How-to: Pencil mod your HD 3870!

[DanishDevil]

Do everything he recommends, but I have a bit to add.

Will it not let you do anything more because the card crashes or because that is the limit that the program gives you?

77C is fine for a GPU temp.

No reason to load the BIOS, as it may not match your card. It doesn't help the overclockability, it was just the BIOS he flashed his card to.

With pictures of the back of the card from you, we can help confirm how to voltmod it.

And as always, these voltmod tips are performed at your own risk, and none of us, nor TechPowerUp are responsible if you brick your card.

Thank you and have a nice day

[Hitman]

Hello
Thanks I will look and try your suggestions.

Sorry for the confusion

Random Wrote:

can you verify that you have a reference pcb? the only gigabyte 3870's i've seen are on non-ref pcb's..

This is not a Gigabyte card as in Manufactured by.
I will have to look for who made produced it as it only says ATI 3870 no it.
I bought it from a friend on another Forum.
As to the Gigabyte reference
I have a Gigabyte MB and it comes with a OC app called Easy tuner with this I can OC a few points. Like the Graphic card but it will only OC the core to 840MHz it won't let me even try higher settings as it is the same for the Memory MHZ.
The Memory is stock clocks no program would let me change it.
Reference.
I tried
ATI tool
Riva tuner
ATI tray tools
And another oc app but don't remember the name.
And none of them let me adjust any of the 3d clocks.
Riva tuner lets me adjust the 2d lower clock speeds but not the 3d.

ATI tool 27.b4 would only allow me to adjust the fan no clock speeds at all.

I tried the new driver no change I tried a older driver same thing.

Oh yea I tried the ATI overdrive thing and it did let me over clock the core to 840MHz but nothing on the memory and it did not allow any fan adjustments.

Threw Riva tuner I have the fan at 80% and getting the above temps I will up to 100% and see if that helps. But yea it is loud
Can you recommend a better cooler please that works great and quiet. or quieter at least. :lol:
Thanks I will load the version of ATI you have up there and see if that helps.

Hitman

[repsol23]

I have a visiontek 3870 and I have run it oc'ed at 877/1251 for gaming. I can run all the way up to 907 on the core but it will artifact slighlty (couple of artifacts over a period of about 30 minutes). Mind you this is all on water cooling, but my temps never get above 49C during long gaming sessions. My idle temp is roughly 38~42C but this is because I have my GPU in the same loop as the 350 Watt TEC cooling an x6800 oc'ed to 3.8 Ghz (1.47 V).

The one thing that concerns me with your overclock is that you say that your idle temp is at 77C, if this is true then that is quite hot in my opinion. Once you start loading your card I have a feeling those temps may really go up.

[Hitman]

Hello
Repsol wrote:

The one thing that concerns me with your overclock is that you say that your idle temp is at 77C,

Yes I am concerned with it also
I went back to all default clocking and let it idle for most of the day and ATI tool and easytuner report the same temps at 60C.
I now put it back up to OC Core 840 MHz Mem 1170 MHz and at idle it went up to 62c with the fan running at 21% (I have the fan set on auto so as the temps go up so do's the fan speed)

But last night I gamed for about 3 hours or a little more and I kept checking the temps the Fan was going for it and my temps where between 78c and 81c, 81c is the highest I saw.
Also I ran the find max core with ATI and my temps jumped to 91c (But I noticed that the fan only went up to 61%)
So now I put the fan at a fixed speed of 80% temps went up to 88c rather quickly using the ATI tool Find Max core.
I take this that it works the card harder then a 3D game would ?

I will do somemore test and see what is what.

Thanks
Hitman

[Random Murderer]

can you do me a favor?
run gpu-z and take a screenshot of it. i think you may need to flash your bios for further improvement. it sounds like the bios you're on is locked.

the best cooler i used on my 3870 was the stock cooler. it was the reference cooler and all i did was replace the thermal paste with mx2.

Originally Posted by Hitman

Hello
Repsol wrote:

Yes I am concerned with it also
I went back to all default clocking and let it idle for most of the day and ATI tool and easytuner report the same temps at 60C.
I now put it back up to OC Core 840 MHz Mem 1170 MHz and at idle it went up to 62c with the fan running at 21% (I have the fan set on auto so as the temps go up so do's the fan speed)

But last night I gamed for about 3 hours or a little more and I kept checking the temps the Fan was going for it and my temps where between 78c and 81c, 81c is the highest I saw.
Also I ran the find max core with ATI and my temps jumped to 91c (But I noticed that the fan only went up to 61%)
So now I put the fan at a fixed speed of 80% temps went up to 88c rather quickly using the ATI tool Find Max core.
I take this that it works the card harder then a 3D game would ?

I will do somemore test and see what is what.

Thanks
Hitman

[Hitman]

Hello

Random Wrote:

can you do me a favor?
run gpu-z and take a screenshot of it. i think you may need to flash your bios for further improvement. it sounds like the bios you're on is locked.

Here is the info from GPU-Z on my card.

I will get some new thermal paste this weekend and redo it the Core and see if that helps.

Thanks again for your time
Hitman

[Random Murderer]

are you comfortable flashing your bios?

[Hitman]

Hello
Random Wrote:

are you comfortable flashing your bios?

Well
I have flashed bios on MB before.
But I am sure there is a big difference with this bios flashing (Right)
I downloaded you attachments and looked for a readme instructions on this but I did not find one.
The other talks about volt modding but thats not what you are asking.
So
I can follow directions and all
Is there a detail readme on this subject so i can read threw and see if I would be comfortable on this.
? Question if the flashing goes wrong for what ever reason my fault comp fails or what ever
would the card become a brick (As they say) for ever and with no way to re flash it back to what it was or fix the problem.
Thanks Again
Hitman

[Random Murderer]

this is all i can find on 3870 having bad flashes. you might want to ask w1zzard himself about this. he has brought back a 1900xtx, 2900xt, and 4870 from bad flashes.

if you use winflash, it's not that hard and unless you have a power blink, there's not really much that can go wrong.
download and extract the "3870 MOD.zip" file. click "load image" and select "RV670 XT.bin." once you've done that, click "program."
a progress bar will show up and the system will become unresponsive for a few moments as it writes the new bios.
once the progress bar disappears, all you need to do is restart and the card will be running the new bios.

[Hitman]

Hello Random
I did what you said per your instuctions.
And when I click Program I get this

little window
SubsystemIDs Mismatch

Continue

I clicked continue but it did nothing no progress bar or anything.

What do you think this is.

Thanks
Hitman

[Random Murderer]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Hello Random
I did what you said per your instuctions.
And when I click Program I get this

little window
SubsystemIDs Mismatch

Continue

I clicked continue but it did nothing no progress bar or anything.

What do you think this is.

Thanks
Hitman

try using this one.

[Random Murderer]

Originally Posted by DanishDevil

No reason to load the BIOS, as it may not match your card. It doesn't help the overclockability, it was just the BIOS he flashed his card to.

just saw this.
it is fine to flash the pll fix bios to non-reference pcb's, and i've seen it done multiple times with success.
if he is in fact on the original pll-lock bios, this will increase his overclockability, and even if he's on a pll-fix bios, it sounds to me like the bios has all the timings and such locked down so tight he can't clock it anyway.
flashing to the ati pll-fix bios will do nothing but help at this point.

[DanishDevil]

Oh yeah with the PLL-lock BIOS. Forgot about that.

I remember when I got into messing with the memory timings through ATiTool too to get the best scores I could.

[Hitman]

Hello Random

Originally Posted by Random Murderer

try using this one.

I tried the new file and got the same Error/Mismatch

ID Blah Blah Blah

I have no Idea what ID it is looking for

Again Thanks for your time on this

Hitman

[Random Murderer]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Hello Random



I tried the new file and got the same Error/Mismatch

ID Blah Blah Blah

I have no Idea what ID it is looking for

Again Thanks for your time on this

Hitman

do you know how to dump your bios?
if i got a look at yours, maybe i could make one that matches your id.

[Hitman]

Hello

Random Wrote:

do you know how to dump your bios?
if i got a look at yours, maybe i could make one that matches your id.

Sorry but I can not say that I know how to do that.
But I am not brainless can you run me threw it.
Is there a artical on this
Or a program that I need to do it.

Thanks for your time on this if it is going to be a pain in the a....s for this card I am ok with that.
I don't want to waste your time so if you feel that this card is not worth it then I will understand that.
Thanks
Hitman

[Hitman]

Hello Ramdom
I did a search and found out what Bios dump is and how to do it.
I used GPU-Z to do it. I hope this is right

Anyway here is the file.
What program do use to look at it or open it.
I am just curious what it contains not going to edited it not that brave :lol:

Just a few minutes I will load it the forum do's not allow winrar files.
Ok here it is Again Thanks for your time
Not sure if this makes a diffrence but I noticed you file is named RV670XT and mine is RV670.?

Thanks
Hitman

[Random Murderer]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Hello Ramdom
I did a search and found out what Bios dump is and how to do it.
I used GPU-Z to do it. I hope this is right

Anyway here is the file.
What program do use to look at it or open it.
I am just curious what it contains not going to edited it not that brave :lol:

Just a few minutes I will load it the forum do's not allow winrar files.
Ok here it is Again Thanks for your time
Not sure if this makes a diffrence but I noticed you file is named RV670XT and mine is RV670.?

Thanks
Hitman

i use a few programs for the 3870, unfortunately only one works for the 4870.
for 3870, i use 38xx bios editor and RaBiT v.2.2.1, but before the 38xx bios editor was released i used a hex editor...

i dumped mine using atitool .27b3 instead of gpu-z, maybe that's why mine was named rv670xt.

anyway, i'll give the bios a look in a bit.

[JrRacinFan]

Congrats on 3k RM. If I pm you my bios, could you detect whether or not it is 864 fixed? Seems like I can go up to 850 stable and the next jump up is 864 (clock divider "??"). No artifacts at 864 but just some nasty VPU recovers. Temps stay 40C idle and 55C after an hours worth of gaming on Prince Of Persia '08 @ 1920x1080 max'd no AA/AF.

Would a voltmod be worth it at this point?

[Random Murderer]

Hitman:
odd, according to your bios, your card has 256MB of ram, not 512.

Jr:

Originally Posted by JrRacinFan

Congrats on 3k RM. If I pm you my bios, could you detect whether or not it is 864 fixed? Seems like I can go up to 850 stable and the next jump up is 864 (clock divider "??"). No artifacts at 864 but just some nasty VPU recovers. Temps stay 40C idle and 55C after an hours worth of gaming on Prince Of Persia '08 @ 1920x1080 max'd no AA/AF.

Would a voltmod be worth it at this point?

i can have a look. if you're on the reference board, i would just flash to the pll-fix bios anyway.
temps seem fine, you may want to try voltmodding considering your temps are so damn good.

[JrRacinFan]

Ok, here's my bios. It can also be found here. Thanks man!

[Random Murderer]

Originally Posted by JrRacinFan

Ok, I will edit this post with an attachment later and PM you. Thanks man!

no problem.

[Hitman]

Hello Random

Random wrote:

Hitman:
odd, according to your bios, your card has 256MB of ram, not 512.

Thats more then odd
Even ATI tool report's in settings that it has
512 GDDR4 memory

Not sure what to even say about this.

Hitman

[Random Murderer]

hitman, i made a bios that i think will fix your problem, however i had to modify the hash code. it should work, but i cannot guarantee it will.
i would recommend having a backup video card(even just a pci card or onboard) so you can flash back to your stock bios should things go awry.

and about the 256mb thing: don't worry about it, it was showing 256 in an area that does not affect the status of the card, everything else says 512, so it is indeed 512. i just found it odd, is all.

[Hitman]

Hello Random
First thank you very much for your help time and patience.

Second the file and the editing you did worked.
It loaded fine and after reboot I did have to remove and reinstall the ATI driver (But that no biggy) and everything seems to be great.
I have the ard OCed at
Core 850
Mem 1175
right now where before I could not even change anything.
I plan on testing it a little further tomorrow or over the weekend but I won't push it until I re apply the and check the heat sink.
Don't want to burn it up before I get to play with it.

Again thanks
Hitman