Fixing a Bad BIOS Flash on the 4870

[halo112358]

edited: This is resolved, most (all?) of the cards reported here had incorrectly flashed bioses due to the use of DDR5, see W1zzard's excellent fix article over at techpowerup for a proper bios and full instructions - and GOOD LUCK!

If anyone cares, flashed cards wouldn't initialize ram after a cold boot (and we all know how often we cold boot our machines) so the failures appeared random. Easy mistake to make IMO.

[purecain]

same here m8, i have 2 of em that wont boot.... wtf is going on....

[Gunnz Akimbo]

well, you could try taking all PCI cards out?

[jimmyz]

Be more descriptive , does the fan spin 100%, are any of the red led's on the bottom of the card staying on, do they go on then off while trying to boot, does it seem as though the pc is booting but not the card? any info you can provide would help, it may or may not be dead

[purecain]

3 leds light up instead of 4 , the fans spin as normal... no post so no reflash.... dead as a dodo... but why didnt they do this last night why only after they had been dorment for a few hours.... dont get it m8...why are they preventing post?????????????????????????????????????????????? ???

[halo112358]

I'm pretty sure that's what mine does - I already filed an RMA with the egg, this crap is going back in the box. Maybe I'll buy another when they've sorted this out, maybe not.

[keiths]

What brands?

[halo112358]

Sapphire - but as far as I can tell all of the boards on the market are just rebadged OEM.

[jimmyz]

3 leds light up instead of 4 , the fans spin as normal... no post so no reflash.... dead as a dodo... but why didnt they do this last night why only after they had been dorment for a few hours.... dont get it m8...why are they preventing post?????????????????????????????????????????????? ???

You flashed them already? if your clocks are too high for the voltage it will not post, there is your issue. If you can perform the volt mod they will most likely work, I had a 4850 refuse too boot at 900 , raised the volts and it boots fine, the card with only 1 led is not getting juice, i bet it is your secondary right?

[keiths]

Yeah, that sounds similar to my 940 server board. It has two power leds; one lights up, the other on and off if the 8 pin CPU power connector isn't plugged in.

[purecain]

right np... i have booted xp by disabling a 4870 in safe mode using the 3870 as video adapter... i'll try upping the volts now.. thanks.. let you know what happens in 10 minutes...

[halo112358]

I've got 3 LED's lit up when the board tries to post, then it fails and spins the fan down. If you're looking at the board from the top down the two leds on the right are lit up, then one is dark, then the one on the far left is lit.

[purecain]

yep thats what i had, now after raising the voltage, it still doesnt work.. only now i have 2 red lights flash very quickly... so i'm on my way to fixing it...
best thing to do is flash a stock bios, only problem is that it wont flash the original one as it says its already installed... using latest winflash... atiflash wont work... what else is working in dos for these cards???
right... managed to reflash my 4870 but the bios isnt right, or the flashing process is fubar'd... this is what gpuz reads from the card now...

[Jakalwarrior]

Fastest 4870 ever!
Anywho, why not try flashing in a bios from a different manufactuer so it wont say its already installed? or maybe there is a force command parameter.

[Scubar]

Wow, that makes me abit happier i didnt hit the Buy button yesterday on the HIS crossfire package for £440. I might hold off to see how the 4870X2 does when released next month because the 4870s do look very promising even for the slightly inflated price for launch due to price gouging.

[mr2sw21]

oh man I just bought one yesterday and I hope it is not going to happen like that.

[xMrBunglex]

i just got two 4870's as well. i'll hold off on the overclocking or flashing until the source of this is discovered. i'd hate to kill my shiny new cards. i don't think any of us know much about GDDR5 yet, so i have no idea how hot it runs or how well it overclocks.

[Papu]

unlucky

[philbrown23]

I read an article saying that atiflash and winflash have caused crashed on the 4XXX series because of inproper bios coding for gddr5 try the one that is in the bios mod forum on this site, flashrom I heard there have been no problems with it yet and you can force flash the cards back to stock if needed.

[purecain]

can someone upload a stock bios and a link to a bios flash utility that works... i'm getting bored of this...

[jimmyz]

only one I know of so far with a link. good luck. http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/i...ace=&memSize=0

as for a flash utility. that is another story, if winflash won't do it correctly you may be out of luck, it is the most recent that I know of.

[keiths]

Or ask someone with an unmodded 4870 to dump their stock BIOS. Probably be a good common practice at xtremes to collect stock BIOS dumps. Of course, good common practice to save your own before modding

[xMrBunglex]

i have Sapphire 4870's fresh out of the boxes. i'll gladly upload my BIOS if you need. can i use ATiFlash or will that cause problems? i used ATiFlash 3.49 to flash my 3870's, but i only used it once and i need to know the command to dump it. let me know if i can help.

[purecain]

thanks jimmyz i was just flashing that bios, but it had the same results in winflash... gonna try ati flash now
get back to you in a minute mr bunglex...
atiflash doesnt recognise the second adapter(4870) only the first (3870)....

[Dragy2k]

good luck cain....most likely teething probs wit the 4870's