ATI HD4800 Review Thread

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I still can't see how this is a "serious issue" when the majority of people reporting problems are people ones who flashed their BIOSes.

BIOS flashing is not an exact science and it is funny that you bring up the GTX 280 cards since no one was flashing the BIOS on those cards to get to that 700Mhz clock speed. I fail to see how parallels can be drawn between the two in the first place based on the methods people have used for overclocking in each instance.

On way or another, people have to realize that a "serious problem" to the overclocking community means squat in the marketplace as a whole. I have said it once and I will say it again: there is a reason overclocking and BIOS flashing isn't covered by the warranty.

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:eek: How dare you criticize another Canuck, eh ?!! :eek: Thou hast broken thy code !!

Et tu SKYMTL :( , then fall Perkam :(

:p:

Some users are finding problems from CCC Ocing and from using them in Xfire at stock. Check the video card section :)

Perkam

i still think your betting your 300$ on a card thats got a high chance of dying within a few days. if you all knew anything about the issue you would know that quite a few cards on this forum have died without flashing any BIOS at all so i wouldn't be so quick to discount it as the sole reason. (this includes one of mine and 6 (4 his and 2 powercolor) others that i can specifically think of at this time tho there are more that i wont risk mentioning for fear of exageration,)

Jimmyz has said that other forums are reporting similar deaths.


so it comes down to this: do you want to buy a card that has a high chance of having a defect and even if it works your not gonna be able to OC it because the quimonda ram is holding you back? or do you want to wait, get a little price drop, and get a card you can work with? it seems pretty logical to me not to buy a 4870 until the problem has a fix or is fixed by AMD

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Originally Posted by SNiiPE_DoGG

(including one of mine)

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Well we can't help it if you start giving invites to people whose card has failed :rofl: :rofl:

In all seriousness, it's still a very small number and WAY to early to make comments like yours. In the worst case scenario, you could have a card die on you, be denied an RMA, be forced to buy another one, and still save money vs the GTX 280 :p:

Seriously, this stuff happens from time to time. For the owners, it is a serious issue, but as long as they are patient, they will get their due :)

I'm personally waiting for an official response from AIBs.

Perkam

well whatever, cant say i didnt warn em :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by perkam

Some users are finding problems from CCC Ocing and from using them in Xfire at stock. Check the video card section :)

Perkam

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I am just playing Devil's Advocate here. :up:

Another aspect to remember is that everyone out there is basically using beta (or what ATI calls "hotfix") drivers which can cause any number of things to go bump in the night. I have even had some issues with the CCC of the Series_5 betas failing to recognize the hardware after uninstalling the 8.6 drivers from my HD3870.

Personally, I think there is alot more going on here than buggy cards that go butt-up when having their BIOS flashed. Alot of it has to do with underlying driver issues IMO. This is why I never (EVER) use an overclock on a day-to-day basis with a hotfix driver from ATI. Not to mention that there is a REASON the CCC Overdrive only goes to a certain speed.

One way or another, if there are widespread reports of non-overclocked cards biting the dust I will be the first to jump on the lynching bandwagon. Until then though, I have my pitchfork, tourches and white bedcovering safely tucked away. ;)

i have a HIS 4580 which i have abused and its going strong still right now... flashed maybe 6-7 times trying different clocks after voltmodding. am sitting at 725/1050 which seems to be its sweet spot. i do have it on water tho... still if it does pop i wont be blaming ati... also my card was pretty weak on stock volts anyway, was only syable at 650 on the core so i needed to abuse it anyways..

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Originally Posted by nunchucka

i have a HIS 4580 which i have abused and its going strong still right now... flashed maybe 6-7 times trying different clocks after voltmodding. am sitting at 725/1050 which seems to be its sweet spot. i do have it on water tho... still if it does pop i wont be blaming ati... also my card was pretty weak on stock volts anyway, was only syable at 650 on the core so i needed to abuse it anyways..

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4850's are not the issue, they are all fine, its the 4870's and the gddr5 that has problems

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Originally Posted by SNiiPE_DoGG

its the 4870's and the gddr5 that has problems

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It's not. It's a few people trying to flash them and failed.
Stop spreading false rumour. :down:

OK guys it seems most of deaths were actually caused by truncated bios.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=1#post3101668

I guess warning still stands. DO NOT FLASH THE CARDS.

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Originally Posted by Unbornchild

It's not. It's a few people trying to flash them and failed.
Stop spreading false rumour. :down:

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sigh. this seems to go back and forth without result. basically nobody has a clue, yet.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

This thread has now taken a hilarious turn. There is a REASON BIOS flashing isn't covered by the warranty and we are seeing exactly why.

Show me where large batches of non flashed, non-overclocked cards are dying (taking into account that people who experience a problem are more likely to whine than those who don't) and maybe we will have something.

Until then it is just a matter of people wading into BIOS flashing without thinking of the ramifications.

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agree, someone should setup a poll
there will allways be a bad batch, just look at RAM, might well be some chips that are fried, it happends

I have a pair of HD4850 and HD4870. When I run Vantage, 4850 CF doesn't show any artifacts and I get p10k+. However, I get a bunch of artifacts on 4870cf but I'm able to finish the benchmark and get p12k+. I'm installing games now. We'll see what happens.

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Originally Posted by Unbornchild

It's not. It's a few people trying to flash them and failed.
Stop spreading false rumour. :down:

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your talking to a guys whos 4870 have faild without ocing or flashing. :p:

You believe that, read this again. ;)

everyone with a 800 shader paperweight aka broken no-boot 4870
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/152
fix for you! from teh w1zz :)

I see one problem with that...does everyone have a replacement video card to boot from?

Also which review is the best?

and has anyone found out what speed cpu unlocks the full power of the 4870?

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Originally Posted by Caveman787

I see one problem with that...does everyone have a replacement video card to boot from?

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Not always of course, but a PCI or PCI-Express cheapie card can be picked up from a local shop for $5-20 depending on your luck, a small hassle but worth it and cheaper/quicker than buying a whole new card of the same type :). Alternatively, if you have a friend with a computer (I think most of us do!) you could ask if you can borrow their videocard for a few minutes :D .

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Originally Posted by SNiiPE_DoGG

well whatever, cant say i didnt warn em :rolleyes:

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Warn us of what...? That you can buy a video card and have it not work or frazzle within a week..?

Sorry, thats been the norm for 10 years! Your not out anything but time and a possible few $ for shipping. Though I think we all thank you for the obvious heads-up!




.

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Originally Posted by Unbornchild

You believe that, read this again. ;)

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http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=529 :rolleyes:

It doesn't matter. If you changed the fan speed even, the original BIOS dump was half the size of what it should have been so it didn't matter if you OC'd or not - all you had to do was change the BIOS and back to the wrong file.

Either way, it seems like a lot of those that were bricked were fixed as the correct size (1Mbit) is now being used. Obviously the ones that truly weren't touched and died have to be investigated or RMA'd, but it looks like those who played with the BIOSes early no longer have to worry as the fix has been put up.

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Originally Posted by zerazax

It doesn't matter. If you changed the fan speed even, the original BIOS dump was half the size of what it should have been so it didn't matter if you OC'd or not - all you had to do was change the BIOS and back to the wrong file.

Either way, it seems like a lot of those that were bricked were fixed as the correct size (1Mbit) is now being used. Obviously the ones that truly weren't touched and died have to be investigated or RMA'd, but it looks like those who played with the BIOSes early no longer have to worry as the fix has been put up.

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so is the stock bios is a problem bios or it is ok? I mean the stock bios is it the full size bios?

The stock BIOS is fine. What was happening supposedly was that GPU-Z and RBE were truncating the BIOS to 61kb files or so rather than the full 128kb which caused cards to die. Dave Baumann notified W1z about it and they found a fix with the help of some XS members and the correct BIOS is now on the site if your card died after a flash. A lot of members have revived their cards already..

now thats over
any pictures of that watercooled diamond 4870 oc

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Originally Posted by zerazax

The stock BIOS is fine. What was happening supposedly was that GPU-Z and RBE were truncating the BIOS to 61kb files or so rather than the full 128kb which caused cards to die. Dave Baumann notified W1z about it and they found a fix with the help of some XS members and the correct BIOS is now on the site if your card died after a flash. A lot of members have revived their cards already..

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In the past all (consumer) graphics card BIOSes were smaller than 64 KBytes. With the introduction of GDDR5 additional space was required for the memory training code. Since ATI could not fit that piece of code into the 64 KB available, they increased the BIOS size to 128 KB (1 MBit).

For an unknown reason ATI's flashing software Winflash/Atiflash does not correctly detect those extra 64 KB and forgets to save them when you dump your BIOS to a file. The same happens to GPU-Z (fixed in 0.2.5 and newer). So everybody who extracted their HD 4870 BIOS ended up with no GDDR5 microcode.

from here, http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/152

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Originally Posted by Unbornchild

It's not. It's a few people trying to flash them and failed.
Stop spreading false rumour. :down:

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Qft