Get your X1950Pro modded BIOS here

[bundlebr]

Just got this crappy piece of Aluminum in mail (ordered two - got only one ). Will not have time till Wed to play with it, but alive it looks even worse than in the picture... It's not about design, but rather poor understanding of the physics AND crappy implementation of it... Honestly, not a it of surprise for me.
Nevertheless, will see, what I can squeeze out of it.

 

[Ketxxx]

If that thing manages to knock even 5c off temps a twix is in the post. I'm betting unmodified as a whole theres more chance of it heating things up more rather than cooling them down though.

 

[bundlebr]

OK, will start with their suggested config first, than compare to the fruit of my creativity

 

[unsmart]

It looks like you may be able to use the flat surface of the heat spreader to mount a NB cooler or at least a few MEM heatsinks. I have a zalman NB cooler that seems would fit, cost like $8 on ebay. I pulled all the HS stuff off my card except the ones on the Vregs / PWM IC and put back on the stock cooler. This things up for sell as soon as the ATI DX10 cards come out unless theres a physic app that uses it. The x1950pros do pretty well at stock for the price but not being able to OC kills me My last three mid range ATI cards[ 9600pro, x700pro and 1800lx] did over the xt level on core and dam close with ram, thats probably way they lock the x1950pros

 

[Ketxxx]

Theres possibly a workaround for locks on the 1950Pros. As simple as using a 1950GT BIOS in fact, their clocked significantly lower than the Pros, but use the R570 cores that fail the heat test, other than that the cores are fully functional. So baring this in mind, I highly doubt ATi bothered locking the GT BIOS as they figured no defunc GT core would ever make 600MHz+ anyway.

Heres a closeup of my ROM chip for folk. I'm pretty sure its a SOIC and not SAP, pin config should be accurate, if if anyone wants to verify that would be handy.

 

[Formula350]

WTFork?

Hi Ket,

Read every page on this thread heh Just got a Sapphire 1950 Pro and love it. Just slapped on HIS's heatsink setup from their 1950 Pro, and befor I was able to use 621mhz core, 760mhz mem stable, haven't bothered with core but mem does 800 stable and haven't pushed it more.

So now my problem! I tried Winflash, no dice. So I found a floppy, tried ATIFlash, SSID doesn't match. So I tried Flashrom and that says it can't find the adapter. I saw Flashrom can force, and thought maybe ATIFlash can, so in windows I just loaded it up in cmdprmpt and it can. For kicks I tried and even IT says it can't find the adapter. Not sure if it's a cmdprmpt problem, not being in DOS, or it really can't. Here's a C&P

Adapter not found

ERROR 0FL01 : press '1' to continue

So I'm a bit confused as to what happened that it won't see the adapter, and why I got the SSID error (don't remember reading about having to force it in your tutorial).

Anyways, I'll include my dump. My only 'wants' are core volt mod, if possible ram volt mod (WinClk gave me an option ONCE, and never again), and timings. And if anything just 600/700 clocks, but I'd prefer to OC it all myself, and I let ATT do my fan speeds since I run quite cool with the HIS heatsink. I hope to get some nice overclocks since my mobo allows me to overvolt my PCIe by +.1 or +.2

I'm willing to try your 1950GT on Pro theory if you have one ready

 

[Ketxxx]

No GT BIOS ready at present, but hopefully soon. As for your problem, you need to get around it with the following command from pure DOS.

A:\ATIflash.exe -f -p 0 *BIOSFilename*.rom

 

[Formula350]

Cool, forcing worked.

Doesn't matter that I went from BIOS ver
009.012.001.019.021755 (newer from the looks)
to
009.012.001.012.021962 (the last 256mb memory timed bios on like page 6 or so)

does it?

 

[Ketxxx]

nope.

 

[Alcpone]

Hi Ket,

Read every page on this thread heh Just got a Sapphire 1950 Pro and love it. Just slapped on HIS's heatsink setup from their 1950 Pro, and befor I was able to use 621mhz core, 760mhz mem stable, haven't bothered with core but mem does 800 stable and haven't pushed it more.

So now my problem! I tried Winflash, no dice. So I found a floppy, tried ATIFlash, SSID doesn't match. So I tried Flashrom and that says it can't find the adapter. I saw Flashrom can force, and thought maybe ATIFlash can, so in windows I just loaded it up in cmdprmpt and it can. For kicks I tried and even IT says it can't find the adapter. Not sure if it's a cmdprmpt problem, not being in DOS, or it really can't. Here's a C&P

Adapter not found

ERROR 0FL01 : press '1' to continue

So I'm a bit confused as to what happened that it won't see the adapter, and why I got the SSID error (don't remember reading about having to force it in your tutorial).

Anyways, I'll include my dump. My only 'wants' are core volt mod, if possible ram volt mod (WinClk gave me an option ONCE, and never again), and timings. And if anything just 600/700 clocks, but I'd prefer to OC it all myself, and I let ATT do my fan speeds since I run quite cool with the HIS heatsink. I hope to get some nice overclocks since my mobo allows me to overvolt my PCIe by +.1 or +.2

I'm willing to try your 1950GT on Pro theory if you have one ready

I will be interested to find out if you can get faster clocks than me? As you will most likely have the same pcb as me

 

[Formula350]

Well the card locked when I went to 660mhz core, and the drivers never recover this 1950 from errors like it did my 1600XT :\ I really have no easy way to overclock since the ATT doesn't let me (No clue why, hit apply and moves back to what I set it at from WinClk)

What are your clocks Al?

My real reason for posting, is now I have an Unknown Device that's location, according to Device Manager, is "on x1950 pro". I let it search for drivers, and it comes up with nothing. So far thats the only "problem" I've had.

Any clues?

EDIT: Well 655 did the same, but only after about a minute of ATT's spaceship while I waited for Artifacts. From 621mhz to a seemingly stable 648mhz, I get no gain in 3DMark at all. Pre-BIOS at 621/803 is 9664 and after @ 648/803 is 9606. So I'm either limited by CPU, or my memory speed on the card heh. I'll try and squeeze more out of the ram now since I"m using the laxed timings one (unless you tightened them Ket).

 

[Alcpone]

Well the card locked when I went to 660mhz core, and the drivers never recover this 1950 from errors like it did my 1600XT :\ I really have no easy way to overclock since the ATT doesn't let me (No clue why, hit apply and moves back to what I set it at from WinClk)

What are your clocks Al?

My real reason for posting, is now I have an Unknown Device that's location, according to Device Manager, is "on x1950 pro". I let it search for drivers, and it comes up with nothing. So far thats the only "problem" I've had.

Any clues?

Use the newest atitool beta 27

I would uninstall your drivers and reinstall, sounds like the secondary driver isnt installed!

660 is abit optomistic I would say

My clocks are 641/804

 

[Formula350]

No, I use ATi Tray Tools and WinClk.

EDIT: Well, somethin's up. I STOPPED at 835 on the ram, bumped the core down to 635 and ran 3DMark05 and got 9616, with is well within margin or error. Seems like it is indeed my CPU limiting everything. Shame there's nothing to be gained from the huge ram OC. I'm getting a Dual Core 3800 soon, hopefully it'll OC like this Single Core.

Might as well go back to the stock BIOS heh.

 

[Ketxxx]

Your the first to get that. Probably just something to do with the drivers not being uninstalled then reinstalled after the flash, it shouldnt cause any issues.

 

[Alcpone]

No, I use ATi Tray Tools and WinClk.

Yeah I know thats what you have been using, but I recommend atitool lol

 

[Formula350]

Well I went back to stock. I'm sure I could still get my memory up there if I really wanted to.

And I did have to reinstall because Windows found a new device. It installed both Primary and Secondary cards, so I don't know what that 3rd item was :\ Seeing as it couldn't find any driver.

Beat your watercooled core clock though. Still only maxed at 50c. I love HIS coolers lol

 

[Ketxxx]

VF900 is great too, load temps @ stock with the crap paste included is 48c, put some ceramique on there and watch it fall to 42c

 

[Formula350]

Yea I know, I should've put my AS3 I have on there, I just left the huge clump of stuff on their lol But, it only takes a few seconds to remove the heatsink if I ever feel the need.

You'll have to let me know when you have something from that GT bios

 

[Ketxxx]

Thers one person who has a GT here, or at least their the only person I know of. I just bumped their thread, so hopefully that person will upload it.

 

[Formula350]

Someone posted a GT BIOS in this thread. At least I'm pretty sure. I know he POSTED here :\

EDIT: NM It was a 1900GT.

 

[SpookyWillow]

formula the chances are you used a bios that was for a card with VIVO, does your card have VIVO?

when i flashed my card i got the install hardware popup but nothing was ever installed because i dont have VIVO and the bios did.

 

[Ketxxx]

VIVO I can easily disable, I dont for the simple fact of keeping the BIOS as generic as possible.

 

[Formula350]

I assumed Avivo superseded VIVO. Probably the case then.

EDIT: BTW, anyone know what the heck this is all about? Around 68mb and a couple months old now.
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=23582

 

[Ketxxx]

Just an online replacement CD package.

 

[Alcpone]

Well I went back to stock. I'm sure I could still get my memory up there if I really wanted to.

And I did have to reinstall because Windows found a new device. It installed both Primary and Secondary cards, so I don't know what that 3rd item was :\ Seeing as it couldn't find any driver.

Beat your watercooled core clock though. Still only maxed at 50c. I love HIS coolers lol

I would love temps to be my limiting factor, but sadly they are not, this card just doesnt want to go any higher, even with the tweaked bios! What clock do you have on your gpu/mem now?