (scrypt mining anyway). Games I'm assuming not so much, otherwise you'd have noticeable gaming differences between cards using Hynix modules and Elpiida modules for 290/290x series.

Now these bioses thestilt said would reduce your frame rate by about 15-20% with the reduction of ROPs from 64 to 32.
 
They would help, except that ROP's are disabled.

I requested to him to create gaming versions of his BIOS's. Literally the same BIOS with the ROP's enabled. That's it... no other changes.

He refused. Guy is a douche. He just did it for the massive donations he got from the miners. And the miners act like he is a charitable god for saving their eldipia cards.


If someone is skilled in editing these BIOS's, it would be useful to edit them and re-enable the ROP's.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
The reason they help mining so much is that mining is very sensitive to latency, (scrypt mining anyway). Games I'm assuming not so much, otherwise you'd have noticeable gaming differences between cards using Hynix modules and Elpiida modules for 290/290x series.

Now these bioses thestilt said would reduce your frame rate by about 15-20% with the reduction of ROPs from 64 to 32.
Click to expand...

I have benchmarked my elidipa card vs my hynix card, and saw a measurable performance difference. Depends on the clocks. This was in Heaven benchamrk. Ill see if I can find the numbers when I get home.
 
Anyone have any clues on how to go about enabling ROPs?

okashira said:
I have benchmarked my elidipa card vs my hynix card, and saw a measurable performance difference. Depends on the clocks. This was in Heaven benchamrk. Ill see if I can find the numbers when I get home.
Click to expand...

Which had the better performance? And are you using Stilt's bios?
 
okashira said:
They would help, except that ROP's are disabled.

I requested to him to create gaming versions of his BIOS's. Literally the same BIOS with the ROP's enabled. That's it... no other changes.

He refused. Guy is a douche. He just did it for the massive donations he got from the miners. And the miners act like he is a charitable god for saving their eldipia cards.


If someone is skilled in editing these BIOS's, it would be useful to edit them and re-enable the ROP's.
Click to expand...

Really dude? The guy took the donations to buy the card and then spent a week of his free time working on the modified BIOSes, got them signed through his contacts, and distributed them to a bunch of whiny know-it-alls on the forum who then proceeded to moan and complain when something didn't work. Tightening the timings around specific memory like he did isn't a walk in the park. He helped a lot of people, definitely not a douche.

Even if you do edit the BIOSes to re-enable the ROPs (which were disabled to save power for mining), you'd need a way to get them signed.
 
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okashira said:
They would help, except that ROP's are disabled.

I requested to him to create gaming versions of his BIOS's. Literally the same BIOS with the ROP's enabled. That's it... no other changes.

He refused. Guy is a douche. He just did it for the massive donations he got from the miners. And the miners act like he is a charitable god for saving their eldipia cards.


If someone is skilled in editing these BIOS's, it would be useful to edit them and re-enable the ROP's.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you sound like a nvidia fan right now, all they do is bitch
 
PC-HAngover said:
Even if you do edit the BIOSes to re-enable the ROPs (which were disabled to save power for mining), you'd need a way to get them signed.
Click to expand...

Hmm, if that's true, how come bioses modded with VBE7 are able to get by without needing a new signature? Is it a matter of having a newer motherboard that enforces bios signatures? Or maybe you're referring to newer 200x cards (vs. older 7000 series)?

I've modded my Sapphire 7950 a few times without any sort of re-signing, but I'm using a reference 7000-series card, and on an older x58 motherboard, too.


EDIT:

Found this here:

"...only the newer non reference cards have a digital signature"

Not sure if it's the crux of whether something needs signing or not:


Also, Stilt mentions:

"These bioses are unsigned... But as usual, signatures have no power here... At least in this case..."


Not trying to argue, by the way. Just trying to figure out whether it might be feasible to reverse-engineer the Stilt-modded bioses to re-enable the ROP's.
 
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Correct, it's the newest cards that have signature verification built in. Though Stilt does provide some extras without signatures and they seem to be working. AMD might be moving towards signature validation on their hardware and it might not be to the total enforcement stage yet.

If I can find any time I'd probably be able to modify his bioses to do what we want but I don't see it happening for the next few weeks at least.
 
PC-HAngover said:
Correct, it's the newest cards that have signature verification built in. Though Stilt does provide some extras without signatures and they seem to be working. AMD might be moving towards signature validation on their hardware and it might not be to the total enforcement stage yet.

If I can find any time I'd probably be able to modify his bioses to do what we want but I don't see it happening for the next few weeks at least.
Click to expand...

Good to know, thanks.

As for the modding -- any chance you'd have a moment to point out any resources for how to re-enable disabled ROP's? Or how to tweak timings?

I've isolated the byte differences of before and after bioses that Stilt's modded, isolating the offsets where the changes occur. However, I don't have any reference for which bytes are changing what (like enabling/disabling ROP's, for example).

If not, no worries -- and fingers crossed you may find some time in the next few weeks :)
 
Damn I flashed to this bios a while ago and got 100kh/s more on my MYSTs. I didn't realize they reduced the performance of gaming. Gpu-z reports 32 ROPs. Is that right for a Tahiti-LE or would that not be visible through software?
I am comparing my current gpu-z screenshots to ones i took before flashing and they appear to be the same. Unfortunately I don't have benchmarks to compare to, but Bioshock Infinite does feel a little choppy.
Does anyone have insight on this? I definitely would prefer better gaming than better mining.
 
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I wanted to post an update on this.
I reflashed my bios back to the regular non-modded version and i am getting a solid 35% increase in average fps on the bioshock infinite benchmark running on ultra 1080p.
It is noticeably smoother too.
 
Coldblackice said:
Good to know, thanks.

As for the modding -- any chance you'd have a moment to point out any resources for how to re-enable disabled ROP's? Or how to tweak timings?

I've isolated the byte differences of before and after bioses that Stilt's modded, isolating the offsets where the changes occur. However, I don't have any reference for which bytes are changing what (like enabling/disabling ROP's, for example).

If not, no worries -- and fingers crossed you may find some time in the next few weeks :)
Click to expand...

Yea unfortunately I'd have to do some research into that. Since you've already looked at the differences, how much is changed? I'll let you know if I come across any resources for offsets of what we're looking for.
 
Dark12 said:
Damn I flashed to this bios a while ago and got 100kh/s more on my MYSTs. I didn't realize they reduced the performance of gaming. Gpu-z reports 32 ROPs. Is that right for a Tahiti-LE or would that not be visible through software?
I am comparing my current gpu-z screenshots to ones i took before flashing and they appear to be the same. Unfortunately I don't have benchmarks to compare to, but Bioshock Infinite does feel a little choppy.
Does anyone have insight on this? I definitely would prefer better gaming than better mining.
Click to expand...

The decrease in your gaming would be due to the reduced ROPs -- Stilt disabled half of them in each of his modded bioses.

I believe GPU-Z only shows total physical ROPs, not enabled ones. 32 ROPs would be the total physical number; 16 should be the Stilt-modded number (I believe).

So far I've been unable to find anything or anyone that knows how to re-enable the ROPs. I've done a hex-compare of Stilt's before/after bioses and narrowed down his changes to a block of bytes, but I'm unable to decipher them, nor find a reference for such.

Anyone know if it's possible to see how many ROPs are currently enabled? If so, I could try flipping bits to narrow down which ones enabled/disable ROPs.
 
I think it would be easier to just find out what program he uses to mod the bios'.
 
Dark12 said:
I think it would be easier to just find out what program he uses to mod the bios'.
Click to expand...

I'm willing to bet that's going to be harder than you think. I'd like to think otherwise, but past experiences go against an easy find on this.
 
okashira said:
He just did it for the massive donations he got from the miners.
Click to expand...


HAHAHAAHAH, that's comedic gold right there. He released over 200 custom bios images; quoted saying 95% of his work was pro bono. I've recommended his bios images to a lot of people, and don't know of anyone that actually donated.

He's very much willing to still create bios images. He just isn't working for free anymore.

Spazturtle said:
A hex editor such as HxD or Emacs
Click to expand...

He built is own custom toolkit.
 
I just flip the bios switch back to stock and and turn the PC back on. Glad these cards have dual bios :)
 
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