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! 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 !!
Cheers~
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! 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 !!
Cheers~
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