VBE7 - vBIOS Editor for Radeon HD 7000 series cards

[sentye]

i use trix and dont need to extend anything with that. but i do have msi installed so i will have a search for it.

uninnstalled msi and restarted and the clocks changed to what was set in bios..
but problem is still the same.
im gonna just blame power play and forget about it ithink..

thanx for the edits though. atleast i know it cant be fixed with just clock and voltage rates.

No problem I'm glad I could help, but too bad it didn't fixed your issue.

 

[hitem13]

Hello hitem

Unfortunately this what's happening with your card is by design and it's not only AMD, but also Nvidia cards which are affected by this, they did something which will force higher clocks to prevent instabilities when using multiple monitors, or even a single monitor with refresh rate set higher than 60Hz (although for 120Hz it should still use idle clocks). I'm not sure if there's anything in vBIOS related to that what's happening in such case or if maybe there's something they set in drivers, nevertheless I'll see if I can find anything in your vBIOS which will make your GPU to use lower clocks for this matter.

Just one question, have you tried different inputs i.e. DVI/HDMI/DP and does it change anything?

Regards

Hello good sir!
Thanks for your time and effort
To answer your questions: If i switch to the other ports on the card there is no 120/144hz support, its a specific socket .

So atm both are connected on the dvi slots. i have tried with a converter to hdmi on one of them but diffrence (cept that i lose 120/144hz support on the dual dvi one).
I dont have a Video cable so i havent been able to test those tbh.

And yes, i suspected it might be by design, but many cards do not experience this so its very frustrating! So i gues its specific depending on bios/driver perhaps.
I have a friend who use a HD6970 card and he never goes above 45C in load on his VRM and he has the same monitor/pc setup. It might be that it has a better cooler but from what ive seen today the DirectCU2 is pretty good cooler. the fittings of the heatsinks are almost in touch with the mostfetarea (vrm). On the other hand, before sleep i will try to attach a pair of heatsinks on the backside where its reported being very hot:

They are 21x7x11mm so they are long and small, but yeat higher then the backplate so i will be able to attach em directly to the circut with some heattape. Might help me with a few degrees.


Thanks again, much appreciated.

 

[hitem13]

Hello good sir.
I tried the profile-solution today and it dosent work.
Both gpu-tweak and MSI afterburner offers me to set some profiles.
I tried the 500Mhz gpu core and 700mhz memory (lowest i could drag it) and it still gives me 77C idle (with the new heatsinks attached to the backplate today, gave me 2-3C less).
I managed to get stable resolution/no flickering (good test is to open a chatmsg in steam and webpage in background, then click the steamwindow in the lower bar and bring it back/forth and see if it flickers) with a profile that has 1000mhz memoryclock. even when i put the voltage meters to lowest in msi afterburner (only one who could edit it, could chose between lowest: 1500 and it was set on 1600 and highest 1700 -alltho gpu-z is showing 0.943 to 1.100 on vddc voltage).


Edit: ended up with MSI afterburner with its own fanprofile (as bios profile seems to be ignored or work diffrently). I now have 1% fan speed per 1C. so 50C = 50%. (Gpu temp).
That leavs me with:
Idle: 40C gpu 74C VRM1
Load: 60C gpu 94C VRM1

 

[neklec]

Hi

I've set new 3D voltage in your vBIOS to 1.200V as you wanted.

Please test it and report back.

Regards

Hi sentye,
You modified vbios for me, but voltage doesn't change. I checked in GPU-Z.Ty you can try once again?
Thanks.

 

[h9826790]

Hi,

I've used VBE7 to OC my HD7950 a little bit and lower the voltage to make it a very quiet graphic card. Thanks for providing this great tool.

However, I suffer from the flickering issue occasionally (on desktop or when using browser). After some research and reading. I am quite sure that's due to the memory frequency change between profiles.

I'd try to edit the 2D profile by myself, but no success.

Is there anyone can help me to modify the 2D profile in order to get rid of the flickering issue?

All I want is just to make the 2D memory frequency to 1250MHz. If required, please modify the voltage for me as well (e.g. 0.95V?).

Million thanks in advance!

P.S. This is the ROM from a HD7950 Mac Edition (boot screen available). I OC it to 850/1250 @0.962V. Also, I changed the fan profile to make it run very quiet (27% fan speed most of the time, may be up to 30% under extreme load). If anyone want to try this setting, please feel free to use it. I am not sure if this is good for other 7950, but should be 100% safe for the Sapphire HD7950 Mac Edition card, and works really well in my Mac Pro 4,1 (flashed 5,1).

 

[xdiv]

Hi,

I've used VBE7 to OC my HD7950 a little bit and lower the voltage to make it a very quiet graphic card. Thanks for providing this great tool.

However, I suffer from the flickering issue occasionally (on desktop or when using browser). After some research and reading. I am quite sure that's due to the memory frequency change between profiles.

I'd try to edit the 2D profile by myself, but no success.

Is there anyone can help me to modify the 2D profile in order to get rid of the flickering issue?

All I want is just to make the 2D memory frequency to 1250MHz. If required, please modify the voltage for me as well (e.g. 0.95V?).

Million thanks in advance!

P.S. This is the ROM from a HD7950 Mac Edition (boot screen available). I OC it to 850/1250 @0.962V. Also, I changed the fan profile to make it run very quiet (27% fan speed most of the time, may be up to 30% under extreme load). If anyone want to try this setting, please feel free to use it. I am not sure if this is good for other 7950, but should be 100% safe for the Sapphire HD7950 Mac Edition card, and works really well in my Mac Pro 4,1 (flashed 5,1).

I've posted this in another forum:

I have a Samsung monitor (S23A700d) @ native 120HZ and HD7950, and I'm having trouble with occasional tearing/flickering while browsing the web, etc. (on stock configuration, also happens on another GPU.)
CRU shows that by default my monitor uses the "LCD standard" timings, but if I change the "Back porch" H/V to 148/36, my GPU idle clocks rise to higher 3D clocks instead of the default 300/150 and this works around the flickering problem, at the cost of higher heat and power usage unnecessarily, which of course is not ideal..
My question is, is it even possible to have idle 2d clocks with 120HZ without experiencing flicker issues, perhaps some monitor setting can be tweaked to fix this, or is the only way is to have high idle GPU clocks?

May I know what is your display refresh rate?
By my testings, it seems that this problem only occurs on refresh rates higher than 60, and not due to the act itself of changing clock states (I could make them fluctuate ceaselessly without flicker, and yet random, rare flickers still show up.)
I've already hex edited my 2D memory clocks to numbers like 300, 400, and even -800-, none helped. My only workaround for now is to lower the monitor's "Back porch" vertical lines from 56 to about 50, this will force the driver to use a similar to UVD state at idle (full 3D memory clock).
Note that I do have only one monitor to test (S23A700d), but it does happen on two of my functional HD7950s.

 

[h9826790]

May I know what is your display refresh rate?

Thanks for your info. I am now using the 27" Apple Cinema Display. Therefore, it's a 60Hz monitor. So, the first work around I should try now is further lower the refresh rate?

This is what I get in SwitchResX, it seems 33 is the native setting of back porch. I may lower this number to see if it helps.

 

[xdiv]

Thanks for your info. I am now using the 27" Apple Cinema Display. Therefore, it's a 60Hz monitor. So, the first work around I should try now is further lower the refresh rate?

I wouldn't go lower than 60 anyway, if that what even triggers the bug in your case, since you have a Mac?
I'm using the CRU utility to lower the Back porch vertical lines to 50, but I have no idea if there is an alternative for Mac, an option to do it manually there, or even if the display driver will behave the same as in Windows when you lower the vertical lines to force idle 3D memory clocks.

 

[h9826790]

I wouldn't go lower than 60 anyway, if that what even triggers the bug in your case, since you have a Mac?

Yes, I am using a Mac. I have no idea what is back porch, but will try to play around with it and hopeful I fix the flickering issue. Anyway, thanks for your help!

Update 1: I try to change the 2D memory clock again. I hex edit my working EFI ROM image, only change the 2D memory frequency from 150MHz to 1250MHz. And then flash that ROM into my card. I don't know is it working or not. Anyway, the card still have boot screen, everything still working so far, and will see if there is any flickering in the next few days.

Update 2: It seems that I did something wrong (but problem fixed). The card now won't get into my edited 2D profile (300/1250), but stay at 500/1250 when idle. It draw a bit more power than the 2D profile, however, no more flickering after few hours extensive test. Hopefully it's a permanent fix!

Update 3: I further fine tune the profiles. I hex edit the 2D profile to (300/1000), and the second stage to (501/1000), but increase the 3D VRAM clock speed to 1500MHz by VBE7. No more flickering. And the card now can run at 300/1000 to save power (and run cooler) under 2D environment but increase the clock speed too (900/1500) under 3D environment. So, it's confirm that if setting the VRAM clock too high for 2D profile, the GPU will not be able to reduce it's core clock to the lowest power setting.

 

[Ntouchable]

Currently having a lot of trouble with the Asus R9 280x I brought a few days ago. I tried editing the BIOS with this BIOS editor and successfully flashed it using Atiflash. There were 2 problems I was having before hand:

1. The fan curve was ridiculously stupid, hardly existent. I managed to fix this when flashing.

2. Overclocking to 1.3v on VDDC with any OCing utility would not work at all, it would reach roughly 1.27v and slowly throttle back to below 1.2v.
When I flashed the card I set the VDDC on #6 to be the same as #0 with the same VDDC, however this has had no affect at all, with the card still jumping all over the place and still nowhere near 1.3v.

Is there something wrong with my card or...? I don't really know what to do at this point, except maybe return the card and get a Sapphire Vapour-X R9 280x.

Please help me with recommendations of what to do

 

[RejZoR]

Hm, there was only one VDDC setting, the rest were locked out, but despite of that, the card doesn't lower the voltage for 500MHz desktop mode. It's now always stuck at 1.188 (its what i use for my OC). Checking the VDDC with GPU-Z. Is this normal?

For some crazy reason i can't use any software overclocking tools on Win8.1 anymore because:
- they all fail to apply OC properly on system bootup
- they all fail to re-apply OC properly after system wakes up from sleep
- they all cause screen to go black with flickering horizontal lines when attempting to watch Youtube (works fine for games and desktop, but when i view embedded Youtube video, it just dies)

So, this VBE7 and with Atiflash tool i managed to flash my card with clocks that i know are fine. And now even Youtube works OK again. I'm just wondering about the constant VDDC thing.

 

[xdiv]

Yes, I am using a Mac. I have no idea what is back porch, but will try to play around with it and hopeful I fix the flickering issue. Anyway, thanks for your help!

Update 1: I try to change the 2D memory clock again. I hex edit my working EFI ROM image, only change the 2D memory frequency from 150MHz to 1250MHz. And then flash that ROM into my card. I don't know is it working or not. Anyway, the card still have boot screen, everything still working so far, and will see if there is any flickering in the next few days.

Update 2: It seems that I did something wrong (but problem fixed). The card now won't get into my edited 2D profile (300/1250), but stay at 500/1250 when idle. It draw a bit more power than the 2D profile, however, no more flickering after few hours extensive test. Hopefully it's a permanent fix!

FWIW, I'm now testing a new workaround, it seems that bumping only the 2d core clock to 400MHz, makes the driver automatically rise the memory clock to 300; 500 core clock results in 800MHz memory. I'm now on 400/300 2d clocks so far without flickering, if this proves to work, it's a far better "fix" for lower power consumption..

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for your info, will try that now, and see how's going in the next few days.

Update 1: Just finish the BIOS edit. The card now still run at 500/1250 in Windows. It seems no matter what I did to the 2d profile, it simply give up and go to 500/1250. However, the idle power consumption in OSX drop from 55W to 29W now. A much much better condition. I don't know how to monitor the GPU frequency under OSX. Anyway, hopefully this is the low power consumption fix for me. Once again, million thanks for your suggestion.

Update 2: This method doesn't work for my card. I Hex edit the ROM, confirm the numbers are correct by VBE7, run the fixrom script, flash the card in Windows 8. Then the flickering come back straight away under OSX.

 

[xdiv]

Yes, eventually 400/300 flickered for me too. I'm now trying 500/800, if that doesn't work either, unfortunately I'll set back the 500/1575 in Windows.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Sorry if this question has been asked before but to be honest I am too lazy to go through so many pages..... will this work with a 280X as it remains Tahiti? What I want to do is to change the voltage to 1.225V from 1.2V, my card (Rev 1 VapourX) is a very poor overclocker (max 1080mhz gaming stable)) at the stock voltages but has the cooling to easily take the extra volts, I have benched at 1.25V (1160mhz) using Trixx without any heat issues but would rather go the easier route and amend the value in the Bios....... any thoughts?

 

[Tomorrow]

Yes you can use it for 280x.

 

[jtamas88]

Hi!

I want to lower the default idle (minimum) fan speed of my XFX Radeon R9 270X

By default it does not go under 20% (1435 RPM), even if it is 30°C
I managed to edit the bios and change the fan curve with VBE7, I managed to flash it as well, but the minimum fan speed did not change. GPUZ showes the lowered percentage, but the real RPM remains the same (1435 RPM)
I even tried to set fan speed to 0% in VBE7, but it also effects only the shown percentage (e.g. in GPUZ), not the RPM.

The bios fan curve editing works fine if I set anything which is higher than 20% (the RPM follows the percentage well)

Is there a way to lower the minimal idle fan speed? For example 15% under 35°C and factory deafult setting above 35°C

Thank you!

 

[Tatty_Two]

Yes you can use it for 280x.

Thanks, done and working nicely.

@jtamas88 ....... I could not change my fan profiles also, it clearly showed and saved the changes to bios but on flashing nothing changed, in fact I had a worrying moment because on reboot after flash it took 4 attempts to get into windows, once I did get to windows it was clear that it was the fan profile changes that caused the issue so I reworked the bios again just for the voltage adjustment and re-flashed.

 

[jtamas88]

@jtamas88 ....... I could not change my fan profiles also, it clearly showed and saved the changes to bios but on flashing nothing changed, in fact I had a worrying moment because on reboot after flash it took 4 attempts to get into windows, once I did get to windows it was clear that it was the fan profile changes that caused the issue so I reworked the bios again just for the voltage adjustment and re-flashed."

I had no problem with flashing and it booted normally after flashing (I didn't change anything else, only the fan profile)
My problem is, that it had no real effect. Only the shown percentage lowered, but not the real rpm.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I had no problem with flashing and it booted normally after flashing (I didn't change anything else, only the fan profile)
My problem is, that it had no real effect. Only the shown percentage lowered, but not the real rpm.

Perhaps I didnt explain myself vey well, it was the same for me (apart from the shaky startup) the profile was saved and flashed but didnt work.

 

[max_clif]

Hi I got a Club3d_R9_270_RoyalQueen_Pitcairn card, modified it using VBE7 but found that the card defaults to 930mhz in 3Dmode before going to overdrive speed for 1090 then even if I changed both fields (fields 4, and field 0) to 1090 for gpu.

930mhz isn't even a number shown in the bios under vbe7. How do I fix this?

 

[potfurr]

Hello guys Im new here!
Guide is fine, evrything is clearly! I flashed my first BIOS to my GB R9 270

But I needs some little help. I want to make my graphic card quiet and cool, so no overclocking. I know I need to set lower voltage if I want to recive lower temps. But program also have some features which I don't fully understand. I mean OverDrive & PowerTune. Can someone tell me is it worth to mix with this setting? Also, in PowerPlay card, there are 4 State: "State 0 Boot" "State 1 Performance" "State 2 UVD" "State 3". Can I set something like in Boot State - Core Clock 300 Memory 150 VDDC 875. Or better leave this, because GPU won't be able to boot with this lower clocks and VDDC?

I made some SS.

Have a nice day to everyone

 

[Tomorrow]

@potfurr
Most clocks are linked. You cant set Boot clock separately. Set Performance clocks as you see fit and the rest will be adjusted accordingly. No need to change PowerTune if your're not overcloking (otherwise one would change the TDP limit). PowerPlay is what it says: varying voltage depending on load level. Also i suggest you do not lower memory clock below default (your's is 1400?) as this can produce problems like flickering and frame jumping on games and inability for monitor to wake from sleep/suspend properly. Also you might wanna set Performance #4 and #0 to the same clock/VDDC level to remove the boost feature. Personally i prefer constant performance and clocks in games rather than miniscule power save due to boost.

Also when going for lower temps you might want to experiment with bringing down your VDDC. 1.206mV seems a but much for only 975Mhz. Test stability on lower VDDC with OCCT 3-D benchmark to search for stability errors (fullscreen).

 

[potfurr]

Thanks for help but it seems like my GPU don't want to cooperate with me.

I set VDDC like this.

Card OverDrive & PowerTune default.

And thats all from my GPU. Yes only 1,162v. Even on 1,156v GPU is very unstable in 3D (Furmark/games) What happening? Simple, set 975 on core 1400 on mem, vddc 1,156v - Furmark, just clicked on start button and... green/red/grey pattern on whole screen. Only switch off power supply was solving problem. So... lets underclock core then! Again, first, core 950, mem 1400, vddc 1,156v - same result, crash. So maybe (little) more? 900 on core, 1400 mem, vddc 1,156v - same result. OK, lets try with memory clock! Core 975, memory 1385, vddc 1,156v - and again the same... Then I gave up and revert to the working and stable 1,162v.

I don't know what i'm doing wrong. When I flashed the bios from bitcoin forum with VDDC ! 1,056v ! It was more stable... I mean, when I launch the game, there was plenty of texture glitch, but I could play it for a while (around 1-2min) then it crashed, and only restart PC was helping. It wasn't just insta crash like with higher 1,156v, which is weird...

Anyway, if someone want to suggest I'm listening.

 

[max_clif]

@potfurr
Most clocks are linked. You cant set Boot clock separately. Set Performance clocks as you see fit and the rest will be adjusted accordingly. No need to change PowerTune if your're not overcloking (otherwise one would change the TDP limit). PowerPlay is what it says: varying voltage depending on load level. Also i suggest you do not lower memory clock below default (your's is 1400?) as this can produce problems like flickering and frame jumping on games and inability for monitor to wake from sleep/suspend properly. Also you might wanna set Performance #4 and #0 to the same clock/VDDC level to remove the boost feature. Personally i prefer constant performance and clocks in games rather than miniscule power save due to boost.

Also when going for lower temps you might want to experiment with bringing down your VDDC. 1.206mV seems a but much for only 975Mhz. Test stability on lower VDDC with OCCT 3-D benchmark to search for stability errors (fullscreen).

What does upping or lowering the TDP do?