R9700 Pro "performance bios" flash guide.

[PiLsY]

Not exactly sure where this belongs really, so I thought I'd post it here and hope some helpful mod (nudge nudge Opp ;)) will move it to the right section.

[EDIT] My hosting has died again so if anyone fancies hosting the zip archive (its only 250kb) Itd be appreciated. Multiple "hostees" might be handy incase theres a lot of traffic. - TIA.

Anyway, on with the show......

===

A few people have been asking me to write up a quick guide to flashing the bios on the Radeon 9700 Pro. There are a few cards out there with performance far below what the card is capable of due to a poor bios release. Most of these cards are PowerColor Revision 3.0 cards, but not all. Anyway, on with the show.

A copy of these instructions is located in the zip archive with filename readme.txt . I suggest you print them out so you can refer to them while you go through the flash procedure.




Instructions to flash to the Low Latency 9700Pro Bios
========================================

Firstly a disclaimer - if this Kills your card its not my fault - its AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Secondly - not everybody will see a performance increase with this bios. It seems that it fixes certain issues with powercolor cards which seem to be underperforming by 20 - 30FPS in most apps and benches (3dmark can be as much as 1200 pts lower than other cards at identical clocks). It has also been reported that on cards using Hynix or Infineon memory chips that the memory overclock has increased substantially. A few users have also reported small increases in core overclock. Nothing is guaranteed though. I would however recommend all owners of revision 3.0 boards to try this - the low performance problem seems to be mainly found on these revision of card.

Third - This bios is ONLY for the 9700 Pro. Whilst you can try flashing it to your 9500 - 9700 Pro modded cards I cannot say whether it will work or not, and whether it will increase or decrease performance or overclock. If you want to try it and report back your findings then great.

And finally - If the bios flash goes wrong somehow you can boot up off a PCI video card while your r9700 Pro is still plugged into the AGP slot. It may take a cmos clear to get this to happen though. You can then re-flash your original bios to the 9700 Pro from dos. The flash config is programmed to look for, and only flash to the 9700 Pro. Remember to run the flash at default speeds - this includes default AGP/PCI speed if you have a separate pci lock - dont forget it! Needless risks make Baby Jesus cry ;).



Instructions
=========

1) Create a boot disk (or download a boot image from www.bootdisk.com).
2) Unzip atiflash.zip and copy the files onto a new floppy disk.
3) Boot up off your newly created boot disk to a dos prompt.
4) At the dos prompt remove the boot disk and insert the atiflash floppy disk you made.
5) Type in "save" at the C prompt. Your original bios will now be backed up as "default.bin"
6) When this has completed type in "flash" at the C prompt. This will then update your cards bios to the new Low Latency bios.
7) If you experience problems or the new bios has a negative impact on performance then repeat steps 1 - 4 again, and then type in "restore" at the C Prompt to revert back to your original bios.


If you would like more info on all the available command line switches for the atiflash program simply type "ATIFLASH" at the C Prompt for a full listing.


Problems
=======

If you find youre card will not boot after flashing the bios, first off dont shout at me. It worked fine for me and is, as stated above, at your own risk. Secondly get hold of a pci graphics card (anything will do). Insert this into any PCI slot EXCEPT slot 1 (closest to your AGP slot). Leave youre Radeon 9700 Pro in the AGP slot. Reset your cmos. You should now boot up, but your pc will boot up off the pci graphics card and ignore the radeon. You then need to follow instructions 1 - 4 listed above and then follow instruction 7. This has to my knowledge resurrected every "dead" card from flashing to this bios. The cause most of the time is a bad flash.





Comments and experiences (and any financial offerings of gratitude ;)) are most welcome.

PiLsY.

[OPPAINTER]

Will this help my average overclocker 9700 card? Best it will do with xtreme cooling is around 460 maybe.

OPP

[PiLsY]

Replied to your email Opp - long and short is I dont know but its probably worth a try.

Rumour has it that ATI crippled 9700 Pro cards using the pre-production 9800 Pro cores (the ones that hit 400mhz or so on retail cooling default volts) by adding latency into the pipelines. This had a side effect of reducing the OC potential of both memory and GPU as well as losing you as much as 1200 points in 2001SE. This is a totally unsubstantiated rumour, but the low performing cards are out there. I know because I had one :).

This took my powercolor card from 15500 stock to 16700 stock and moved me up from 403/345 to 433/358 oc wise (on default cooling - no ramsinks and standard ati retail gpu cooler).

PiLsY.

[Hobocrow]

PiLsY, this sounds great! :) I have no way to host anything, but, would like give it a try on my 9500 > 9700.

[Svenn]

Send me this file, I'll host it. I wanna test it out on my rev3.0 9700 Pro.

EDIT: My e-mail address is svenn@cablespeed.com

[DR. YT]

so if i have one of the earlyer rev cards made by radion this wont do me any good?

[PiLsY]

It may or may not :). It doesnt help every card, and most of those it does help are revision 3 cards. This isnt to say it wont help any others - one of those things you have to just try :).

Svenn - Shortcircuit has kindly offered to host it for me. However, if you would be willing to as well it may be handy to spread the load a little incase it gets downloaded quite a lot. Ive emailed you the file either way :).

PiLsY.

[DisposableHero]

Originally posted by Hobocrow
PiLsY, this sounds great! :) I have no way to host anything, but, would like give it a try on my 9500 > 9700.


let us know how it goes!

[shortcircuit]

here's the link: http://frodobunny.net/files/atiflash.zip

I just flashed my hercules 9700 pro with it. I haven't tried to see if it overclocks any faster, but I can confirm that it didn't kill the card.

[PiLsY]

Thank you kindly good sir :toast: .

PiLsY.

[Svenn]

http://w3.mivlmd.cablespeed.com/~svenn/atiflash.zip

Posted, I'll try it in a bit, gotta run some errands.

[PiLsY]

And thank you too Svenn :).

:toast:

PiLsY.

[xtreme]

hmm i have my powercolor r9700pro, since the first radeon's were available :O my card does oc awesome with watercooling and some mods.. -> 478/353 (look @ 3dmark03).. will try this bios later ;)
thank you for the info :D

[xtreme]

hmm, just flashed and got same results, like beforce. can bench @ 490 , but in the 1st second of nature, it freezes :>

[Vali]

OK, i flashed this bios even if it seemed to me to be the same as mine (checked it with radedit). I have a BBA 9700Pro rev3 which worked very well at 390/354 using default cooling, default volts. I did vcore and vdd in the past but i haven't been able to achieve much (only 400/369 using again default cooling except for some homemade ramsinks...).

Anyway, this bios seems to be ok, i'm currently at my overclocking speeds writing this to you.:) I quick tested the 400 core clock with d3d fablemark as it stresses very much the card (with stencil calculation) and found it to have the same artifacts as it had with previous bios at this speed. So, for my card it seems that this bios doesn't bring anything new but i'll test it some more and i'll get back to you.

Thanks again PiLsY for this :toast:

[PiLsY]

No negative results so far which is promising. Nothing that positive either though ;).

Keep em coming lads.

PiLsY.

[Method Man]

I just flashed my 1.3 9700 Pro....going to test it and will come back with the results.

[Method Man]

My overclock is still the same....400/355 is my limit :( and I don't see any diffrence in preformance.

Oh well it was worth a shot:cool: looks like I need to do the volt mods to get any further preformance.

[Svenn]

Well, I got 10 points more in 3dmark2001 at stock speeds, but my overclock won't go as high. I could do as high as 420-430 on core before, now I can barely get past 400. Memory seems to be a little lower too, getting artifacts at 350... Oh well, I'll flash back now.

[PiLsY]

Svenn - could you upload your original bios m8? Sounds like it might be worth trying :).

Cheers,

PiLsY.

[XtremepH]

another link if needed: http://whyhacking.com/stuff/atiflash.zip

[twiztdskatr]

Will this work on a Sapphire 3.0 9700P card? I get like 380 stock cooling/voltage and it has 3.3ns ram :(

[PiLsY]

Only way to find out is to try :).

As far as I am aware it should be ok for any cards that are now a 9700 Pro, whether they were originally or whether they were hardmodded. Basically all you 9500 > 9700 Pro users should be ok with it. I certainly wouldnt use it on a standard 9700 or a 9500 Pro though.

The default clock speeds for this bios are 325/310, so it may be a good idea to make sure your card acually clocks like this first ;). There have been reports over at rage3d.com that flashing a 9500 conversion card to a 9700 Pro bios gives a much higher memory overclock though.

PiLsY.

[DisposableHero]

hey pilsy... i cant seem to open this bios in radedit... says its not a valid bios...

i was hopeing you could edit the clockspeeds to 9500 speeds for us 9500np's so we can test it out too.. thx

[PiLsY]

Try this version m8....

[DisposableHero]

nice ... where did you get that from?

[Colin]

Thanks for the links guys... It didn't do anything for my old 9700 Pro and since I can't buy a 9800 Pro here in Toronto yet, I may try and get one of these new 9700 Pro's! :D

[Hobocrow]

Originally posted by DisposableHero
let us know how it goes!

I flashed it this afternoon...no problems at all! First thing I noticed is that the monitor display is "snappier" everything seems quicker!

I was able to lower the CPU MHz from 4012 to 3944, leave vcore MHz the same and raise memory MHz from 329 to 335.:) and I went from 6064 to 6095! More importantly, everything thing is brighter, more crisp and the nature series is now just visually breath taking!
3DMk03 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=612943)

Thanks, PiLsY! everyone that wants a leg up on there score shoud give this bios a try! :toast:

[PiLsY]

Glad it worked out for you m8 :). As I said, im not sure exactly whay but it makes a massive difference on some cards, and doesnt do a thing for others.

As for the radedit - well Ive got my sources ;).

I really would like to figure out why it works so well for some and does nothing for others. Ive yet to hear of it having a negative effect though, so overall all is well.

PiLsY.

[HisShadow]

ill try this later my HiS R9700Pro only does 371Mhz core and 344Mhz mem :(

[Sidebinder]

Has anyone played around with the CAS settings in radedit on the 9700 pro's ram? I can imagine that CAS3 may result in higher ram speeds, mabey.

[DisposableHero]

this bios actually decreased my 3dmark considerably on my 9500np ...

thx though pilsy

Sidebinder: Ive heard of people actually OCing farther with cas1, but i dont know, there have been mixed results.. you might just get a whole bunch of crap on the screen. ive heard of that happending too

[^TD^]

Well I would need this bios and there is 0 mirrors that work, so could somebody mail it to me -> joonas_kontulainen@yahoo.com .

I would be really thankful... My bios sucks so hard ->> when I oc about 5mhz there is lot of graphic bugs after it and that really suck.

[texuspete00]

TD welcome. Do you have an np(non-pro)? Sounds like a locked card.

[Slickthellama]

As soon as I get my new mobo on monday I will be flashing my 9500 NP bios with this one. I currently have a 9700 Pro bios in it but I still have to install modded drivers :/ But as I said I WILL BE trying this out on my 9500NP. For all you 9500 softmodders out there :P

[kromosto]

first if needed anymore i can host it too

second i tried this bios long time ago but didnt see any gain in my HIS 9700pro but i friend of mine had a big change with powercolor

[saaya]

is this bios performing better than the mufu bios?

[LilGator]

i have a 9500np ... unlocked card, it can hit 330MHz fine on the core, but the mem doesn't like to go over 300MHz ... should I try this ?

[^TD^]

Originally posted by texuspete2k2
TD welcome. Do you have an np(non-pro)? Sounds like a locked card.

I'm really so sure that this is hercules radeon 9700 pro! But I bought this quick as it came to market so I think there is some really old bios. If I remember right there was some talk about this thing when r9700pro was published... Well I really only want to try this performance bios so could someone pls mirror it or mail it joonas_kontulainen@yahoo.com thank you.

[thirdeye]

cna anyone else host this BIOS or email a copy? no real complaints on this type of HW/SW mod is amazing...

[^TD^]

Anyone has this bios anymore? No-one haven't sent me the bios so what's up ? I really need this one so please :(

[^TD^]

This is getting too hard why nobody doesn't have it this is impossible :D

[sKiTz0]

whats the stock clocks on this bios.. my 9700np doesnt like over 300 mem

[VinnieWeiss]

skitzo, you could modify the bios after you got it with radedit and lower the memclocks.
If only somebody would find this bios and post it here.. :sigh:

[Gogeta]

I can host the BIOS file if somebody sends it to me via email.

cooper814@hotmail.com

[Sidebinder]

I think the MUFU bios has been on OCFAQ bios data base for quite some time now: http://softmod.ocfaq.com/bios.php

They got 100s of bios guys. :toast:

[snow]

I would like to try this bios out to but neither of the links works so could you please mail it to snemanden@www.com

[Raybo]

I found it on another forum.............

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41676&highlight=atiflash



Raybo

[STEvil]

Anyone have a way to identify if the bios your card is using is the "slow" bios?

Maybe someone with a 9800np or decent 9700pro/np and their system clocked the same as what I used in my 19k score for 2k1 can repeat my bench and look at the numbers side by side so we could find a way to identify cards? (such as low car high or something)...

[VinnieWeiss]

Hmm not really the same but:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7199736
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7472697

[snow]

I got 6-700 marks more in 2k1 at the same clock speed (380 core, 340 mem) and it seems more stable but i am unable to clock it more.
And the atiflash version in the zip couldn't flash my 9700 so it went black until i got atiflash 1.6 on the disk instead which worked perfect, so remember to upgrade atiflash before you try it out.

[Raybo]

Any more results from this bios??

I'm getting ready to roll up my sleeves and try it but I would like to hear from some others first:stick:

Raybo

[Poki]

I have a revision A00 (so the sticker says?) Powercolor 9700Pro. I just flashed that bios and saw a very nice improvement in score in 3D01 17,691 before and 18,481 after with 380/340 clocks for both tests. The gamma might be a tad higher, other than that ican't see see any visual difference. Thanks Pilsy, wish i had seen this sooner. :toast:

[Gogeta]

I just flashed to this BIOS about 5 minutes ago. No visual problems in 3D apps (UT2K4). Have yet to test OC.

[STEvil]

ok, maybe we should figure out a program or game where it shows a visual improvement and get before and after pics so that we can tell through use of that program or game if we have the "bad" bios.

[Raybo]

Nice improvement Poki,


Does the bios improve visuals? I thought gamma was improved through drivers. (please correct me if I'm wrong because..........I HAVE NO IDEA)


Raybo

[STEvil]

Here is something to compare to...

UT2k4 ons_torlan 1280x1024 128 tap aniso no FSAA and every thing in game and driver options (3d tab) cat 4.1 cranked up....

[STEvil]

I took a slice since the whole image would have been huge. I'll upload the bmp to my webspace and put the link here once its done (3.75mb over 56k.....)

EDIT

First pic (please dont link these elsewhere)

Pic 1 - http://www.wcroller.com/los/linkpics/ut2k41.bmp
Pic 2 (easier to make comparison shots with) - http://www.wcroller.com/los/linkpics/ut2k42.bmp

[Raybo]

STEvil,

I'm a little lost, is it better?


Please do not forget who you are talking to!


Raybo

[STEvil]

I dont know if its better, this is my stock bios I am using for shots and i'm not going to flash to one that "could" have a better picture just to find out... i've got my system all nice and stable and i'd like it to stay that way for at least another month... lol

I wouldnt mind it if it didnt make me reinstall my drivers, but with the likelyhood of that happening from previous flased bios experience... :rolleyes:

The second pic I am uploading now should give a better representation.. and a better location for someone to make a comparrison pic at who has already flashed to the "LL" bios.

[Gogeta]

All I have to say about this BIOS update is WOW, HOLY JEEZ

OC before update
360/330

OC after update
400/350

Pretty nice improvement...helped me to break 18K!!
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7581740

Noticed something weird though. At 700MHz memory, my 2001SE scores would fluctuate a lot from run to run anywhere between 16.8k to 18k. When I set the mem speed to 344(688), my scored jumped to 18.2k. Pretty weird if you ask me.

[STEvil]

try 360/350 and see if the memory does it still.

If you check your memclocks with powerstrip after a run thats been affected you will notice its dropped to about 288 or some number, sometimes if it does that... not sure why.

[SKATAN]

mufu´s bios = pilsy´s bios ;)

[saaya]

whats the LL bios? :confused:

[STEvil]

saaya: http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41676&highlight=atiflash

Its in the attachment

[Poki]

The LOD is defintely lower... It was very obvious running 3D03.
I beat my old score bigtime with with lower clocks. Must have been an Nvidia employee that modded this one. Glad i kept my old one.

[Confused_User]

I'm guessing this bios will only run 9700s with samsung ram?

[Gogeta]

Originally posted by STEvil
try 360/350 and see if the memory does it still.

If you check your memclocks with powerstrip after a run thats been affected you will notice its dropped to about 288 or some number, sometimes if it does that... not sure why.
I've been using RivaTuner, and haven't seen any of the values decreased after a strange run...
I'll try a test at that speed and post my findings.

[Raybo]

Gogeta,

What kind of ram does your card have? I like your results.



Raybo

[Gogeta]

Sorry Raybo, I have no idea. Been a long time since I put ramsinks on there, and didn't bother to look when I installed them. I don't even know what revision my 9700 Pro is!! Seeing how much this BIOS update helped the card OC, I'm led to believe that they are Infineon chips...

[Raybo]

If you are getting 350 out of your Infineon than my Hynix should fair pretty well, I think I will flash it tonight.

Thanks Gogeta :toast:

Raybo