anybody flasehd a 290x 8GB to a 390x ??

[msimax]

pt1 bios and modded 390x quick test firestrike to long on free version lol 1040 driver

 

[broken pixel]

Could I get a link to that modded Bios please! What clocks are the modded one you tried?

I would like to give it a try on my trio for fun! Might as well see what improvements I get, ill run a few tests on my trio with one bios setting and the other with the new bios.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=400050

The first post has the link the modded 390x BIOS & the clocks are 1050/1250MHz. Run some actual game test not so much synthetic benchmarks please, we needs more data man before this ship blows.
I had a link for the 15.15 modded for all cards but that link has disappeared from mega, it was asder00 who modded the driver. That driver would bench sweet but in game it sucked, well with BF4 it did.

When I tested my results @ 1100Mhz/ 1500MHz on vanilla XFX 290x with Elpida chips.
20008 with AMD Radeon R9 290X(2x) and Intel Core i7-3930K Processor
Graphics Score
26121
Physics Score
16680
Combined Score
8147
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5140236

 

[broken pixel]

Funny how people come into a thread about flashing a BIOS and insist on making comments in a negative fashion by stating you will brick the GPU, why flash it?, etc.
The essence to this flash is it works because the architecture has indeed NOT changed or it would not farking flash on the GPU in question and boot into an OS & the 390x BIOS will flash on most 290s.

Most GPUs & Mainboards have dual BIOS capabilities to prevent the very term of bricking, it's not like you are flashing an EEPROM. Also if you indeed by chance do not back the original BIOS & end up flashing both of the BIOS with a farked up BIOS you can always insert a spare GPU & re-flash the GPU you borked after you find the correct BIOS for your GPU you forgot to back up. Doh!

Who ever came up with the term: If it is not broken do not fix it is a farking idiot. Anything and everything that is birthed from some manufacture is most likely hindered in some way.

If there is a PCB there is a way to modify the original corporate specification.

 

[R-T-B]

No, if the BIOS is sufficiently different supporting different DRAM at different voltages and timings, you could damage the card.

I've yet to see this.

 

[MrGenius]

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's always going to be some cost for extra performance. Especially on identical hardware. Are you familiar with the trade-offs? Are you prepared to pay that price? Do you know what will happen if you don't? Maybe nothing? Or maybe something? Are you sure? Do you have a clue? Or are you just another lemming, blindly following the crowd?

Do you know that soft modding is weak anyway? And that you'll gain far more from hard modding. Are you aware that those who really know how to squeeze everything you possibly can out of any type hardware consider soft modding(such as flashing a different BIOS, or even modding the original BIOS) to basically be a waste of time(and almost never do it, unless that's all they feel like doing for whatever reasons). It's really just for those that are too unskilled, lacking in knowledge, and/or too afraid to do it the right way. In short, it's for the novice, the amateur, the lazy, and/or small minded. Hardcore OCers consider it a laughable attempt(made by rookies mainly). If that's all you know how to do, then you truly know little. And you'll never "unlock" the true potential of your hardware by doing so(if that's all you're going to do anyway). It's a second rate practice of OCing, which will only ever yield mediocre results(on its own at least). Them's the facts.

Have fun thinking you know everything there is to know about what you're doing though!

 

[broken pixel]

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's always going to be some cost for extra performance. Especially on identical hardware. Are you familiar with the trade-offs? Are you prepared to pay that price? Do you know what will happen if you don't? Maybe nothing? Or maybe something? Are you sure? Do you have a clue? Or are you just another lemming, blindly following the crowd?

Do you know that soft modding is weak anyway? And that you'll gain far more from hard modding. Are you aware that those who really know how to squeeze everything you possibly can out of any type hardware consider soft modding(such as flashing a different BIOS, or even modding the original BIOS) to basically be a waste of time(and almost never do it, unless that's all they feel like doing for whatever reasons). It's really just for those that are too unskilled, lacking in knowledge, and/or too afraid to do it the right way. In short, it's for the novice, the amateur, the lazy, and/or small minded. Hardcore OCers consider it a laughable attempt(made by rookies mainly). If that's all you know how to do, then you truly know little. And you'll never "unlock" the true potential of your hardware by doing so(if that's all you're going to do anyway). It's a second rate practice of OCing, which will only ever yield mediocre results(on its own at least). Them's the facts.

Have fun thinking you know everything there is to know about what you're doing though!

This thread has nothing to do with modding hardware on the PCB man. If there is or nothing to gain with flashing how are people supposed to know if they don't experiment? Shit I like flashing hardware just to do it & test.
The post you made sounds like you have a pompous personality, why? The entire point of this thread is to gather data & let people do what they want to do with their GPUs with the data they have acquired from the thread.
Most users will not attempt a PCB modification because of soldering skills there lack of, but will gladly do a soft modification & you belittle people who choose to attempt even experimenting with any type of modification.

No lemmings man, just people trying to help out other people until MrGenius enters the room with 500 dollars worth of soldering gear, white papers & spews ePenis all over the gathering.

 

[R-T-B]

There is a somewhat legit point he brings in though: It's not JUST the Hawaii silicon at play here, you do have to ackknowledge the PCB might be slightl different from the R9 290X as well, leading to instability.

I find that likely that they are similar, but not the same. Hardly a bricking concern though.

 

[broken pixel]

There is a somewhat legit point he brings in though: It's not JUST the Hawaii silicon at play here, you do have to acknowledge the PCB might be slight different from the R9 290X as well, leading to instability.

I find that likely that they are similar, but not the same. Hardly a bricking concern though.

His point was stated in terms of how a pompous asshat would inject information on a subject being discussed. There is no change on the PCB from the data that has been presented from many sources. There is no instability upon flashing a ref 290x with the modded 390x 4GB BIOS, same architecture man. AMD is gimping the 290x for the 390x within driver support, seek your favorite search engine on the topic.

 

[msimax]

One thing i like about this bios over the pt1 pt3 bios is the fact i can overclock higher in games. with all 3 cards separately they clock like champs but in cfx card 2 will do 1070 core on the stock bios pt1 fixes that but has no 2d mode clocks this bios allows clocking plus itll idle at 300mhz for power savings. Only quirk so far is power limit slider past 0% causes driver crashes. But doesnt matter as the cards are still overclocking for me and if you watch that thread alot of ppl are hard at work on the bios and making progress. Just finish playing crysis 3 for 4 hours no issues.

 

[EarthDog]

I don't think you understand what @W1zzard was pointing out, "the architecture is the same, it's the same physical silicon with the same transistors.". It's the same so flashing it, isn't going to hurt it. Or at least that's what I took from W1zzard's post. But that's not to say the user's not going to hurt it or screw it up with an incorrect flash... But if you want to learn it, then there is a curve and trial and error is apart of the process.

No, I understand exactly. But I'm still left wondering WHY? Why would I change my car from a Ford Explorer to a Mercury Mountaineer by switching badges?? Its the same vehicle... nothing would change on it. If you want the higher clocks it offers, then have MSI AB or something of the like run at startup with your clocks. Done! No risk in borking that way (same with a dual bios card). I guess I just don't understand the point of flashing in this particular case.

o you know that soft modding is weak anyway? And that you'll gain far more from hard modding. Are you aware that those who really know how to squeeze everything you possibly can out of any type hardware consider soft modding(such as flashing a different BIOS, or even modding the original BIOS) to basically be a waste of time(and almost never do it, unless that's all they feel like doing for whatever reasons). It's really just for those that are too unskilled, lacking in knowledge, and/or too afraid to do it the right way.

Holy cow...... get your head out of your ass. While your underlying point may be correct (hard modding can get your clocks higher), to talk down to those that are not hardcore benchers is swimming out of your lane. Now, I don't get it either why they are flashing like with like, but to disparage other people who could GIVE TWO SHITS about breaking records or getting boints and just want to play games and overclock simply because they don't hard mod cards, shows your 'genius'.

 

[GhostRyder]

No, I understand exactly. But I'm still left wondering WHY? Why would I change my car from a Ford Explorer to a Mercury Mountaineer by switching badges?? Its the same vehicle... nothing would change on it. If you want the higher clocks it offers, then have MSI AB or something of the like run at startup with your clocks. Done! No risk in borking that way (same with a dual bios card). I guess I just don't understand the point of flashing in this particular case.

Its because there are supposed to be some improvements on the software side "Not yet available" (or maybe never available) to the R9 290X that do improve the card in more ways (Including performance on a clock to clock basis). For just core clocks, there would be no point but its for testing the improvements and see if there are any that make some type of difference.

 

[EarthDog]

The results I have seen so far have not inferred that there were any clock for clock improvements.

I see ~9% gains at 1080p (a res that would not be affected by the vRAM) but that is against 100 Mhz core increase and 250MHz memory increase. That is also against different drivers I believe as the 290x came out what, several months ago? So that seems 1:1 to me with driver improvements across that time period.

Another way to test without all this hullabaloo (flashing) would simply be to test a 390x with 290x clocks on the same driver.

 

[R-T-B]

His point was stated in terms of how a pompous asshat would inject information on a subject being discussed. There is no change on the PCB from the data that has been presented from many sources. There is no instability upon flashing a ref 290x with the modded 390x 4GB BIOS, same architecture man. AMD is gimping the 290x for the 390x within driver support, seek your favorite search engine on the topic.

View attachment 66146

I'm pro bios modding, but you can't possibly claim to know that every single PCB trace is the same even beneath the PCB. No one but a professional electronics engineering firm can.

That said, I stated and stand by this statement: It's unlikely to be an issue.

 

[Mindweaver]

No, I understand exactly. But I'm still left wondering WHY? Why would I change my car from a Ford Explorer to a Mercury Mountaineer by switching badges?? Its the same vehicle... nothing would change on it. If you want the higher clocks it offers, then have MSI AB or something of the like run at startup with your clocks. Done! No risk in borking that way (same with a dual bios card). I guess I just don't understand the point of flashing in this particular case.

@GhostRyder pretty much answered it above and also, like @Solaris17 said, "Proof of concept" that it's possible. Also, if you are going to compare someone changing their vehicle into something else use a better example, like a Chevy Tahoe into a Cadillac Escalade. People do it all the time that's why they sale conversion kits. I can understand someone being afraid to do it, but I don't understand why they are acting like it's "crazy" for someone else to do it. This thread isn't about should you flash or why you shouldn't flash your BIOS, let's get back to has, "anybody flashed there 290x to a 390x" buddy.

 

[EarthDog]

And I responded to his assertion...I don't see any differences that cannot be attributed to the clockspeed increases and improvements across drivers.

I also pointed out a way to test this theory without flashing the cards...


Apologies for the on topic detour though, buddy.

 

[claylomax]

If I've said this once, I've said it a million times. Flashing your BIOS with another card's is just asking for trouble. It's like flashing a motherboard with a BIOS from v.2 when you own v.1. You're just asking to brick it. Simply put, don't screw with your BIOS unless you know exactly what you're doing or if there is a problem.

It annoys the heck out of me when people flash their GPU BIOS' like they're changing a pair of shoes. It's insane because a bad outcome, which is more than likely, is going to cost you the card.

All in all, if you have to ask, you shouldn't even be considering flashing it in the first place IMHO, otherwise you simply like to live stupidly dangerously.

My card was flashed by Powercolor; I guess it was "professionally" flashed.

 

[Tatty_Two]

This thread has nothing to do with modding hardware on the PCB man. If there is or nothing to gain with flashing how are people supposed to know if they don't experiment? Shit I like flashing hardware just to do it & test.
The post you made sounds like you have a pompous personality, why? The entire point of this thread is to gather data & let people do what they want to do with their GPUs with the data they have acquired from the thread.
Most users will not attempt a PCB modification because of soldering skills there lack of, but will gladly do a soft modification & you belittle people who choose to attempt even experimenting with any type of modification.

No lemmings man, just people trying to help out other people until MrGenius enters the room with 500 dollars worth of soldering gear, white papers & spews ePenis all over the gathering.

Funnily enough I seem to remember flashing my HD6950 with a HD6970 Bios, amateurish as it sounds and getting around an 18-20% performance boost, how lazy of me

 

[EarthDog]

Funnily enough I seem to remember flashing my HD6950 with a HD6970 Bios, amateurish as it sounds and getting around an 18-20% performance boost, how lazy of me

This is not remotely the same situation. We knew darn well that there was a gimped 6970 under the hood of a 6950...in the case of the 390x, we know darn well there is THE SAME EXACT CARD as the 290x under the hood. So there won't be any unlocking performance in a physical sense.

Please do not misunderstand me... I am curious to see if there are any efficiency per clock improvements as well. But looking at comparisons between the two cards, it appears if there is any difference, its not much, if any at all.

But as I mentioned earlier, there are easier ways to test this.

EDIT: As far as the car analogy, I used the Explorer and the Mountaineer because they are the same thing, just rebadged with very few aesthetic differences. While the Tahoe to the Escalade actually alludes to something better (even though it has the same underpinnings - it clearly looks a lot different and better).

 

[Mindweaver]

And I responded to his assertion...I don't see any differences that cannot be attributed to the clockspeed increases and improvements across drivers.

I also pointed out a way to test this theory without flashing the cards...


Apologies for the on topic detour though, buddy.

That's all you took from that was me asking to get back on topic? I don't know what to say about that, I expected better from you @EarthDog... I wasn't trying to just tell you to stay on topic because if everyone keeps going down that road of why flash or why you should not flash, would be taking it off topic which the topic is just a simple question of has anyone yet? If you feel we still need to debate why you shouldn't flash your BIOS then create a new thread and I'm sure you can gather a lot of different opinions. Hell I might even join in on the festivities.

 

[Vlada011]

Still no R9-390X 8GB reference models available?
Why? Maybe brands will not offer reference model at all.

 

[EarthDog]

That's all you took from that was me asking to get back on topic? I don't know what to say about that, I expected better from you @EarthDog... I wasn't trying to just tell you to stay on topic because if everyone keeps going down that road of why flash or why you should not flash, would be taking it off topic which the topic is just a simple question of has anyone yet? If you feel we still need to debate why you shouldn't flash your BIOS then create a new thread and I'm sure you can gather a lot of different opinions. Hell I might even join in on the festivities.

No, I apologized... but lost my mind when I replied to your peer that continued the off topic posting.

 

[broken pixel]

Here is the new link for the 15.15 modded driver that works with the 290s, the one asder00 modded & uploaded to mega was taken down by request?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1mEsti6N1siWUhBNTN1NjFMSms/view?pli=1

 

[Tatty_Two]

This is not remotely the same situation. We knew darn well that there was a gimped 6970 under the hood of a 6950...in the case of the 390x, we know darn well there is THE SAME EXACT CARD as the 290x under the hood. So there won't be any unlocking performance in a physical sense.

Please do not misunderstand me... I am curious to see if there are any efficiency per clock improvements as well. But looking at comparisons between the two cards, it appears if there is any difference, its not much, if any at all.

But as I mentioned earlier, there are easier ways to test this.

EDIT: As far as the car analogy, I used the Explorer and the Mountaineer because they are the same thing, just rebadged with very few aesthetic differences. While the Tahoe to the Escalade actually alludes to something better (even though it has the same underpinnings - it clearly looks a lot different and better).

Clearly sarcasm (or perhaps bad sarcasm in my case) is not always easily recognised, my comments were aimed at Mr Genius who beleives that software/Bios modification bring very little gain and are amateurish.

 

[mroofie]

If I've said this once, I've said it a million times. Flashing your BIOS with another card's is just asking for trouble. It's like flashing a motherboard with a BIOS from v.2 when you own v.1. You're just asking to brick it. Simply put, don't screw with your BIOS unless you know exactly what you're doing or if there is a problem.

It annoys the heck out of me when people flash their GPU BIOS' like they're changing a pair of shoes. It's insane because a bad outcome, which is more than likely, is going to cost you the card.

All in all, if you have to ask, you shouldn't even be considering flashing it in the first place IMHO, otherwise you simply like to live stupidly dangerously.

+11111111 ive never understood the whole flashing thing its pointless really might as well buy a new (faster) card

Or unlock the voltage so you can burn the card up

lel

 

[Folterknecht]

+11111111 ive never understood the whole flashing thing its pointless really might as well buy a new (faster) card

When your Windforce cooler runs idle at 40% min and AB cant go below 40%, its time for a modBIOS.