Guide on How to Flash BIOS of your ATI card

[sid0972]

This guide explains how to flash your ATI GPU using Radeon Bios Editor (RBE),

This guide is to be followed safely, if not done properly, may damage your card.

There already is a very good guide posted by EricTheRed, which can be read here

How to flash Graphic Card BIOS ?

But i am posting my own guide.

It is a very simple and small guide.

What is Flashing of BIOS?

In simple terms, changing the default settings of BIOS to new settings and then loading it is called as flashing of BIOS
Here, we are concerned mainly with changing the the voltage of the card.
We can, however, change the core and memory clocks, but we have many easier ways to do that.

Why to Flash the BIOS?

Flashing of BIOS is highly useful in overclocking the card. I have posted a guide on how to overclock an ATI card, which can be read here

Guide on how to overclock an ATI graphics card

While overclocking a card, we can push its limits even further by flashing the BIOS. The overclocking can be done better at higher voltages than stock voltages. So, our main concern here is increasing the voltage within safe limits.

What can happen if Flashing Goes Wrong?

If you select a very high voltage for your card, you may end up bricking your card. Bricking of card means you wont be able to boot from it even under safe voltages or default BIOS settings.In short, your card will be dead.

First of all, you'll need Radeon Bios Editor (RBE) and winFlash or ATIFlash to use RBE.

Radeon BIOS Editor is necessary, and you can download anyone among WinFlash or ATIFlash.

You can download Winflash from RBE itself, like this



Now since you have WinFlash or ATIFlash, click on Acquire/flash, as shown



then you'll have to browse for your Winflash or ATIFlash location, and after selecting it, click on Acquire BIOS, as shown



After you have done it, click on "CLOCK SETTINGS", and select the voltages in the table to whatever you want within the limits, as shown



Now comes the tricky part. Every card has its limitations, and that is what you have to find for your card.

If your card's default voltage is 1.215 V, then you select the voltage as 1.258 V and then run a stress test. Run ATITool or GPUtool stability test for 20-30 minutes and then check the temperature of your card. Till 70 degree Celsius is safe, 75 is manageable, 80 is red zone, and 90 is the limit.
To run the stability test, click on "scan for artifacts" while using ATItool, or click on "test for stability" while using GPUTool. Let the test run for 15-20 minutes.

Use GPU-Z to check the temperature of your card. Go to sensors tab at the top, and check the GPU temperature.
If your card's temperature is 70 after increasing the voltage from 1.215V to 1.258V (as assumed) and you get no artifacts while running stability test, then you have a little more room to increase the voltage.

Artifacts are small little yellow or blue dots that appear if your clocks are too high, which are similar to this



You can also enter the values manually, and not just select them.

I suggest you not to increase the voltage after 1.4V for your card without any external cooling or any hard mods.
Excessive voltage can brick your card, resulting in permanent damage

After you have the safe voltages of your card( i recommend you find those values before you select any), again click on "Acquire/Flash" as shown

then click on "analyze",



after that, click on "Flash BIOS". If it shows an error, select "force flash", and then flash your BIOS.



Then restart your computer.
The new voltages have been loaded into the BIOS, and you can check them by opening RBE, clicking on "Acquire/Flash", then "Acquire BIOS", then "clock settings" as done before,and here they are....

Now start overclocking your card, and make sure you run the stability test for at least 30 minutes (or 2 hours to be sure) to check if your card will be stable under stress conditions for longer periods of time.


How do you know how much you have gained by overclocking your card?

You run a benchmark test, like PCMark, 3DMark,3DMark Vantage, SiSandra, FurMark,AquaMark etc.
The tiniest among them all, is furmark.

Run the test before overclocking your card, and then again after overclocking
and note the difference
Note that the test has to be ran with similar settings both times, and it's not to be minimized, as the scores can differ hugely if any setting is altered.

Thats it. You have successfully Flashed the BIOS of your ATI GPU.

Note that this guide is to be followed safely, and Techarena.in will not be responsible for any damage done to your card.


Hope you find my guide useful, if you find anything to add or any mistakes, please point it out.
Any questions or general query, feel free to ask.

[Maqbool]

Make sure you dont post or use any external links on this forum or to hyperlink as well.

[sid0972]

okay, i wont do that again in future

but in the guide posted by ericthered

How to flash Graphic Card BIOS ?

the links are all alive, though not active

so i thought i cud post it by hyperlink

[FReakMaster]

Originally Posted by sid0972

okay, i wont do that again in future

but in the guide posted by ericthered

How to flash Graphic Card BIOS ?

the links are all alive, though not active

so i thought i cud post it by hyperlink

Thanks for letting us know about the download links of the utilities that are dead and should be made live in that thread. In any case keep up the good work mate.

[sid0972]

thank you sir,
but what i meant to say was in that thread, the hypertext links were alive, but not working, which i found out after i wrote this thread

Before writing my guide, i just read the thread and assumed that the links must be working
so i wrote in that fashion...
anyways, it wont happen again