- Joined
- Nov 1, 2004
- Messages
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Listen to this! I knew about the unflashable Gigabyte 9550 cards especially since I happened to own one. But since I am a bit stubborn and I wanted to have a higher-clocked card, and I wanted the higher frequencies in the bios by all means, I edited the Atitool-dumped original bios with RaBit and tried to flash it. Atiflash and Flashrom predictably failed, but I also tried Gigabyte's own flash (gvf11.exe). Amazingly, if flashed the bios, but then I was unable to boot the Shuttle XPC on which the 9550 normally runs.
Of course I got a bit desperate, so I removed the card to put it into my other PC and retry flashing it with the original bios, with the assistance of a PCI card. But before plugging in the PCI I tried to boot the PC normally, especially since it runs off a Gigabyte motherboard. To my second amazement this afternoon, it booted fine. I rechecked the card on the Shuttle and it did not boot. So Gigabyte cards love each other.
I fired up WinXP only to witness some very strange behavior from the card - it refused to work with any recent drivers I threw at it, except the 4.5 Catalysts (the oldest I have in my machine). The symptoms? With 4.9 it gave me a blue, fatal error screen before entering Windows. After later drivers were installed, the videocard was not fully recognized (no ATI control panel, but device manager showed Radeon 9550 alright). Furthermore, my network connection got all messed up and somehow - and most curiously - the battery icon materialized in my tray. Anyway, the PC was slow and basically unusable.
Of course I tried reflashing with the original bios, but now gvf11 failed to work any wonders anymore. It gave out a strange error, something about "0" and empty page, if I remember correctly
And yet the card worked fine with Catalyst 4.5 (though not with 4.9 through 5.2), and furthermore, it worked at the higher flashed freqiuencies. I would have been content with this state of affairs, but unfortunately the 4.5 drivers completely mess up the overscan and I watch a lot of TV, so I had to abandon them.
I realize this seems hardly believable, but it really happened. So now I am waiting anxiously for the flashing utility to appear that can correctly flash the bios-locked 9550. Please be sure to let me know as soon as this happens.
Of course I got a bit desperate, so I removed the card to put it into my other PC and retry flashing it with the original bios, with the assistance of a PCI card. But before plugging in the PCI I tried to boot the PC normally, especially since it runs off a Gigabyte motherboard. To my second amazement this afternoon, it booted fine. I rechecked the card on the Shuttle and it did not boot. So Gigabyte cards love each other.
I fired up WinXP only to witness some very strange behavior from the card - it refused to work with any recent drivers I threw at it, except the 4.5 Catalysts (the oldest I have in my machine). The symptoms? With 4.9 it gave me a blue, fatal error screen before entering Windows. After later drivers were installed, the videocard was not fully recognized (no ATI control panel, but device manager showed Radeon 9550 alright). Furthermore, my network connection got all messed up and somehow - and most curiously - the battery icon materialized in my tray. Anyway, the PC was slow and basically unusable.
Of course I tried reflashing with the original bios, but now gvf11 failed to work any wonders anymore. It gave out a strange error, something about "0" and empty page, if I remember correctly
And yet the card worked fine with Catalyst 4.5 (though not with 4.9 through 5.2), and furthermore, it worked at the higher flashed freqiuencies. I would have been content with this state of affairs, but unfortunately the 4.5 drivers completely mess up the overscan and I watch a lot of TV, so I had to abandon them.
I realize this seems hardly believable, but it really happened. So now I am waiting anxiously for the flashing utility to appear that can correctly flash the bios-locked 9550. Please be sure to let me know as soon as this happens.
