Asus motherboad BIOS update makes flashed 6950's to 6970's not work. HATE YOU ASUS

[Phusius]

I took my flashed 6970 and put it in 3 different PC's, each one worked perfect, GPU Z showed 1536 unified, 880/1375

Put it back in my PC... and black screen each time, have to use BIOS 2.

hate my life.

[sneekypeet]

have you removed and re-istalled the drivers on "your" rig since the flash?

[Phusius]

I am boycotting all Asus products from now on, total bs.

[sneekypeet]

Originally Posted by Phusius

I am boycotting all Asus products from now on, total bs.

Ok then

[Phusius]

Sneekypeet. Yes. I did everything accordingly, even booting Win98 froma flash drive and manually flashing through DOS. The 6970 works shows up in other rigs just fine.

Apparently I am not the only one with this problem, any Asus BIOS 3xxx for a motherboard blacks this flash from working.

If I knew what company was Asus's main competition I would buy all their products overnight. If you can't tell, I am extremely pissed.

[sneekypeet]

Sorry I think I misread the OP. You are having issues with the mobo bios flash, not flashing a card

Could get a programmed bios chip pretty cheap vs. buying all new goods

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by sneekypeet

Sorry I think I misread the OP. You are having issues with the mobo bios flash, not flashing a card

Could get a programmed bios chip pretty cheap vs. buying all new goods

You are still mis-reading:


Apparantly any ASUS P67/Z68 motherboard with BIOS numbered 3xxx is incompatible with HD6950 flashed to HD6970. This makes it an issues with either/or...you cna blame the board BIOS, while ASUS blames the VGA BIOS.

When they issued 3xxx BIOSes, they changed quite a bit, including the type of font used in BIOS, and also prevented backward-flashing to earlier versions(BIOS core code is different), and one of the changes makes modded cards not boot correctly. There are quite a few reports of this problem on various forums at this point, including the ASUS ROG Forum.

There are users who already had modded cards, flashed to new motherboard BIOS, and then thought the BIOS update bricked the board, only to find out that when they removed the modded cards, things worked fine.


Why or how this is an issue, I have no idea, but an official "agent" of ASUS did notify one user that ASUS was aware of the problem, and that it was intentional. IF ASUS is taking steps like this on purpose, to prevent VGA modding, that's pretty crappy.

[Phusius]

Yeah, I am pretty pissed about it. Never buying Asus again, or AMD. I am sick of all the bullshit. Intel + Nvidia fanboy I have become. Thank God this day has come.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Yeah, I am pretty pissed about it. Never buying Asus again, or AMD. I am sick of all the bullshit. Intel + Nvidia fanboy I have become. Thank God this day has come.

I dunno that there is really any truth that it was intentional..,it may have been unintentional, but because of the circumstances, they are not going to fix it. I wouldn't blame them if they didn't.

I am also unsure if this relates to all current products as well...I'll be reviewing an ASUS Z77 board in a couple of weeks, and will investigate...I've got 3x HD6950 here to try.

[TC-man]

Originally Posted by Phusius

I took my flashed 6970 and put it in 3 different PC's, each one worked perfect, GPU Z showed 1536 unified, 880/1375

Put it back in my PC... and black screen each time, have to use BIOS 2.

hate my life.

Hi,

I remember that ThaSpacePope has a similar problem with his Asus Z68 motherboard and his two HD 6950s that are modded to HD 6970s with HD 6970 bioses.

He has solved the problem by modding the original bios from his HD 6950s and then unlocked the shaders via with w1zzard's php script (instead of making use of a HD 6970 bios). The result is that the unlocked HD 6950-to-6970s would be able to boot again with the unlocked shader units, but they do not run at the clockspeed of a 6970, but of HD 6950; this is easily solved by using some overclock tools(such as MSI Afterburner) with which you can overclocked the cards back to the speed of HD 6970.

[95Viper]

Why do people have to start a new thread about the same problem?

Black screen when I reboot after successfully flashing my 6950 to 6970

This one seems to be a rant thread IMO.
__________________________________________________ ________________________________

If, what cadaveca says is true, then, revert to an older MB bios; if, that is not possible then you are stuck running your HD6950 as a HD6950 (what you paid for, sorry). Yep, I do agree, if they did the bios updates to purposely dis-able the ability to use a HD6950 flash to a HD6970, then shame on them.

If you flashed your HD6950 with HD6970 firmware, maybe, you might wanna try flashing it with HD6950 firmware with the shaders unlocked.


TC-man beat me to it, but it may be worth the try.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by TC-man

Hi,

I remember that ThaSpacePope has a similar problem with his Asus Z68 motherboard and his two HD 6950s that are modded to HD 6970s with HD 6970 bioses.

He has solved the problem by modding the original bios from his HD 6950s and then unlocked the shaders via with w1zzard's php script (instead of making use of a HD 6970 bios). The result is that the unlocked HD 6950-to-6970s would be able to boot again with the unlocked shader units, but they do not run at the clockspeed of a 6970, but of HD 6950; this is easily solved by using some overclock tools(such as MSI Afterburner) with which you can overclocked the cards back to the speed of HD 6970.

I was just going to post this!


It seems the problem is related to the 6970 BIOS flash, which does not actualyl change the card itself to show fully as 6970. This mis-match between 6950 card ID, and 6970 BIOS ID causes the problem. If you use unlocked shaders BIOS, the BIOS is still the "original" ID, and matches wit hteh card, and things work fine.

It's also worht noting that 3DMark apps also notice that 6950's modded to 6970 BIOS are actually 6950. I tried a fresh OS install checking that one out, so it's not a VGA driver thing...

[Sh00t1st]

Mehhh, let him rant, i'd be pissed and wanting to vent too, and at least his title says nearly the FULL issue in it, so you don't have to read much of the actual post.
Maybe gigabyte will do this to remain competitive with asus
Anyways, its informative as i had planned to go almost the exact same route as this and find a used 6950 to flash using possibly the same asus chipset which i'll now know to avoid .

[Phusius]

I just unlocked the shaders thanks to wizzards script.

OC'ed in trixx to 900/1400. stable.

W1zzard is my hero. <3 Asus can still blow me though, for ruining two days of flashing and reflashing my card. ^^

[95Viper]

Glad you got it going, hope it keeps on going for you.
Test it and let us know if you see any noticable difference in the performance.


And, I'm sure ASUS is terribly sorry for ruining two days of your life.

Scenario:

ASUS engineer/techsupport reads thread; and,


Just messing with you, Phusius!

[fullinfusion]

^
Was thinking the same thing, lol you cant keep everybody happy... I guess it was Asus's fault he flashed his gpu too

I think most the time ppl have a problem with Asus is due to the person there talking to. I call a certain person from Asus and the problem gets resolved Immediately

All in all glad your back up and running

[Phusius]

Went from a 5500ish 3D Mark 11 score to a nudge over 6000. 2500k @ 4.8ghz, and 6970 at 900/1400, before that it was 4.5 and 6950 at 900/1400.

so yeah it helps. xD

[erocker]

Originally Posted by 95Viper

Why do people have to start a new thread about the same problem?

Black screen when I reboot after successfully flashing my 6950 to 6970

This one seems to be a rant thread IMO.
__________________________________________________ ________________________________

If, what cadaveca says is true, then, revert to an older MB bios; if, that is not possible then you are stuck running your HD6950 as a HD6950 (what you paid for, sorry). Yep, I do agree, if they did the bios updates to purposely dis-able the ability to use a HD6950 flash to a HD6970, then shame on them.

If you flashed your HD6950 with HD6970 firmware, maybe, you might wanna try flashing it with HD6950 firmware with the shaders unlocked.


TC-man beat me to it, but it may be worth the try.

Use the other thread you started linked above. ^