Bricked 5970?

[Datektrader]

so I have a HIS 5970,


the card developed a problem where it would not boot into windows with any ati drivers loaded. tried 9.12, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 test on two different computer with the same result. would work fine with the generic CGA driver installed

the card will not go through RMA because it had a water block installed and extra thermal grease was used to cool the vrms and the original screws for the gpu retention brackets are missing as well as one screw for the original back plate. so I know it won't pass an RMA inspection. as a last ditch effort I thought I would try and flash the bios.

I tried flashing with an ASUS 5970 bios instead of the HIS one ( stupid I know ) the flash went fine, though I did have to force it. when I rebooted I got nothing. so I rebooted again, same result and the red diag led on the motherboard next to the pcie slot was lit solid suggesting an obvious video problem.

so I got a PCI video card booted back to dos and tried to flash the card back. the problem is the atiflash tool does not detect the card. is there a work around or somthing I am missing here or is the card now a nice paper weight?

 

[DanishDevil]

Jeez, bad luck man! I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'll bump the thread so somebody else can chime in.

 

[TVman]

just RMA the card

 

[Fitseries3]

dont these new cards use a 128k flash? and is the 5970 a dual bios card like 3870x2 and 4870x2?

if so i can see what happened here.

 

[Datektrader]

I see what your getting at and that may very well be the case, in looking at the flash drive the master and slave bios's for asus are only 64k. I backed up the original bios's and they are both 128k. I didn't put two and two together when I did it. curiously I download the HIS bios m/s from this site and only the master is 128k the slave is showing only 49k.



there is a fix talked about http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/152 but since the atiflash will not detect the card I assume I am SOL and JWF. or is it possible that the card would be detected by winflash in windows?

 

[human_error]

I see what your getting at and that may very well be the case, in looking at the flash drive the master and slave bios's for asus are only 64k. I backed up the original bios's and they are both 128k. I didn't put two and two together when I did it. curiously I download the HIS bios m/s from this site and only the master is 128k the slave is showing only 49k.



there is a fix talked about http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/152 but since the atiflash will not detect the card I assume I am SOL and JWF. or is it possible that the card would be detected by winflash in windows?

someone here about a month ago bricked their 5970 by flashing it with a nvidia 7600gt bios - they were able to fix it by shorting a couple of pins on the bios chip - i believe w1zzard found the info from google on what to do and told them - i can't for the life of me find the thread now but it is here somewhere and i'm sure the guy in there would be happy to share the steps needed for forcing the flash in a non-recognised card (like his was).

**edit**

found the thread - the fix is written there somewhere
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=115240

**edit 2**

and if you don't want to read through the thread here is the post with the fix detailed with pics:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1766932&postcount=84

 

[phanbuey]

someone here about a month ago bricked their 5970 by flashing it with a nvidia 7600gt bios - they were able to fix it by shorting a couple of pins on the bios chip - i believe w1zzard found the info from google on what to do and told them - i can't for the life of me find the thread now but it is here somewhere and i'm sure the guy in there would be happy to share the steps needed for forcing the flash in a non-recognised card (like his was).

**edit**

found the thread - the fix is written there somwhere
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=115240

that's pretty f#$(* handy.

 

[alexsubri]

just RMA the card

it won't pass an RMA inspection.

Just back track man, whoever installed the custom cooling you or whoever made an error while installing it. Take the card out and make sure all the wires are in right and nothing is bent or missing. I always take pictures with my phone or whatever to see before and after because when it comes to pc modding, things can get tough

 

[Datektrader]

i'll give that a shot tomorrow, anyone know where i can get the full 128k master and slave bins? there seems to be only a master Asus one, and the HIS one has the slave at only 49k it seems. haven't looked at the others yet.

 

[human_error]

i'll give that a shot tomorrow, anyone know where i can get the full 128k master and slave bins? there seems to be only a master Asus one, and the HIS one has the slave at only 49k it seems. haven't looked at the others yet.

here's the xfx black edition bios from my card - they should work exactly the same on your card since they all use the reference pcb and components.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=32569&d=1264670279

the one ending B0 is master, and the one ending B1 slave.

 

[Datektrader]

Thanks for bios. I downloaded the HIS ones from this site again and this time they were both 128k, so im guessing some how I screwed up the first download. the Asus ones I got from another forum where some one was talking about how to extract the bin files from .exe that Asus provides. I downloaded those again and they are still only 64k.

im going to give the fix a shot after work today so i'll post an update later this evening. hopefully all goes well.

 

[DanishDevil]

Best of luck!

 

[Loosenut]

Best of luck, will keep our fingers crossed

 

[MatTheCat]

so I got a PCI video card booted back to dos and tried to flash the card back. the problem is the atiflash tool does not detect the card. is there a work around or somthing I am missing here or is the card now a nice paper weight?

You are going to have to do blind flash.

Get the HIS 5970 bios ROM, and note the procedures for the flash down very carefully and follow this procedure through as though blindfolded. I have recovered a bricked X1900XT this way.

It was a few yeas ago so I am afraid I can't remember much of the details, but it is very possible to do!

 

[Datektrader]

well good news and bad, the shorting of the bios pins worked and I loaded the XFX bios provided by human error ( thanks again for that) however the original problem is still there which leads me to believe the card is infact broken.


just to recap the original problem, the card will load into windows ( 7 pro x64) fine on the generic vga driver. when you install the ati driver ( doesn't matter which version) the card no longer loads into windows it hangs just after the flag comes together. windows see's this problem as a bad driver.

another thing to note, every time I have installed the video drivers with other cards ( 4890, sapphire 5970) the screen flashes black when the driver loads and you get the windows sound that it has detect a new piece of hardware. with this card the screen does not flash it just goes through the proccess and then askes to reboot. Im guessing that has somthing to do with this. even if I just install the driver through the device manager the same problem occurs.

 

[Datektrader]

one other thing, with GPUZ without a driver loaded this is what i get for GPU 1 and 2




GPU 1

GPU 2

is it just because the driver is not installed that it is reading the second GPU like that?

 

[Asylum]

If you have the card back to the right bios i would try reformating my computer.
May be you have a corrupt file...If not the card is bad and i would peice it back together and try to RMA.

 

[Datektrader]

well the fun continues.

i flashed it to the HIS bios availible on this site. same problem, once the driver is loaded there is no going into windows. but, now this is the funny part, i rebooted a couple times installing and unistalling the driver. and now it seems as though windows has the driver load for one GPU the other GPU is showing up as an unkown device. but the driver is loaded and everything is running ok, just on one GPU. even GPU-Z see's it as only a single gpu 5970.

 

[Datektrader]

my conclusion is that the second GPU is dead, or the ram that is supose to work with it is dead.

gpuz shows this for information on the second gpu

I guess I will try to RMA it though I highly doubt it will be succesful, but maybe they have some out of warranty repair fee.

one last thought, would it be possible to flash a 5870 bios to the master bios. since the 5970 is simply two underclocked 5870s. maybe making this into an oversized 5870.

 

[Asylum]

How about tring to reformat your computer like i suggested before you go dumping your $600 card.

 

[Datektrader]

before the bios flashing issue, this was the original problem. at that time I tried multiple reformats. one for each version of the driver I tried. but if you think it may help then I'll give it a shot.

 

[nullcorp]

Hi,

Sorry to see that flashing the bios didn't help.

I've been having the same problem of windows 7 locking up at the flag screen for the last few weeks, and been looking everywhere for a solution, without success. I finally found your post at xtremesystems.org, and it led me here.

I have a HIS 9570 as well, and didn't have any problem during the first week or so. I was using the first 10.3 preview drivers that just came up when I got the card. Then the problem kind of appeared a few days after I installed a Heatkiller waterblock.

At first I wasn't sure if the problem really came from the waterblock (and I’m still not sure it does), because I also use a tri eyefinity setup, and sometimes when I disconnect one or two monitors and reboot, Windows loads fine. But it's not guaranteed 100%.

I also tried to reinstall windows several times with different catalyst. No difference, even with the supposed "10.5 beta". At first I thought these did solve the problem, because I could reboot 5 times after windows was installed without an issue. Then this morning it happened again. Although I rebooted right after that without disconnecting any monitor, and it loaded fine. So this doesn't seem related to multi monitors after all.

I'm kinda freaked out to see that one of your GPUs is not working anymore. At least in my case after I've had a successful boot, everything works fine in win 7, and I still have the 2 GPUs in crossfire.

I'm really hesitating to RMA the card, because it will take several weeks to be replaced. And again, once I'm in windows, the card works just fine (although I haven't tried to really push or oc it). It just pisses me off that I have to boot several times just to get into win 7, and I'm still not even sure where the problem comes from. I guess I will at least try to put the original air cooler again to see if it changes anything, but what a loss of time...

 

[computertechy]

HERE I AM!!!! WHO SAID U COULD POST MY THREADS!!!!!!

LOL joking fellas.

nullcorp & Datektrader do you have msn handy?

 

[xrealm20]

--- my 2 cents ---

It sounds like the bios on one of the GPU's is functioning, hence you only seeing one gpu. There is a very specific process to flash these cards, as they have dual bios. Make sure that you've flashed both bios chips with the ORIGINAL bios - this should restore your functionality to your card.

 

[Psychlone]

Hold up guys - I've got the same exact problem on the same exact card - luckily (perhaps), I haven't changed a thing on my card.

I was just looking to flash the BIOS on this card and came across this thread. Looks like the flash doesn't help the driver issues.

There are a small handful of us that are experiencing this same exact problem, and nothing that I can see is the common denominator - except the card itself, but even then, the model is the same, but different manufacturers (for example, my card is a Built-By-ATI OEM card for system builders such as myself)

There's GOT to be an answer somewhere that's not the OS, not the driver, but something else...

Just like the OP, I can install any driver set I want, and it successfully installs without error, but after a reboot, there's nothing but a blank screen right after the Starting Windows animation, which is the exact moment the OS loads the VGA drivers. This does this on every driver set past 10.1 (the driver that I installed the day I got the card and formatted my HDD with a new install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64)
I can game just fine on ANY driver prior to the 10.1 set. There's no issues at all with 9.12 - in fact, they game just fine, but I, like everyone else, would like to be able to update our drivers accordingly.

Psychlone