Major problem after GPU BIOS Flash

[Detection]

Hi guys, I really need some help here, stupidly I flashed the 6870 BIOS to my Sapphire 6850 after reading a couple of people had successfully managed it and the higher clocks worked fine

Anyway, the flash went bad, I bricked my 6850

Today I borrowed a 5450 and downloaded a 6850 BIOS with the same clocks as mine had, from your VGA BIOS Database

1 of the BIOS's worked and I can boot back into Windows using my 6850, but the second I try to install the driver it BSODs with atixxxx.sys error

I have uninstalled and completey cleaned all traces of the old driver from windows, registry etc

Still when I try to install the driver it bluescreens immediately

I have tried a few different BIOS's, even one I had saved from an identical card and the same result with them all, either that or they brick the card again

So far I have tried:

atiflash -unlockrom 0

atiflash -f -newbios -p 0 bios.rom
atiflash -f -newbios -p 0 bios.bin
atiflash -f -p 0 bios.rom

And other combinations of the above commands, they all flash successfully, some boot, some brick, but none let me install the drivers with a BSOD again

I really don't want to admit defeat / buy a new card

Is there anything I have missed that I can do to fix my card?

It was working 100% before I flashed the 6870 BIOS


Thanks for any help

[Detection]

bump

[Aquinus]

You can't turn the 6850 into a 6870. If you did your research you would notice that you can only do that with the 6950 to the 6970 and even that doesn't always work. You most likely bricked your card, because every other person who appears to have done this hasn't been able to recover from it. Not to say that you can't, but (not to be insulting,) you made a very foolish decision by flashing your 6850. Sorry.

People need to realize that the BIOS isn't like a driver, it's something that drives the entire card, including voltages. You can physically damage a motherboard or video card by flashing a BIOS not designed for that hardware. It might be a tough lesson, but I hope that you took something away from it at least.

[ShiBDiB]

By foolish he means you made a terrible mistake.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by ShiBDiB

By foolish he means [snipped]

Or maybe he didn't know what he was doing. Calling a new member a "dumbass" is uncalled for and isn't the kind of environment people are looking for when they come here to TPU. That is something you would expect from HardForums.

It's was a foolish move and a hard lesson learned. That is all.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

Or maybe he didn't know what he was doing. Calling a new member a "dumbass" is uncalled for and isn't the kind of environment people are looking for when they come here to TPU. That is something you would expect from HardForums.

It's was a foolish move and a hard lesson learned. That is all.

Yeah it was a bit hard but on the other hand it's easy to get fed up with all these people flashing bioses wrong. These kinds of posts are quite common unfortunately.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Frick

Yeah it was a bit hard but on the other hand it's easy to get fed up with all these people flashing bioses wrong. These kinds of posts are quite common unfortunately.

Hence why it was a foolish move, because anyone who had done research before hand would have known that this would mean sudden death for your video card. Some people need to learn the hard way that messing with your BIOS is a dangerous game to play.

Also keep in mind that a user probably is going to be pretty upset that their video card is dead, so insulting them is only going to make them feel worse and doesn't change the lesson learned.

[drdeathx]

Originally Posted by ShiBDiB

By foolish he means [snipped]. Enjoy your paperweight

Troller. Help the guy and if you read the thread, it is not a paper weight.

[drdeathx]

Detection, I read a while back that flashing a 6850 to a 6870 is bad. The VRM's run much hotter and the cards have a high chance of burning up the VRM's/

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by drdeathx

Troller. Help the guy and if you read the thread, it is not a paper weight.

Actually, it probably is. He said:

Originally Posted by Detection

I have tried a few different BIOS's, even one I had saved from an identical card and the same result with them all, either that or they brick the card again

If the BIOS for that particular video card doesn't work, there is a very good bet that the 6870 BIOS damaged the GPU for one reason or another.

Edit:

Originally Posted by drdeathx

Detection, I read a while back that flashing a 6850 to a 6870 is bad. The VRM's run much hotter and the cards have a high chance of burning up the VRM's/

You beat me too it. It also runs the VRMs are the wrong voltage so components can be damaged as well as the VRMs.

Like I said, a hard lesson learned.

[Detection]

Originally Posted by drdeathx

Detection, I read a while back that flashing a 6850 to a 6870 is bad. The VRM's run much hotter and the cards have a high chance of burning up the VRM's/

Thanks, it was a dumb move yep, only decided to try it after reading a few other people had done the same successfully

So there is no way back from this then? I`m looking to get a new card but would be a shame to just bin this one

@ trolls, isn't there a bridge you should be sitting under some place ?

[Detection]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

You can't turn the 6850 into a 6870. If you did your research you would notice that you can only do that with the 6950 to the 6970 and even that doesn't always work. You most likely bricked your card, because every other person who appears to have done this hasn't been able to recover from it. Not to say that you can't, but (not to be insulting,) you made a very foolish decision by flashing your 6850. Sorry.

People need to realize that the BIOS isn't like a driver, it's something that drives the entire card, including voltages. You can physically damage a motherboard or video card by flashing a BIOS not designed for that hardware. It might be a tough lesson, but I hope that you took something away from it at least.

This was one of the threads I read before trying it

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1562148

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Detection

Thanks, it was a dumb move yep, only decided to try it after reading a few other people had done the same successfully

No one has done is successfully because they're two very different cards with different voltages and hardware on the inside. It should never work for any 6850. Anyone who said that they did are lying to you.

Originally Posted by Detection

So there is no way back from this then? I`m looking to get a new card but would be a shame to just bin this one

You can keep playing with it, but I think the damage has been done.

Originally Posted by Detection

@ trolls, isn't there a bridge you should be sitting under some place ?

+1:

Edit:

Originally Posted by Detection

This was one of the threads I read before trying it

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1562148

Pretty sure he is lying or flashed a different BIOS than the thought, because every time someone does this on TPU, it fails like yours did. In fact other people are worse off because their card doesn't even get detected after doing this. You're better off than most.

[Detection]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

No one has done is successfully because they're two very different cards with different voltages and hardware on the inside. It should never work for any 6850. Anyone who said that they did are lying to you.

You can keep playing with it, but I think the damage has been done.

+1:

Yea I think its pretty dead too, was just hoping I was missing something trying to recover it

--

[Detection]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

No one has done is successfully because they're two very different cards with different voltages and hardware on the inside. It should never work for any 6850. Anyone who said that they did are lying to you.

You can keep playing with it, but I think the damage has been done.

+1:

Edit:


Pretty sure he is lying or flashed a different BIOS than the thought, because every time someone does this on TPU, it fails like yours did. In fact other people are worse off because their card doesn't even get detected after doing this. You're better off than most.

Lesson learned, I read the details on the BIOS download page, the clock speeds and voltages for the 6870 BIOS were what I was running my card at using MSI AB anyway, but naively neglected to check what the rest of the card was running at

I didn't expect to convert a 6850 into a 6870, just do away with the need for software to OC it

[drdeathx]

Detection, it may be a registry file or something of the nature. Have you tried reflashing it back to the default bios?

[drdeathx]

You may want top do a fresh isntall of windows if it does not mess you up

[Detection]

Originally Posted by drdeathx

Detection, it may be a registry file or something of the nature. Have you tried reflashing it back to the default bios?

Yep, I flashed it back to an original BIOS from my old identical 6850 and even installed Win 7 on a separate partition to double check it wasn't a driver thing and it bluescreens too

[UbErN00b]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

Hence why it was a foolish move, because anyone who had done research before hand would have known that this would mean sudden death for your video card. Some people need to learn the hard way that messing with your BIOS is a dangerous game to play.

Also keep in mind that a user probably is going to be pretty upset that their video card is dead, so insulting them is only going to make them feel worse and doesn't change the lesson learned.

Whilst I agree, just calling someone a dumbass is immature and uncalled for, and by having a quick look at the rest of his posts he does look like a blatant troll.

Detection, the 6850 bios you have flashed it to is it the original? EDIT I see someone got in there before me, seems like your card may be a brick afterall.

[Detection]

Originally Posted by UbErN00b

Whilst I agree, just calling someone a dumbass is immature and uncalled for, and by having a quick look at the rest of his posts he does look like a blatant troll.

Detection, the 6850 bios you have flashed it to is it the original? EDIT I see someone got in there before me, seems like your card may be a brick afterall.

It's not the actual BIOS from this card, but from another 6850 I used to use in CFX before I sold it, it was the same make and model, I was wondering if there could be anything different between them that was causing the problem though


The numbers on this card are

PN 288-1E174-000SA
SKU# 11180-00

I looked through your bios database here and couldn't find anything even close to those numbers so maybe they don't mean anything BIOS wise

[UbErN00b]

Originally Posted by Detection

It's not the actual BIOS from this card, but from another 6850 I used to use in CFX before I sold it, it was the same make and model, I was wondering if there could be anything different between them that was causing the problem though

I wouldn't have thought so to be honest, have you tried reflashing that same bios since?

[TC-man]

Originally Posted by Detection

Hi guys, I really need some help here, stupidly I flashed the 6870 BIOS to my Sapphire 6850 after reading a couple of people had successfully managed it and the higher clocks worked fine

Hi,

If I read your post correctly, then you only want to have higher clock-speed for your HD 6850, so you flashed your card with the HD 6870 bios, right? You could have used the Sapphire Trixx or MSI Afterburner OC tool for adding voltage to achieve higher clocks yourself.

Anyway, you say you saved a vga bios from an identical videocard, but not from the actual card you have flashed on, right? You never made a backup from the bios of that specific card that's now bricked? Then that's the problem, perhaps from the outside both cards look the same (same vga cooler) but may have (slightly) different design (pcb, videoram, timing etc.), hence the vga bioses you used causes bsods, but some do boot, but do not let you install the drivers before a bsod. Maybe try out the other Sapphire HD 6850 bioses 'till you can boot the videocard and install the driver for it without getting a bsod; there are 29 bioses for the mentioned card in the Techpowerup vga bios database.

What you can do too is you either contact Sapphire and ask them politely that you need the specific bios for you HD 6850 and tell them what you have done to your HD 6850; hope that Sapphire would send you that specific vga bios to you, or you ask Sapphire if you can send back the bricked HD 6850, ask if Sapphire could repair the card for you at your cost (ask how expensive such repair could be; buy a new vga card if the cost is too high), since your warranty just expired because you have tinkered with the vga bios.

[Detection]

Originally Posted by UbErN00b

I wouldn't have thought so to be honest, have you tried reflashing that same bios since?

Yea, I flashed that one and about 20 others from the database a couple times each using different variations of the atiflash commands and there was only ever two results

Bricked or Bluescreen

[Detection]

Originally Posted by TC-man

Hi,

If I read your post correctly, then you only want to have higher clock-speed for your HD 6850, so you flashed your card with the HD 6870 bios, right? You could have used the Sapphire Trixx or MSI Afterburner OC tool for adding voltage to achieve higher clocks yourself.

Anyway, you say you saved a vga bios from an identical videocard, but not from the actual card you have flashed on, right? You never made a backup from the bios of that specific card that's now bricked? Then that's the problem, perhaps from the outside both cards look the same (same vga cooler) but may have (slightly) different design (pcb, videoram, timing etc.), hence the vga bioses you used causes bsods, but some do boot, but do not let you install the drivers before a bsod. Maybe try out the other Sapphire HD 6850 bioses 'till you can boot the videocard and install the driver for it without getting a bsod; there are 29 bioses for the mentioned card in the Techpowerup vga bios database.

What you can do too is you either contact Sapphire and ask them politely that you need the specific bios for you HD 6850 and tell them what you have done to your HD 6850; hope that Sapphire would send you that specific vga bios to you, or you ask Sapphire if you can send back the bricked HD 6850, ask if Sapphire could repair the card for you at your cost (ask how expensive such repair could be; buy a new vga card if the cost is too high), since your warranty just expired because you have tinkered with the vga bios.

Yea I was using MSI AB to OC, the reason for the flash was in the hope to do away with software OCing

I've tried the majority of Sapphire BIOS's from the database all with the same results, either bricked or bluescreen when I install the drivers, no variations

Currently I have the saved BIOS from the other 6850 I had, and the card works without drivers but again BSOD when I install them

Thanks for the tip on Sapphire, which details would I need to give them in order to get the correct BIOS sent to me? I've posted the numbers I can find on the card a couple posts up

EDIT --
PN 288-1E174-000SA
SKU# 11180-00

[qubit]

So, new posters come on TPU looking for help to fix a mistake they made and shibby boy is right there to stick the boot in! Way to go dude!

I agree with the other posters, this is totally uncalled for. It's just plain bullying and yes, many of his posts are similar to this one. I'm dismayed that members like this are allowed to continue on TPU. They'd soon be gone from my forum, I can tell you.

@detection

I'm sorry that I can't help with your card problem; it looks like the other posters may have been right about the wrong bios having damaged the card.

Anyway, shit happens and it's really frustrating, I know. However, there's a small upside to this: you now have the perfect excuse to upgrade your card to something better!

If you have the money and the PC/PSU, then I personally recommend a GTX 680.