Anyone Else Try This ( 7970 BIOs Flash)

Ok so AMD announced the new R9 series GPUs one of which the R9 280X is said to be a rebrand of the 7970 GHz. So i tried to flash my 7970 with the 280X BIOs. It went through but upon reboot the screen turns black upon windows login. Could this because of current drivers don't support the R7/R9 series. Has anyone else tried this

 

Probably. Look around and see if you can find some leaked drivers.

Curious to see if this gets you any performance boost.

 

Is this 7970 an "old" 7970 or a new or custom 7970? My reference 7970 and XFX reference DD 7950 both don't like some newer BIOSes, and the driver will refuse to load or the card doesn't display anything in rare instances.

 

Hi

No; this is most likely caused by the outputs of the Asus 280X vbios differing; device ID, voltage, memory/branding and timings @ PSB level layout

Note: flashing a vbios designed for another board manufactures is asking for issues of this kind, let alone a new revision of the series

I trust you have been able to recover from this black screen and flash back the original vbios image [if need to flash edit a copy of the original vbios using VBE7]

atb (all the best)

Law-II

 

I have looked but nothing

 

This is the old refernce 7970 no custom PCB. Volt unlocked also

Yes i flashed it back to stock BIOs

 

Hi

Maybe an XFX vbios will become available; the circumstances may change, should be a new driver available with official launch

atb

Law-II

 

I hope so. Launch date is suppose to be the 8th. so i guess i'll want until then and try once more maybe that time with luck

 

Add the device ID to the driver inf paths. I doubt the BIOS alone will unlock anything or give a performance boost,

 

How do i go about that

 

Hi

Just looking through the Catalyst 13.10 beta v2 C8162870.inf; only refers to R300 WDDM support at this time.
Example:


atb

Law-II

 

Thx

 

Welp i already tried it lol

 

This is a classic case of just because two cards use the same GPU with the same configuration, minus maybe a minor clock change, that doesn't mean they are the same card. This is why you couldn't flash a 8800GTS 512MB into a 9800GTX, even though they both used fully unlocked G92 GPUs. The 9800GTX PCB was so different, and supported enough different features, that flashing a 9800GTX BIOS onto a 8800GTS would brick the card.

 

Looking at the pics of the 280X custom cards they are not using AMD reference boards. They have either already designed custom boards for the 280X, or, more likely, they us the same PCB as the previous 7970's did. The difference, if any, is probably elsewhere besides the PCB.

 

Has anyone made any progress with this, now that the 280X cards and BIOSs are out in the wild ? I'm thinking the 280X BIOS will be a great way to add Mantle support to the 7970 cards eventually !

 

Umm the HD 7000 series already has Mantle support as they also use GCN

 

Great, thanks for the update. I'd read that Mantle was only coming to the new 200-series cards - good to hear that's not correct

 

If you look at AMDs webpage it will state Mantle supports all GCN compatible GPUs which the HD 7000 are (GCN 1.0)

 

done. ASUS Matrix 7970 used.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dmv/4845944

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1042513

 

OLD original reference 7970's can NOT be flashed to 280x. they also can NOT be flashed with NEWER 7970 bioses. The old reference 7970's have VRM temp monitoring (that isn't stuck at 25C).

They (the old original 7970's) can also be flashed with the old unofficial ghz edition flasher.

New (v2+) 7970's can not be flashed with ANY of the old 7970 bioses (nor the ghz edition versions of them) but they MAY be flashable with 280x, if there were no more major hardware/IC changes.

 

Hi OP.

I have done a flash from the Sapphire HD7970 OC with Boost to the Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X. This was done using ATI Win Flash

Here is the link to the VGA Bios http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/146790/sapphire-r9280x-3072-130902.html that worked.


I tested this for 3 days and noticed the card was getting quite hot (temps between 70-85). I used darkmhz's Bios editor and changed the TPD paramaters/powertune and power limits to match the original 7970 Bios and that brought the temps down to normal and expected results (55-65). The only thing else i had to do was up the memory voltage to 1.6 on the R9 280X Rom. I did this using the Modded Sapphire Trixx app.

Stable clocks:-

1100 MHz on the Core at 1200 mV

1450 MHz on Memory at 1600 mV (5800 MHz effective)

I was using the latest Catalyst drivers running Guild Wars 2 and BF4 without any glitches or dramas.

So it's possible and it works. I'm unsure about the long-term ramifications on the hardware in doing this so i reverted back to the original bios

 

Tried this magic with my Asus 7970 DC2T v2 and an Asus matrix 280x bios....
Now i'am a happy owner of Matix card