XFX HD 7970 GHz DD Bios Flasing

[xibinim]

Hi,

I have recently bought a XFX HD 7970 GHz DD 3GB after retiring my trusty 4870 1GB. As my bills are included in my rent, decided to give crypto mining a go.

People with similar cards seem to be getting 700+ kH/s but my first attempt yielded only 610, and after tweaking my hash rate went down. I can't get passed 570 as it stands.

I've heard the XFX cards aren't as good at mining compared to other 7970s but you can flash the BIOS. I have flashed BIOSs before but never on a GFX card and the information I have found isn't convincing so I thought I would get a definitive answer. Can I flash my card to a reference BIOS? One reason, regardless of mining, is altering the clock speeds and voltages - if I change anything in AB (even down) the computer starts acting very weirdly. Another issue are ATI drivers; just installed 8.1 x64 and had all sorts of problems installing 13.11 beta drivers - eventually worked but seemed to be a case of blind luck.

So can I flash the BIOS without bricking the card (assuming I follow the instructions correctly) to allow for more tweaking (including undervolting) and hopefully a higher hash rate? Many thanks

 

[ne6togadno]

better dont mess with vga bios flashing
your problems are more likely related to drivers+win8
install win7 with 13.9 drivers and then check performance

 

[xibinim]

better dont mess with vga bios flashing
your problems are more likely related to drivers+win8
install win7 with 13.9 drivers and then check performance

Thanks for the quick reply. I did notice on the performance tables, a lot of people who got decent scores had Windows 7. I might give that combo a go.

 

[rougal]

That card definately have a dual bios feature, so i think bios flashing is not a problem.. If anything goes bad, u can revert to default setting using the bios switch as long as u don't fry the card by overvolting to much..

 

[xibinim]

Don't think I will be overvolting. If I were to flash though, which would be the best BIOS? Is there a better BIOS than the default one supplied?

 

[rougal]

If your thinking of flashing your card from a different BIOS file, u need to ensure that the PCB is the same design.

What u should do is to try OC your card to see how much ability it has in it's hardware. (max clock, max Memory, max voltage needed) then tweak your current BIOS. Backup the current bios first before u try to tweak it. And I recommend to ask help from here

 

[xibinim]

Cool, is After Burner the recommended tool? Things started going funny very quickly when playing around with it.

 

[rougal]

Yep. Tweak using Afterburner or Sapphire Trixx. try to OC without increasing the voltage to see how much OC u can get.

 

[xibinim]

Hadn't heard of Trixx, will give it a go. I really should actually play some games now that I have a new card lol! I can now play Ghosts; despite my 4870 playing BF4 @ 1080 on medium, it couldn't do Ghosts because of their "next gen" push.