Graphics BIOS problem.

[thegreatone]

Hey everyone, upon reading lots of articles about BIOS on graphics cards i actually found that my card was just a slowed down version of another one by the same manufacturer. Being curious i looked furthur into this and found everyone i asked with experience telling me that it could indeed run at higher speed easily as it was indeed just slowed down.

My graphics card is a Sapphire Radeon 9550 256Mb DDR AGP 8x.
The card that it is a slowed down version of is Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 256Mb AGP 8x.

So, me being me looked into flashing the BIOS to the 9600XT model, which to my surprise i found that others had done at a 100% succes rate, so long as they got the correct BIOS. So, i went and grabbed the Sapphire 9600XT's BIOS, and backed mine up.
I looked into flashing and found it relatively easy and built myself a bootable CD from the ISO they supplied (with the 9600XT's BIOS already on it)
I flashed the BIOS and Windows picked up my card as a 9600XT.
I was amazed.
It should now run at 400/300, but i keep having artifacts, or, what seem to be artifacts, and after a minute they vanish.

Does anyone know of a solution ? As this even happens when i clock my card down using ATItool, all the way back down to 9550 speeds.

Let me know if you want any more info.
Looking forward to your responses...

[si_the_geek]

I'm afraid I have no idea how to correct the issue, all I can suggest is reverting back to the old BIOS if you can (you did take a backup didn't you ;) ).

I think a story about this (with instructions) was run recently on TheRegister.com, and the bad new was in the part "if you do this, your warranty is no longer valid".


FYI, Sapphires warranty support seems quite good (I'm waiting for a replacement card, bought the original 9 months ago), but I really doubt that they will be willing to help in this case.

[thegreatone]

I'm afraid I have no idea how to correct the issue, all I can suggest is reverting back to the old BIOS if you can (you did take a backup didn't you ;) ).

I think a story about this (with instructions) was run recently on TheRegister.com, and the bad new was in the part "if you do this, your warranty is no longer valid".


FYI, Sapphires warranty support seems quite good (I'm waiting for a replacement card, bought the original 9 months ago), but I really doubt that they will be willing to help in this case.
I took a backup, i always do, apart from with college work, and i learnt from that mistake the hard way ;)

I was wondering about reverting back to original BIOS, then testing and seeing if maybe then i could get a replacement, this card is not even 6months old...

[dglienna]

They get downgraded when they don't pass the tests of the higher rated cards. It's odd that you heard of a 100% success rate, though. Are there any other settings in the BIOS? Did you install the new drivers after deleting the old card entirely?

[thegreatone]

They get downgraded when they don't pass the tests of the higher rated cards. It's odd that you heard of a 100% success rate, though. Are there any other settings in the BIOS? Did you install the new drivers after deleting the old card entirely?
Ok, this really is weird, i've literally had it running fine now for hours, so i think it needed just burning in... lol

[thegreatone]

Ok, i ran ATItool and found that this card was clocked down because its ram isn't capable of 300MHZ, it infact is only capable of 220MHZ before artifacts start appearing.

So, my "9600XT" is now running at 480/220mhz. I find that a substantial boost in performance often adding upto 10fps in games.
Cool :thumb:

[si_the_geek]

Good stuff :)

I think I read that the parts and manufacturing for both cards has become really close, so much so that if supply of the cheaper version is short they just re-badge the better version - although with your memory speed findings it seems this isn't actually the case!

[thegreatone]

I'm not saying it will be like this for everyone, but this is before i overcloked (running Aquamark 03)
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4597/aquamark03stock6mb.jpg

And this is after, notice the score, anf FPS and even triangles per second...
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/921/aquamark034852254cb.jpg

Enjoy, and no heat problems either i may add ;)


EDIT: I have just bumped this up some more now it is well burnt in, and still no heat problems, no artifacts, no problems :thumb: currently working it at 495Mhz Core, 221Mhz Ram :) Thats a 65% overclock on GPU and 10% overclock on RAM.