Two DEAD HIS 3870s, PLEASE assist

[Gipswasser]

Don't ask how, but I managed to give both of my 3870s (HIS ICQ3) bad bios flashes, and now they are both more or less unresponsive. I did this when trying get them both to run on the SAME BIOS, because they appeared unstable.

I understand that the cards are shipped with different bios to give them GPU and mem clock speeds according to how the components perform.

Here are my questions...

ARE there physically different models of these cards although the looked identical and no differences (other than the bios versions) showed in the ATI control centre? If so where can I find out?

ATI Winflash did not appear to be able to start when only one bios was messed up and both cards were physically installed. Does it check for an installed BIOS and is there a way to avoid that?

IS the best/only way to recover them by booting with a PCI card and then flashing them in DOS if required?

IF flashing from DOS how would the syntax for this look?

IS there any "lowest common bios" that both cards would run on?

Many thanks to anybody who takes the time to help me out... after the hours I have spent to try and get this to run it would probable have been wiser to get a single 4870 though...

[Jarman]

dos is the best way.

u can get the bioses from mvktech.net i think this place has a selection of bioses too.

then download ati flash 3.60 from this site.

Format urself up a USB key drive or dos disk or whatever.

syntax is:

atiflash -f -p 0 file.rom

where file.rom is the name of the bios u wanna flash and 0 is the card number (replace with 1 for second card)

[Jarman]

a single 4870 would have been a better choice imo, yes

[Gipswasser]

Thanks a lot for the info

Any idea if both cards will run on the same bios or not? Is there any place where I can find out if they are really identical (going by their serial numbers)?

PS The two 3870s came very cheap... a wasnt calculating the 10h+ it has already taken me to try to get them to run smoothly

[JrRacinFan]

There is a possibility they would not be identical. I recently went through an RMA with the exact same model card. The card I sent out had Hynix chips, the one I got back had Samsung 1 ( or is it .1 don't really remember it's been a week or 2 since I read it) ns chips.


EDIT: FYI if you do end up RMA'ing them, keep on their RMA Vendor's asses with emails or your going to be waiting for 4 weeks!

[Jarman]

as long as the specs are the same, yes, clock speeds and ram size.

I use the Diamond XOC bios on my sapphire card to gain higher clocks.

As long as you get a bios for the cards with the same amount of ram and the clock speeds arent insanely optimistic, u should be fine.

[Gipswasser]

All well and running smoothly now! I actually did get the cards to run stable by swapping them in the end ... dont ask me why that makes a difference, but it does. Thanks for quick and accurate help!