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6950 flash problems help please!

Ezzie

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Jul 5, 2012
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I purchased a gigabyte 6950 OC edition 1 gb graphics card (non reference, no switch), and was happy with it for about a 7 months. Yesterday i decided to attempt to unlock the shaders and increase the OC upper limit from 870 to 930, using RBE. I saved the original bios to my desktop to be safe. I proceeded to tick the 6950 > 6970 shader option, and i also changed the max oc limit to 930 mhz as opposed to 870.

I flashed it, and got the success message. it asked for a reboot, so i did, only to run into a BSOD at startup. I can post, and access my bios settings however. The error is "SERVICE_EXCEPTION" and just restarts automatically, in an infinite loop.

I went into safemode, unistalled my graphics drivers, rebooted, and went into normal windows without problems ( the weird resolution, no graphics drivers, state). I then tried Atiwinflash, to try and flash back to my original 6950 bios, but i got the error 'cannot erase rom".

I then followed the instructions perfectly, on how to flash my bios using command line and Atiwinflash. I did the atiwinflash -unlockrom 0, it said successfully unlocked.

I then did atiwinflash -f -p 0 original.bin to flash the orignal bios; it loaded for a couple of secs then said "Rom not erased".

I later found out my specific card is hardware locked via a missing bridge from pin 3 to pin 8 ( WCC to voltage), so i followed a guide on how to bridge the two pins: (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148806) . i hot glued the wires of a headphone ( thin twined copper ones) from pin 3 to pin 8, being very careful, as shown in the picture in the link. Alas when i rebooted and tried flashing using cmd (same as above), i got the same error >.<.

I havnt tried using atiflash yet, only atiwinflash, but i dont see how that would make a difference. Ive read about using a bootable usb, and fflashing with atiflash in DOS, but again i dont see how thts any different then using my default os.

Im thinking i either didn't bridge the pins properly ( how can i check if i did?), or there is some other software issue going on, help please!!!!!!!!!!!



EDIT: SOLVED!!!! WOOOO THANKS TECH POWER UP! :D saved me an angry rma xD

What i did:

1. Made a bootable windows 98 flash drive following this guide: http://www.bjorn3d.com/2010/04/boot...-nvidia-gpu-bios-recovering-from-a-bad-flash/
2. Add atiflash, and 6950 original bios to the usb root directory (just drag and drop)
3. Booted through the usb (for my motherbaord the sabertooth 990 fx, i pressed F8 during post and it allows me to pick a boot device)
4. Then i typed atiflash -unlockrom 0 to unlock the gpu in adapter 1
5. Then i typed atiflash -f -p 0 original.bin ( or whatever the name of your original bios is, mines is called "original.bin")
6. rebooted, and WALLA, succesful flash.

Ye i was hesitant that using a bootable usb and DOS to flash wasnt going to be any different than doing it in windows, but it worked :D!!

Cheers~
 
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brandonwh64

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Do it from dos you should have better luck there.
 

Ezzie

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May i ask why i would have better luck there?

Anyway ill try it, so i need to make a bootable usb with an OS on it and atiflash, along with the original bios, then flash my gpu in dos?
 

cadaveca

My name is Dave
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you cannot edit the CCC maximums. Shaders, fine, but if you do flash BIOS successfully with modified CCC overdrive profile, once driver starts it will prevent OS from loading.

And yes, DOS method works best.
 
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AFAIK, you can't just up the Overdrive limits and expect it to work cleanly as the OD limits are digitally signed by AMD (there's an RBE help file that explains this). Maybe that's the issue?


EDIT: cadaveca beat me to it
 

Ezzie

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Jul 5, 2012
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ya pretty big mistake, i should have read up more :(. Well now my cards bricked, and i have little faith that the DOS method will work.....

Can anyone link me to a surefire guide on how to flash a gpu using DOS and a bootable usb? (do i even need to use a bootable usb?)
 
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