HD 6450 overclocking/BIOS flash?

[Jstn7477]

Hello all,

I bought a Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 w/ 512MB GDDR5 for my spare parts rig (AMD 770 chipset has no onboard video). Even though it is obviously a low-end card, I want to see if I can get 800-1000MHz out of the core (default is 625) since it has a ton of bandwidth with 800MHz (3.2 effective) 64 bit GDDR5 memory and the chip has a lot of potential. Now, I've tried MSI Afterburner 2.1 (and tried enabling unofficial overclocking) but the 725MHz limitation is still there sadly. I then downloaded RBE 1.28 and dumped the BIOS using GPU-Z, but RBE throws a warning because it is seeing a 64K BIOS file (I need to make sure Caicos uses a 64K BIOS) and I don't know if RBE even supports the cards. I'd love to flash it but really need unlocked OCing software to find the optimal clocks. Any ideas?

Card is a Sapphire 100321DDR5L. SAPPHIRE 100321DDR5L Radeon HD 6450 512MB 64-bit G...

BIOS dump from GPU-Z is attached.

GPU-Z:

[OneMoar]

it has ANYTHING but a ton of bandwidth it 64bit cards are junk
you can try ati traytools

[erocker]

RBE seems to support it as all of the information shows up in RBE including the three different clock states. I just don't know where to find out whether or not the bios is 64k or 128k.

[Jstn7477]

Originally Posted by OneMoar

it has ANYTHING but a ton of bandwidth it 64bit cards are junk
you can try ati traytools

It has the same bandwidth as my laptop's 128 bit HD 5650 DDR3, so it does have relatively a lot of bandwidth. The real junk is the GT 220 128 bit DDR2 card it replaces with only 6 GB/s bandwidth, vs. 25.6 on 64 bit GDDR5.

Originally Posted by erocker

RBE seems to support it as all of the information shows up in RBE including the three different clock states. I just don't know where to find out whether or not the bios is 64k or 128k.

Thanks for confirming. Maybe W1zz can chime in since he reviewed a reference sample 6450 GDDR5 card a while ago.

[Jstn7477]

So, I looked in the TPU BIOS collection, and found one 6450 BIOS (I think it was probably the BIOS from the card that W1zzard evaluated, as it is for a 512MB GDDR5 card. That one is also 64K and causes the warning with RBE, so I guess the card is probably 64K.

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/9...12.110128.html

I should probably find the BIOS chip on the card when I get home and see what size it is. Maybe it is exactly 512 Kilobits (64K ROM) or 1 Megabit (128K ROM) it will help me out, but I can't be certain though that everything works. It's a shame that Sapphire sold me an underclocked version of the reference design, and has a stock clocked version for $5 more.

[Jstn7477]

Okay, this is REALLY getting annoying. All because of ATI and their "limits" I have wasted time trying:

1. BIOS editing with RBE 1.28: Corrupts my VBIOS and BSODs computer.
2. Tried ATIWinFlash with the engineering sample Caicos BIOS on TPU (literally the same PCB as my card): "VBIOS could not be found" error. WTF.
3. RacerX or whatever the overdrive unlocker is in the RBE section breaks my card and keeps it at 100/150.

Can't use the DOS flasher because:
ASUS thinks Crosshair III Formula owners will never use a floppy port.
The floppy port on my BRAND NEW ASRock A770DE+ is broken and crashes Windows.
The floppy port works on my s754 rig but it's AGP.
Hiren's BootCD is just a blackhole and I can't find my custom files.
I don't own a flashdrive, nor am I going to buy one and break it with the HP Bootable USB tool.

This is really ridiculous. I can go and buy an AMD 7XXG/8XXG and overclock the IGP to 2GHz if I wanted to. But, heaven forbid someone actually buys a real graphics card, the BIOS and its speeds have to be blessed by AMD. NVIDIA cards use a buttload of power and have better drivers and no OC limits. Meanwhile, the HDMI scaling bug is still present 14 months later. No, I am not turning this into a fanboy thread, I am just extremely frustrated by this.

If anyone can help me force flash this damn thing with ATIWINFLASH so I can get on with my life, that would be appreciated. I've heard nothing from the GPU gurus, guess they're busy unfortunately.

[erocker]

Originally Posted by Jstn7477

I don't own a flashdrive, nor am I going to buy one and break it with the HP Bootable USB tool.

It won't break. You can format the flashdrive when you're done using it. Heck, you can pick them up at gas stations for a few bucks.

Try using the command prompt in windows and use ATiFlash. ex: atiflash -f -p 0 bios.bin

[Jstn7477]

Originally Posted by erocker

It won't break. You can format the flashdrive when you're done using it. Heck, you can pick them up at gas stations for a few bucks.

Try using the command prompt in windows and use ATiFlash. ex: atiflash -f -p 0 bios.bin

Sadly, it's a 16 bit executable and won't run on my x64 Windows.

[Jstn7477]

Well, after my angry rage (sorry guys) I found my crappy X-Fi Go! USB dongle which has 1GB of flash memory. Formatted it with the HP bootable stuff using WinME files, put atiflash and the bios on, and flashed away using erocker's command line.

About time I finally have the real deal here. OD limits are now 850/1000 which I feel a little better about.

[OneMoar]

all that effort for such a slow gutless card

[Jstn7477]

This wouldn't have been such a problem had I known the new way to unlock MSI Afterburner. Instead of changing a few numbers, you now have to insert a whole freaking sentence into the config file that you agree to potentially break your card.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...50&postcount=4

But at least that works. My core seems to become unstable past 875MHz and I haven't touched the GDDR5 yet. I might flash back to the Sapphire BIOS and see if there are any overclocking differences, because the ATI BIOS might have raised my core voltage from 1.0v to 1.15v.

[WhiteNoise]

I guess the real question is; is it worth it? Are you gaining fps in games that you play and is it needed? If gains are minimal then flash back to your stock bios and your card will last longer for sure.

[Jstn7477]

For those of you who are hating on my 6450, (Honestly, it's for my parts rig and I just wanted to see what I could get out of it) you should see what I pulled out of my dad's desktop. I decided to give him my old GT 220 1GB for Father's Day, because it is the ****** DDR2 version and has barely any memory bandwidth. Anyway, behold: