Voltage change on Sapphire 4850

[MopeyMartian]

GPUTool says it can't adjust my cards voltages so I'm hoping I can change them in RBE. I think I've got this straight...

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b115/mopeymartian/RBE.jpg

From reading the tutorial I should be able to:

a) adjust the voltage under 03, 07, 08 and 09 to 1.158
b) hit Save BIOS
c) Load that BIOS onto the card using WinFlash

I don't need to touch anything else, GPUTool already does the rest for me. Is there anything I'm missing??? :confused:

[MopeyMartian]

No one has any feedback for me?

I'm not looking for "Will this work?" Frankly, I don't know if it will.

What I do want to know is if these are the proper steps to take so that I don't bork my card.

Since the BIOS will be, roughly, 99% the same everything should work. Correct?


Maybe you'd rather tell me, "Shut up and buy a HIS 4870 for $150 from ZipZoomfly! (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009882)", instead.

I'd love to... if I could. :cry:

[BAGZZlash]

It should be safe to try these settings. Go ahead. :)

[LagunaX]

looks ok - here is what i did with my visiontek:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1274297&postcount=686

[MopeyMartian]

Ok... I noticed a couple things I'm curious about.

You only changed the voltage on 03 and 09? Did you find out the other didn't need to be changed?

Also, why turn the fan off until you hit 40 degrees? I tried 0 rpm with GPUTool just to test and it hit 50 VERY quickly. Since my card idles around 40 my fan would be constantly kicking on. (g'damn my fan is annoying)

[LagunaX]

I just switched a few things from the original bios.
I started the fan at 40 deg so it would stay cool and not idle in the 60-70's.
Fan rpm is low at 40 not to be too loud...

[MopeyMartian]

It should be safe to try these settings. Go ahead. :)

A setting like voltage isn't protected by the digital signature, normally? If this doesn't work I don't have a PCI card to recover with.

[MopeyMartian]

Okay, well I bit the bullet and gave it a try aaaaaaaannnnnnd...


nothing.

Well, nothing has improved with my clocks. :cry:

I made the change, just like I'd described, and Hardware Monitor reports the new volts as 1.16V. Getting all excited inside, I opened up GPUTool and hit Find Max next to the GPU slider and waited... only to watch the speed slowly creep down back to 670. :ohwell:

It seems that W1zz got lucky in his review of my card and I must have gotten a bit of a clunker.

Hopefully by the time I can afford to upgrade again Win7 will be out and I'll need a DX11 card anyway. Thx for the help.