Help...Sapphire GDDR4 3870 can't flash BIOS.

[pablo NZ]

Hi folks, I have what seems to be two early batches of 3870 from Sapphire with the fan speed locked to 25% (90'C+ load temps!). One card I was able to flash with a fixed BIOS and fan speed ramps up perfectly, but the other one I can't flash even using the force command with atiflash, infact I can't even save the BIOS file from GPU-z (it says "BIOS reading not supported on this device")

The one that didn't flash also only reports the subvendor as "ATI" in GPU-z, whereas the other one correctly identified as Sapphire.

Does anyone know a way around this?




They both also suck at overclocking (max 800MHz core) but I'm not too bothered about that as long as I can fix the fan settings to run them in Crossfire.

[trog100]

the fan speed isnt actually locked at 25% its just targets 90 as the operating temp.. it will run faster if the card tries to run hotter for any reason.. its how ati set it.. 90 C operating temps and quiet running.. it wont do it any harm..

as regards your bios flashing are the cards both the same.. ???

trog

[pablo NZ]

Originally Posted by trog100

the fan speed isnt actually locked at 25% its just targets 90 as the operating temp.. it will run faster if the card tries to run hotter for any reason.. its how ati set it.. 90 C operating temps and quiet running.. it wont do it any harm..

as regards your bios flashing are the cards both the same.. ???

trog

I see, now that you mention it I did actually notice the fan speed go up to about 33% when it hit 90'C, but that's still too slow for my liking. I can force the fan speed to 55% in Rivatuner but I need a long term solution for when I put them in Crossfire. I'm not personally happy with the bottom card running at 90'C even if it doesn't do any harm, I like my case temps low

To answer your question - both cards look physically identical, but they have different BIOS versions and different subvendor IDs in GPUz. Here's a screeny of the one that doesn't want to play nice...

[trog100]

its not normal.. looks like the early 67 bios.. have u tried taking one card out to do the flashing.. subvender stuff dosnt matter..

the fanfix bios will drop your temps if u can flash both cards with it.. i have no idea why u are having problems with the one card thow..

trog

its a not zip i have just renamed it to upload

[pablo NZ]

I've only tried with one card at a time.

It certainly is confuddling

edit: yip that's the bios I used on the good card.