RBE - General information and discussion

[mav2000]

Hey Bagz, Your program is absolutly super. But I am facing a funny problem. I am not able to use it anymore is it loads and shows in the taskbar and system tray but just will not open. ANy ideas? I am using windows vista ultimate sp1.

 

[BAGZZlash]

Hey Bagz, Your program is absolutly super. But I am facing a funny problem. I am not able to use it anymore is it loads and shows in the taskbar and system tray but just will not open. ANy ideas? I am using windows vista ultimate sp1.

I'm having a fix for this waiting for the next release. Until then, try this workaround.

 

[Flash]

I would like to ask a few questions in regards to this nifty tool I just discovered today.

1. If I press the button in Fan Settings to use the recommended values, would it not imply it fixes the bug spin too and I don't need to make a selection in Additional feature. Why there is no changes in Fan Settings once you click to fix the bug spin, what exactly it modifies?

2. If at Enable Superior Powerplay I select Disable, does it mean I will no longer have power play and my card will run at the default 750/900 all the time? If indeed it disables power play what clock info will it use?

3. For Increased overdrive limit, there is a HD4870 (Method 1 Hash) that has 800Mhz/1100mhz with 990mhz and 1200mhz for CCC values. If I click "change to these values, isn't there a bit possibility my card will go bust? I mean there is no guarantee that my card can run up to 800mhz/1100mhz memory. TBH I never seen someone having his 4870 running so high (I think the highest I seen was 800/1000) My card could display articafts, lockup, give BSOD with only 780mhz/1000mhz right? Isn't that why there is recommended when you OC to set your clock and memory by 5-10mhz at a time? How safe it is to use this feature and select the HD4870 800/1100/990/1200 option?

4. I do not want to use CCC for overclocking. I also understood that CCC loosen the timings on the GPU RAM. How does RBE handle in in this regards?

5. Something related to question 3. I just saved a BIOS with the HD4870 800/1100/990/1200. Now the actual settings are 800/1100, however the clock settings did not change, and they still are 750/900 Boot, 200/500 power saving/thermal, 500/500 UVD and 750/900 Accel 3D. Also it did not changed when selecting disable to Enable superior power paly

6. A game called EVE Online, when played in window mode, GPU switches to the 200/500 settings (750/900 if played in full screen). Which Clock info needs to be change to fix that?

7. (if you have any idea, I already made a thread specific for this). Any idea what clock info makes RivaTuner to detect my clocks as 200/500 instead of 750/900 like everybody's else?

8. When using other BIOS for the same card (in my case the HIS 4870) I noticed that this BIOS I downloaded from techpowerup also has a voltage of 1.27. How is this possible when my cards BIOS maximum was 1.26 and the Help said it's hardwired into my card. The BIOS was selected under HIS 4870, the card I have.

Thank you, I attached my original BIOS for reference (NOTE, CHANGE .TXT to .RAR).

 

[mav2000]

Thanks BAG that worked wonders.

 

[BAGZZlash]

1. If I press the button in Fan Settings to use the recommended values, would it not imply it fixes the bug spin too[?]

That's a nice suggestion. I will add this to the next version, if I don't forget.

Why there is no changes in Fan Settings once you click to fix the bug spin, what exactly it modifies?

It fixes one byte (or a few, I don't remember right now and am too lazy to look it up ) in the BIOS. It is not noticable in the usual fan settings.

2. If at Enable Superior Powerplay I select Disable, does it mean I will no longer have power play[?]

No. Only the superior powerplay features are gone then.

3. For Increased overdrive limit, there is a HD4870 (Method 1 Hash) that has 800Mhz/1100mhz with 990mhz and 1200mhz for CCC values. If I click "change to these values, isn't there a bit possibility my card will go bust? I mean there is no guarantee that my card can run up to 800mhz/1100mhz memory. TBH I never seen someone having his 4870 running so high (I think the highest I seen was 800/1000) My card could display articafts, lockup, give BSOD with only 780mhz/1000mhz right? Isn't that why there is recommended when you OC to set your clock and memory by 5-10mhz at a time? How safe it is to use this feature and select the HD4870 800/1100/990/1200 option?

Increasing the overdrive headroom does not mean your card runs these clocks all the time. Nothing will change at all if you don't have overdrive enabled.

4. I do not want to use CCC for overclocking. I also understood that CCC loosen the timings on the GPU RAM. How does RBE handle in in this regards?

RBE doesn't handle anything regarding overdrive. It simply increases the clocks headroom. All disadvantages regarding overclocking using overdrive remain.

5. Something related to question 3. I just saved a BIOS with the HD4870 800/1100/990/1200. Now the actual settings are 800/1100, however the clock settings did not change, and they still are 750/900 Boot, 200/500 power saving/thermal, 500/500 UVD and 750/900 Accel 3D. Also it did not changed when selecting disable to Enable superior power paly

First of all, you should read and understand the RBE tutorial carefully. It seems you didn't (entirely) understand several basics of the powerplay mechanism yet. Please be sure to entirely understand what you are doing before tinkering with your BIOS.

6. A game called EVE Online, when played in window mode, GPU switches to the 200/500 settings (750/900 if played in full screen). Which Clock info needs to be change to fix that?

You need to understand your BIOS. The RBE tutorial will help you doing so. Then, you can answer this question yourself.

7. (if you have any idea, I already made a thread specific for this). Any idea what clock info makes RivaTuner to detect my clocks as 200/500 instead of 750/900 like everybody's else?

Look into that thread.

8. When using other BIOS for the same card (in my case the HIS 4870) I noticed that this BIOS I downloaded from techpowerup also has a voltage of 1.27. How is this possible when my cards BIOS maximum was 1.26 and the Help said it's hardwired into my card. The BIOS was selected under HIS 4870, the card I have.

The reported values are irrelevant. Think about it: The reported values are valid only for the video board the BIOS has been extracted from.

 

[Random Murderer]

i just read the tutorial and learned a few things i did not know about rbe.
however, now i also have a few questions not answered in the tutorial...
in section 3.4.2, you describe how the hysteresis and pwm ramp work, but you don't say a word about the spin up cycle, spin up time, or pwm ramp(%) settings.
what are they and what do they do?

 

[BAGZZlash]

i just read the tutorial and learned a few things i did not know about rbe.
however, now i also have a few questions not answered in the tutorial...
in section 3.4.2, you describe how the hysteresis and pwm ramp work, but you don't say a word about the spin up cycle, spin up time, or pwm ramp(%) settings.
what are they and what do they do?

You're welcome!
I didn't mention anything about those settings because there is a link in RBE's fan settings tab (click "What do all the settings mean?") explaining that. After all, it's not that important (except for PWM ramp, you may wish to enable that because it brings some psychoacoustic advantages).
Have fun using that stuff!

 

[Random Murderer]

You're welcome!
I didn't mention anything about those settings because there is a link in RBE's fan settings tab (click "What do all the settings mean?") explaining that. After all, it's not that important (except for PWM ramp, you may wish to enable that because it brings some psychoacoustic advantages).
Have fun using that stuff!

cool, just flashed the new bios and going to reboot now

EDIT:
i'm happy the fan isn't constantly spinning up and down now.

 

[Flash]

Thank you for answering so fast

No. Only the superior powerplay features are gone then.

Ok, I did as the FAQ said, and opened a saved BIOS with them Disabled (Enable/Already Enabled was checked). Nothing changed tho . I guess they are already hard coded?

Increasing the overdrive headroom does not mean your card runs these clocks all the time. Nothing will change at all if you don't have overdrive enabled.

Well what I was reffering to is that the "standard clocks". If the increase overdrive limit tab, does only that, increasing the overdrive in CCC only and nothing more, the expresion "Standard clocks" made me think the standard clocks will change too. For example under actual settings, it's Standard Clocks 750/900 (which are the rated clocks), with the upper limit 790/1100 (same numbers I have in CCC). Now with the Hash check method, and the included 4870 settings, it says "standard clocks" 800/1100 and upper limit 990/1200. Compared between, at least myself, I understand that the limit in CCC will now be 990/1200 and the GPU clocks will not be 800/1100.

First of all, you should read and understand the RBE tutorial carefully. It seems you didn't (entirely) understand several basics of the powerplay mechanism yet. Please be sure to entirely understand what you are doing before tinkering with your BIOS.

This would be related to the above statement. I thought that a new "standard clocks" means it will change the standard 750/900 clocks to a 800/1100 value.

You need to understand your BIOS. The RBE tutorial will help you doing so. Then, you can answer this question yourself.

Ok, I think I just know. Because my windows mode (which I guess is the notebook blabla powerplay state structure) is 200/500 on the line for all low, medium and high modes. For it to activate to 750/900, it has to detect a 3D acceleration state, which I guess it's done when entering full screen. If you stay in window mode, it uses the windows state, and since my windows state is 200/500 for all 3 modes, it only uses 200/500, even tho it's an actual game.

Now my question is the following: in the FAQ you gave a nice rule when windows might find it self in low, medium or high. But is there an actual written "rule" in the BIOS when it switches between the low, medium, high that you can check? Or it's just a "it should" because that's how it's hard-wired.

What I'm trying to say, is there a way for an average joe like me to know when the modes change and what triggers them?

The reported values are irrelevant. Think about it: The reported values are valid only for the video board the BIOS has been extracted from.

Ok, so basically, it's safe to assume that the max voltage wired in the card is the value found in the original BIOS? Therefore when you flash to a different 4870 BIOS, any voltage which is over the maximum voltage found in the original BIOS might not work? And if it doesn't and you select a 1.276v when your card maximum is 1.265v, by selecting 1.276 will it crash/damage the card, or the card will simply run with the voltage nearest to the one you selected, that being 1.265v? (or what i'm trying to say is something similar you write in the FAQ "various things may happen") Or just use the voltages that were available with the original BIOS and ignore all other values in the different 4870 BIOS to be safest?

Regarding changing BIOS with another 4870 BIOS, how "viable" is it. I'm asking this because of the huge BIOS database you can select on this website. Is there a reason why to use this method vs changing the settings yourself (to the same settings you would find the the other BIOS you want to switch) in your own BIOS?


A new question. If the clocks for the core and memory decrease, you save power. By decreasing the voltages also, I guess you save even more.
Now if my BIOS has 200/500 @ 1.10v, 500/500 @ 1.20v and 750/900 @ 1.26v (1.26v being the max), and I want to change the value to 200/900 (first value), is it safer to just set it @ 1.26v rather than 1.20v?

Another question: What exactly is that Hysteresis % value. I mean I have read the FAQ, wikipedia the word (not native english speaker), read the guru3d forum explanation by unwinder, but I just can't exactly get it. If you could just give me an example what is the difference having hysteresis % - 4 and hysteresis % - 24, everything else identical.

 

[Flash]

Fan Fix changes Spin up time.

Just noticed that if you choose the fan fix, the spin up time goes from 2 to 4. Not sure if this is intended.

 

[Random Murderer]

On the right side, there is the vendor and the device ID. If you have a card from, say, ASUS, it can happen that the display states "0x1002 - ATI..." however. Many video card vendors seem to simply forget to put their vendor ID into the BIOS or use the ATI stock BIOS. You can change this information (as well as the device ID), but this is again protected using that digital signature described earlier. So after changing this and flashing such a BIOS to the card, Catalyst might not recognize the card anymore. However, there's no point in changing one of those items anyway. You can't turn a 2900 Pro wondrously into a 4870X2.

does this mean catalyst won't detect the card at all or you have to reinstall catalyst to get it recognized?

 

[BAGZZlash]

What I'm trying to say, is there a way for an average joe like me to know when the modes change and what triggers them?

I don't think so. I don't know how the triggering mechanism works and I don't know how to find out. Maybe the folks in the general graphics cards threads know more about this. If you find some information, tell me.

Ok, so basically, it's safe to assume that the max voltage wired in the card is the value found in the original BIOS? Therefore when you flash to a different 4870 BIOS, any voltage which is over the maximum voltage found in the original BIOS might not work?

You can find the voltages the card is able to set (regarding the original BIOS) in the pulldown menu in each clock info mode voltage setting box. Also, see the list of selectable voltages in the lower left of the clocks tab (I made that before I put those pulldown menus into the clock info boxes, so this list is a little obsolete ). The card should be able to implement those voltages. If you enter a voltage different than those in the list (e.g. an even higher voltage), tha card can't do it, so this is pointless. I'm not sure what happens in those cases. It seems to depend on the catalyst driver version. Sometimes people report that the driver won't even recognize the card any more. The least that could happen is that the nearest possible voltage or the lowest or highest possible voltage is being applied.

A voltage of, say, 1.263V means, say, "voltage mode 4" internally for the BIOS and the voltage controller. Now flashing some other BIOS to the card that reports a voltage of, say, 1.276V can also mean "voltage mode 4" to the card, so the controller still implements 1.263V. So you have to distinguish between what is reported and what this value is being interpreted as internally.

Regarding changing BIOS with another 4870 BIOS, how "viable" is it. I'm asking this because of the huge BIOS database you can select on this website. Is there a reason why to use this method vs changing the settings yourself (to the same settings you would find the the other BIOS you want to switch) in your own BIOS?

It's always safer to use your own BIOS (even an RBE-tuned one) rather than flashing a BIOS from some other card to your card. I can hardly imagine cases in which it is really necessary to do that.

A new question. If the clocks for the core and memory decrease, you save power. By decreasing the voltages also, I guess you save even more.
Now if my BIOS has 200/500 @ 1.10v, 500/500 @ 1.20v and 750/900 @ 1.26v (1.26v being the max), and I want to change the value to 200/900 (first value), is it safer to just set it @ 1.26v rather than 1.20v?

Voltage means stability. Higher clocks mean the need for more voltage to run stable. For lower clocks, you can save some power by using lower voltages. People lower the voltages until the card becomes unstable and then rise the voltage a little again to remain stable. That's the usual method of undervolting a card.

Another question: What exactly is that Hysteresis % value. I mean I have read the FAQ, wikipedia the word (not native english speaker), read the guru3d forum explanation by unwinder, but I just can't exactly get it. If you could just give me an example what is the difference having hysteresis % - 4 and hysteresis % - 24, everything else identical.

This can most easily be understood considering the look up table mode.
Imagine your card switches from 25% fan duty to 33% at a temperature of 50°C. So the temperatures rises... 48°C, 49°C, 50°C. Not the fan turns up, the temperature may rise to 51°C at first but due to heavy fan duty, the temperature falls to 50°C and 49°C. Without hysteresis, the fan duty now falls to 25% immediately. This means the card becomes hotter again and the fan duty switches back to 33% and so on.
Using hysteresis, the fan will turn up to 33% if the temperature crosses 50°C. Now if the temperature falls back to 49°C, the fan will remain at 33% until the temperature falls a litte more. So hysteresis prevents the fan to switch between two fan duty modes all the time.

 

[Alessio]

does this mean catalyst won't detect the card at all or you have to reinstall catalyst to get it recognized?

catalyst won't detect the card at all

 

[BAGZZlash]

does this mean catalyst won't detect the card at all or you have to reinstall catalyst to get it recognized?

catalyst won't detect the card at all

Correct. Be careful with that, Random Murderer. Have your original BIOS and ATIFlash on a bootable device ready if you decide to play around with that.

 

[Flash]

The original BIOS saved with GPU-Z is .bin. Do you have to manually change .bin to .rom or it will work to flash it as .bin too?

 

[VuurVOS]

The original BIOS saved with GPU-Z is .bin. Do you have to manually change .bin to .rom or it will work to flash it as .bin too?

it will work as bin file also. Its all about the content of the file, the extention doesn't really matter.

 

[Random Murderer]

Correct. Be careful with that, Random Murderer. Have your original BIOS and ATIFlash on a bootable device ready if you decide to play around with that.

i just wanted to change the vendor id, but that's fine. i won't tinker with it.

 

[panfist]

I just got a 4870 1GB and I'm messing around with RBE but I must not be doing something right.

I installed RBE to C:\program files (x86)\RBE
I installed ATIWinFlash to C:\program files (x86)\RBE\winflash.
I installed ATIFlash to C:\program files (x86)\RBE\atiflash.

I open up RBE, I go to "Acquire," I browse to ATIWinFlash, and I get a dialog box that says "No ATI Video Card found. Try WinFlash directly. If that doesn't work, try ATIWinFlash." So then I browse to ATIFlash instead of ATIWinflash, and I get the same message. I have tried opening up those executables directly and nothing happens.

In device manager it shows ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series. GPU-Z says the same thing.

 

[Flash]

ATIFlash is to be used in DOS. Which I have the problem to actually boot in DOS for 4 days now. I just wish ATIFlash was bootable

 

[panfist]

ATIFlash is to be used in DOS. Which I have the problem to actually boot in DOS for 4 days now. I just wish ATIFlash was bootable

Yeah, the chances that I'm going to boot into DOS just to see if I can squeeze my card core past 790MHz is pretty small...and by pretty small I mean zero.

 

[VuurVOS]

ATIFlash is to be used in DOS. Which I have the problem to actually boot in DOS for 4 days now. I just wish ATIFlash was bootable

Why don't you make a bootable usb stick with ATIFlash on it?

Yeah, the chances that I'm going to boot into DOS just to see if I can squeeze my card core past 790MHz is pretty small...and by pretty small I mean zero.

Did you try the latest version of ATIWinFlash ?

 

[panfist]

Did you try the latest version of ATIWinFlash ?

I don't know what you mean by "try."

I downloaded it. I pointed to it from within RBE. I also tried double-clicking the exectutable. It says it's missing a critical file and then it just kept running taking up an entire core and then some (50-60% total). I could not end the process, I had to restart.

I don't know what file it's missing; I downloaded the most recent version and extracted all the files together in a folder.

Also, is there a source of documentation for ATIFlash and ATIWinFlash? Because I had no idea until Flash posted above that ATIFlash was a DOS App.

 

[VuurVOS]

I don't know what you mean by "try."

Did you "use" (try) the latest version of atiwinflash?

I downloaded it. I pointed to it from within RBE. I also tried double-clicking the exectutable. It says it's missing a critical file and then it just kept running taking up an entire core and then some (50-60% total). I could not end the process, I had to restart.

I don't know what file it's missing; I downloaded the most recent version and extracted all the files together in a folder.

Also, is there a source of documentation for ATIFlash and ATIWinFlash? Because I had no idea until Flash posted above that ATIFlash was a DOS App.

Which OS are you using? Which version of ATIWinFlash did you download? Version 2.0.1.5 is at the moment the latest version available.

 

[panfist]

Did you "use" (try) the latest version of atiwinflash?


Which OS are you using? Which version of ATIWinFlash did you download? Version 2.0.1.5 is at the moment the latest version available.

See 5 posts up where I linked directly to the version I downloaded.

See my system specs which says I'm using Vista X64.

 

[BAGZZlash]

I also tried double-clicking the exectutable. It says it's missing a critical file and then it just kept running taking up an entire core and then some (50-60% total). I could not end the process, I had to restart.

I don't know what file it's missing; I downloaded the most recent version and extracted all the files together in a folder.

You are not the first person to encounter that error. Seems to be a random WinFlash issue. Try googleing for that error message to find out what causes this error. If you can't get WinFlash to work, your only option is making a bootable disc, USB stick, hard disk, CD/DVD, ZIP disc or anything else to boot to DOS and run ATIFlash. There are tons of tutorials on the internet explaining how to do that; it's not that hard. However, using real DOS in order to flash any device such as video cards is recommended anyway. Windows can be unstable so flashing from within windows can be risky.