VBE7 - vBIOS Editor for Radeon HD 7000 series cards

[budget_Optiplex]

VBE7 works fine on my Firepro W7000. Have a modded fan curve, increased core clock and an undervolt (1GHz at 1.0volt), and reduced memory speeds to keep the crap Elpida memory on my particular card alive as long as possible (1200 to 1100MHz), then new UEFI module added back in. I have ran my current modded card in both legacy and UEFI mode on my current motherboard and my VBE7 mods work in either mode. Are you removing the GPU from device manager and letting Windows reinstall it or simply reinstalling the drivers after making your BIOS mods? I have BIOS modded/overclocked an insane amount of GCN 1 cards from HD 8570s to Firepro W9000s with VBE7 and depending on driver and Windows version, many times you have to fool with the drivers to get all the BIOS changes to be detected and utilized by the drivers especially voltage changes.

Also in recent experience the Amernime drivers seem to cooperate with BIOS mods better then OEM AMD drivers and perform much better too.

 

[Methanoid]

VBE7 works fine on my Firepro W7000. Have a modded fan curve, increased core clock and an undervolt (1GHz at 1.0volt), and reduced memory speeds to keep the crap Elpida memory on my particular card alive as long as possible (1200 to 1100MHz), then new UEFI module added back in. I have ran my current modded card in both legacy and UEFI mode on my current motherboard and my VBE7 mods work in either mode. Are you removing the GPU from device manager and letting Windows reinstall it or simply reinstalling the drivers after making your BIOS mods? I have BIOS modded/overclocked an insane amount of GCN 1 cards from HD 8570s to Firepro W9000s with VBE7 and depending on driver and Windows version, many times you have to fool with the drivers to get all the BIOS changes to be detected and utilized by the drivers especially voltage changes.

Also in recent experience the Amernime drivers seem to cooperate with BIOS mods better then OEM AMD drivers and perform much better too.

Thanks for the reply. Made me want to try again. I wonder if your core OC is within the "allowed" Afterburner limits (EDIT: it is) ? eg. on my card Core 800, Mem 825. You can increase in AB, Core to 1075 and Mem to 1040. Stock Rom, I can OC with AB to 900/1040 and I see real improvements in benchmarks. I did a modded BIOS, didnt change the core/mem but did increase core voltage from 990mV to 1100mV (so I can actually OC better) and changed the Power budget from 63W+20% to a flat 75W and no adjustment, and the Overdrive limits to 1300/1600 (so I could see what is realistic later). Booted up, removed drivers with DDU and installed AMD RadeonPro drivers as AMD recommends. Performance is dog turd, my FPS is less than half what it was before. Afterburner still limited to same 1075/1040 maximums but didnt crash with 1075 core which it would before so I am guessing the voltage increase did stick.

Funny but I'd modded appx 10 Nvidia Keplers and probably GCN1 cards and never needed to play with drivers. I wonder if its cos its a FirePro? I'll try some other drivers anyway

Can you confirm you can get a FirePro to take new "overdrive" limits for Afterburner? (EDIT see below)

EDIT: I have learned that AB limits are not taken from Overdrive limits in BIOS, just are a percentage of the BIOS stock values (30%) BUT..... Watching my dog turd Heaven runs I see the card ISNT switching to the performance state. Its running at 150/150... So need to fix that somehow!!! And voltage on GPU-Z is showing 0.9V which is for state #3 (2nd in list) and 150/150 is not ANY of the states in GPU BIOS. Tried NIMEZ drivers install card as R7 370x (!?)

EDIT2: If I change the clocks ONLY it takes fine. Also noticed that NIMEZ drivers gave me strange artifacts on all clock so put stock AMD drivers on. So I set clocks to 900/1100 and I see noticable boost in Heaven performance. Stock 69FPS, BIOS-mod+Afterburner to 82FPS

Anyone wanna take a look at stock BIOS or maybe suggest whats going on? It seems to be that voltage mods do not work??

EDIT3: Maybe if someone has and can share the mythical modded Asus Tweak 2.2.1.4 (see here https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...deon-hd-7000-series-cards.189089/post-3016859) I can see if that will do voltage. I am convinced the core can go to 1100 with about 1.1v and still be cool n quiet

@budget_Optiplex a simple test could confirm my theory.

Could you try adding voltage above the stock to your GPU and see if it boots AND runs normally? My theory would suggest it would boot but stay at default lowest clocks 150/150 or similar.

Since you can undervolt in BIOS and I have only tested overvoltages (I also tried ALL the TechPower up BIOS's for W5000 and tried overvolting. The first 3 I tried resulted in apparent soft brick (black screen) so I added UEFI back and flashed a stock volts 900/1100 BIOS (up from 825/800).

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Interestingly, the W5000 is probably one of the only GCN 1 cards I've never had in my possession to bios mod. I have done Firepro W2100s, W7000s, W9000s, and W4100s though. On the Radeon side I've done plenty of HD 7750/7770, HD 8570, R7 240/250, R7 350/450, and various other R7/R9 cards. The best card was a lowly Dell R5 240 with a 62% ASIC quality that went from 780 to 1300MHz with an undervolt and memory from 900 to 1279MHz lol. I have also never had to up the voltage to overclock either, I go by ASIC quality. From my experience with a pile of 50 or so R5 430s I modded a few years ago during the GPU apocalypse I have determined that ASIC quality on GCN 1 is backwards, so the lower the ASIC quality the better the silicon and the more likely I can undervolt and still overclock 100MHz or more. Higher ASIC quality runs hotter and is harder to overclock without running acting like a furnace, and less tolerant of undervolting regardless. On all those R5 430s, cards with ASIC quality in the 60s overclocked nicely without temperature problems on the crap stock coolers (780MHz to 1200MHz+), but ASIC quality in the high 70s/low 80s were hot enough that I didn't push too hard and just focused on undervolting (so GPU from 780MHz to around 1050MHz). I also have never used Afterburner or even AMDs own software overclocking on GCN 1, I just BIOS mod right away so I can't help you with that part of it.

Give me a few days and I'll mod you a BIOS to try though again, I've never dealt with a W5000 so could be fun. What is your ASIC quality? And what brand of memory does your card have? Even better would be a screenshot of the complete GPU-Z memory timings tab from your card as well.......reason for this is memory timings can affect performance as well and sometimes a high memory overclock with slower timings can be detrimental on these cards. I always like to evaluate memory timings to find a good compromise.

 

[Methanoid]

I'll disassemble to seee what mem chips are fitted after this post.... but I'm still operating on theory that you can't INCREASE voltage on FirePro cards with BIOS mods... so if you can see if yours would tolerate an increased voltage in BIOS then that would kill that theory quickly. I think my 900/1100 OC is not bad and dont want to undervolt at all as I want performance!! But memory timings might be interesting

Screenshots attached (will edit to add memory when I've done that too) EDIT: 4th pic shows mem

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Ooof, that 79.4 AMD ASIC quality is pretty bad as far as heat and efficiency go.......how are your temps right now? Remember this card runs on PCI-E slot power only, so one of the reasons why I always undervolt (AMD cards always seem to have default voltage that's too high) is to reduce power draw while overclocking. This card already has a 75W TDP at stock clocks, so the W5000 may be a unique situation where one would have to be careful not to push things too far and hurt the card and/or motherboard. The BIOS I make for this card because of it's high TDP, poor ASIC quality, and slot power only will be carefully conservative so you may not like it lol.

For more clarity, and backed up my own findings specifically across a pile 50 Dell R5 430 2GB GDDR5 GCN 1.0 cards that I BIOS modded for all the performance they had to offer during the GPU apocalypse a few years ago, on AMD ASIC quality (I suspect this may only apply to GCN 1.0 though, not sure about later AMD cards as I've never owned or modded any personally beyond GCN 1.0): https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4rzo88
Also the memory timings are interestingly limited compared to all the other various GCN 1 cards I've modded. As an example here's my tab from the W7000.

EDIT: OK I have made a BIOS for you to try with a modded fan curve based on lots of experience with various OEM GCN 1 cards including my W7000, a GPU overclock/undervolt, and a mild memory overclock. I theorize that since the W5000 BIOS is lacking in memory timings for higher speeds then 800MHz on your identical to mine Elpida GDDR5, that overclocking your memory too far is just going to induce silent error correction that is going to hammer memory performance anyways so W5000 memory overclocking is going to be very limited. Be nice to find a way to add the memory timings for the W7000 into the W5000 BIOS......

I kinda wish I had one of these cards in my hands to experiment on for fun.

 

[Methanoid]

Ooof, that 79.4 AMD ASIC quality is pretty bad as far as heat and efficiency go.......how are your temps right now? Remember this card runs on PCI-E slot power only, so one of the reasons why I always undervolt (AMD cards always seem to have default voltage that's too high) is to reduce power draw while overclocking. This card already has a 75W TDP at stock clocks, so the W5000 may be a unique situation where one would have to be careful not to push things too far and hurt the card and/or motherboard. The BIOS I make for this card because of it's high TDP, poor ASIC quality, and slot power only will be carefully conservative so you may not like it lol.

For more clarity, and backed up my own findings specifically across a pile 50 Dell R5 430 2GB GDDR5 GCN 1.0 cards that I BIOS modded for all the performance they had to offer during the GPU apocalypse a few years ago, on AMD ASIC quality (I suspect this may only apply to GCN 1.0 though, not sure about later AMD cards as I've never owned or modded any personally beyond GCN 1.0): https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4rzo88
Also the memory timings are interestingly limited compared to all the other various GCN 1 cards I've modded. As an example here's my tab from the W7000.

EDIT: OK I have made a BIOS for you to try with a modded fan curve based on lots of experience with various OEM GCN 1 cards including my W7000, a GPU overclock/undervolt, and a mild memory overclock. I theorize that since the W5000 BIOS is lacking in memory timings for higher speeds then 800MHz on your identical to mine Elpida GDDR5, that overclocking your memory too far is just going to induce silent error correction that is going to hammer memory performance anyways so W5000 memory overclocking is going to be very limited. Be nice to find a way to add the memory timings for the W7000 into the W5000 BIOS......

I kinda wish I had one of these cards in my hands to experiment on for fun.

Thanks, would be very interesting to see if mem timings boosted performance but I can't even TRY that BIOS cos its asking to put LESS volts in and expect the core to go 25 higher than it already crashes at when OC with Afterburner. I guess I can put core clock back to 900 which does work.

And I'm still MORE interested in why I cannot get BIOS to give it above the default 990mV...

 

[Tatty_Two]

Does your card have one of the supported voltage regulators? If not it may not be programmable.

 

[Methanoid]

Does your card have one of the supported voltage regulators? If not it may not be programmable.

Yup the VT1556 from memory.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

W5000 and W7000 have same voltage regulator. I found in the way back past when I first started modding GCN 1 cards that afterburner and AMD driver software overclocking were not very reliable back in apx 2014, so I've always just flashed in modded BIOS files and then tested the card for reliability right away, then just flash in further modded BIOSs until I'm happy with the results. It may be more work this way, but that's how I've just done it lol. I'd suggest you try my BIOS first in the actual card without software overclocking, then tweak voltage if necessary. You may be surprised that while software utilities create problems, flashing the actual BIOS and making sure drivers acknowledge the BIOS voltages/frequencies, that everything works fine......been there done that. My spare W7000 has a 77.3 ASIC quality and it will still do 1025MHz with 1 volt. My primary W7000 has a 69.8 ASIC quality and it will do 1105MHz with 1 volt. I just choose to run it at 1GHz with 1 volt as card runs in the low 70s C for full load temps this way and I like cool and quiet hardware. If I limit my FPS to 30 on my low end Samsung 768p TV, card temps are in the high 50s C while playing something like Cyberpunk 2077 or Doom Eternal and I love not having my computer act like a space heater!

 

[Methanoid]

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...g-for-higher-core-clocks.281081/#post-5088665 Confirmation of what I suspected - FirePro cards go into "safe mode" if more than 1V....

So for mine, best I will get is maybe adding the memory tweaks from @budget_Optiplex rom above. (Would love to know what s/w you use for them)

FYI, I benchmarked with Heaven run and the performance with and without memory tweaks (at same clocks) was identical (slight bump in minimum FPS but I have seen that just by careful timing on WHEN you start the run so not attributing that to memory tweak). Couldn't try Optiplex's BIOS cos he had clocks my GPU couldnt handle so I may now experiment with reducing voltage and see if I can keep the 900MHz core clock still.

And maybe buy a W4100 for another experiment

 

[Methanoid]

@budget_Optiplex so I bought a W4100 for fun... it doesnt seem to like me much though. I can mod the BIOS but it seems to run at a strange speed when benchmarked (like 400/1000 rather than 900/1300). I wonder if the drivers are causing this? If I use it on stock I can just drag the sliders in Afterburner to Max and it works fine but BIOS mod and it gets confused. I'm pretty sure 1300 is the safe max for memory for it but I cannot test core clocks reliably cos of this "half" clock it seems to do... I did tweak fans speeds up a bit as it does get quite toasty (up to 100C) when OC and the ASIC is 73% (not ideal). If I can get to to bench at 900 without downclocking I can then use Afterburner to see if it can go higher and also maybe undervolt a bit for temps.

Do I need to patch drivers?

 

[Methanoid]

OK I am using Windows built in drivers and modded my W4100 from 630/1000 to 925/1350 and a whopping 66% improvement in Heaven benchmark scores. Obviously clocks didnt rise by 66% so some of that had to have come from unlocking the power budget . Voltage can't be over 1.05V cos its a hard lock on the card but I am curious if anyone has cross-flashing experience?

AMD FirePro W4100	Cape Verde PRO GL	2 GB	512	32	16	630 MHz	1000 MHz
AMD FirePro W600	Cape Verde PRO GL	2 GB	512	32	16	750 MHz	1000 MHz
AMD Radeon R7 350	Cape Verde PRO MOCHA	2 GB	512	32	16	800 MHz	1125 MHz

I wonder if I might cross-flash to R7 350 and bypass the hard lock on voltage and then boost that core a bit higher? Temps dropped by 13C when I repasted it... the old paste was rock hard

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Just caught this and don't have a lot of time. Will come back to it later! First, nice OC on the W4100, one of the few ultra cheap on ebay OEM type GCN 1.0 cards I've never had in hand besides the W5000. I wonder if you can adapt the copper cooler from the Dell R7 250 2GB card to the W4100? I have adapted that copper cooler to both the low and high profile Dell R7 450 cards so far by lengthening the fan wires and it works far better then the heatsink that the HD8570, W2100, W4100, R7 350X 4GB GDDR3, and R7 450s come with.

I have had success with cross-flashing. I have a specific R7 240 BIOS that works great on the Dell R7 250 2GB card that allows for frequency/voltage unlocks as the original Dell R7 250 BIOS is mostly locked in VBE7. The only drawback is the DisplayPort doesn't work, only the DVI port. And in some of my other cross flashes I have tried, many times either the DVI or DisplayPorts don't work. Since W4100 is basically an underclocked HD7750, I wonder if a BIOS from an HD7750 with 2GB of GDDR5, or some oddball 2GB GDDR5 R7 250 cards that actually use the HD7750 die would work on the W4100? I think Asus and HIS in particular sold an R7 250 card that was really a Cape Verde instead of the usual Oland core.

AMD Radeon R7 250 Specs

AMD Cape Verde, 925 MHz, 512 Cores, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 1024 MB DDR3, 900 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Try the latest Amernime drivers, am using them with my Firepro W7000 currently and finding they work great especially with Far Cry 6. And so far I have found that they are more forgiving as far as picking up BIOS changes without alot of fuss.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/amernimezone/files/Release%20Legacy%20GCN%20%28Pre-Polaris%29/WHQL-AMD-Software-Hybrid-Edition-23.11.1-GCNFlex-Nebula-Native-DCH.7z/download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/amernimezone/files/Dependencies/V5.5/ccc2_install_v5.5_23.10.exe/download

 

[Methanoid]

Just caught this and don't have a lot of time. Will come back to it later! First, nice OC on the W4100, one of the few ultra cheap on ebay OEM type GCN 1.0 cards I've never had in hand besides the W5000. I wonder if you can adapt the copper cooler from the Dell R7 250 2GB card to the W4100? I have adapted that copper cooler to both the low and high profile Dell R7 450 cards so far by lengthening the fan wires and it works far better then the heatsink that the HD8570, W2100, W4100, R7 350X 4GB GDDR3, and R7 450s come with.

I have had success with cross-flashing. I have a specific R7 240 BIOS that works great on the Dell R7 250 2GB card that allows for frequency/voltage unlocks as the original Dell R7 250 BIOS is mostly locked in VBE7. The only drawback is the DisplayPort doesn't work, only the DVI port. And in some of my other cross flashes I have tried, many times either the DVI or DisplayPorts don't work. Since W4100 is basically an underclocked HD7750, I wonder if a BIOS from an HD7750 with 2GB of GDDR5, or some oddball 2GB GDDR5 R7 250 cards that actually use the HD7750 die would work on the W4100? I think Asus and HIS in particular sold an R7 250 card that was really a Cape Verde instead of the usual Oland core.

AMD Radeon R7 250 Specs

AMD Cape Verde, 925 MHz, 512 Cores, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 1024 MB DDR3, 900 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Try the latest Amernime drivers, am using them with my Firepro W7000 currently and finding they work great especially with Far Cry 6. And so far I have found that they are more forgiving as far as picking up BIOS changes without alot of fuss.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/amernimezone/files/Release%20Legacy%20GCN%20%28Pre-Polaris%29/WHQL-AMD-Software-Hybrid-Edition-23.11.1-GCNFlex-Nebula-Native-DCH.7z/download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/amernimezone/files/Dependencies/V5.5/ccc2_install_v5.5_23.10.exe/download

Toast. Cross flashed to R7 350 and card fails to display (prob cos 4 x mini DP and nothing except FirePro's use MiniDP???) and now ATI Flash wont even see the card "card not recognized by ATIflash" (tried 2.67/2.74/2.93) so looks like I bricked card :-( Maybe I could direct program the BIOS chip in situ. Is it the top chip most likely (not Ram) here? https://tpucdn.com/gpu-specs/images/c/2611-back.jpg

​

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Bummer, good time to pick up a CH341A BIOS programmer. Am wondering if the BIOS from the Asus R7 250 2GB GDDR5 card would possibly work as it's got at least one DisplayPort output? The CH341A really comes in handy for situations like this, as when I was looking for a BIOS to unlock the Dell R7 250 2GB GDDR3 cards, I bricked mine several times in the process of finding a usable BIOS.

ASUS R7 250 2 GB GDDR5 Specs

AMD Cape Verde, 925 MHz, 512 Cores, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1125 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Methanoid]

Bummer, good time to pick up a CH341A BIOS programmer. Am wondering if the BIOS from the Asus R7 250 2GB GDDR5 card would possibly work as it's got at least one DisplayPort output? The CH341A really comes in handy for situations like this, as when I was looking for a BIOS to unlock the Dell R7 250 2GB GDDR3 cards, I bricked mine several times in the process of finding a usable BIOS.

ASUS R7 250 2 GB GDDR5 Specs

AMD Cape Verde, 925 MHz, 512 Cores, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1125 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I got it to detect in DOS and flashed it back.... its fine. I picked up a W4300 (Bonaire) FirePro and that was more fun to "fix".. as stock the power budget means it never runs close to its official clock...now its 70% faster

 

[Mussels]

I got it to detect in DOS and flashed it back.... its fine. I picked up a W4300 (Bonaire) FirePro and that was more fun to "fix".. as stock the power budget means it never runs close to its official clock...now its 70% faster

Someone has to test these things, thanks for posting the final result