Basic FX59xxx bios changes

[jimmor]

rewt, Althogh your heatsinking looks fine, I dont think it is good enough for running your card at 5950u levels and beyond ?? I keep saying to people, that a 5950u card has very good heatsinking because it has to remove a lot of heat, and its only running at 475/950 ??

I therefore suggest, you definately fit case side fans to blow more airflow over your card ! But also remember its not only important to get the right airflow accross the internal components, its also just as important to ensure good airflow through the case to keep things cool !

My Aopen 5900nu which is flashed to a MSI5950u and running at 300/500/1000, is based on the original Nvidia design and therefore is fitted with the original large black heatsinks over core and memory chips ! So heat is under reasonable control ! And as I said before, I also have a side fan blowing more air over both my overclocked CPU and overclocked 5900 !!

[rewt]

well, if you take a look at the BFG 5950 it has the same cooling design (with added heatpipe to cool the memory on the rear side). Check http://www.bfgtech.com/5950u_redux.html However, something has been done to the 5950u BIOS to decrease temps, but not quite sure what that is. Any suggestions?

[jimmor]

well, if you take a look at the BFG 5950 it has the same cooling design (with added heatpipe to cool the memory on the rear side). Check http://www.bfgtech.com/5950u_redux.html However, something has been done to the 5950u BIOS to decrease temps, but not quite sure what that is. Any suggestions?

I saw that their BFG5950u used the same design, and it is going to run hot ! But not as hot as yours running at the same or higher speeds, as I believe 5950u cores are specially selected and 5950u's memory chips can naturally run at 1000MHz ? Also, there are many parameters within the 5950u bios controlling timings and thus temperatures, however this is an area still being looked at ? From my perspective however it can only be looked at for 5900nu's, but will hopefully ultimately provide the info you seek ?

also, don't be fooled that a 5950u runs cool all the time ??? run the rivatuner realtime hardware monitor, then run your high stress game or performance test, and see just how high the core temp gets ? When playing about with extreme overclocking and high stress testing, I have had my card at 90c+ ! Fortunately with no lasting side effects !

Typical temps for various standard clocked 59xx cards can be seen here,

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1955&p=18

and these, should be your expected temps if you run at the same levels as these cards !!!

EDIT:

and as you can see, the BFG5950u is one of the hottest !!! Doesn't say much for their heatsinking/cooling design ?

[cstring]

jimmor,
power supply is thermaltake 480 (550 peak)
using forceware 61.12
As for it being a chaintech, thats what the origional bios says the manufacturer
is, so bfg just slapped fan/hs and memory hs , then upped the core/mem?

My system :

Thermaltake 480 PSU
Asus A7N8X D model Revision 2 Deluxe
Uber bios 1007
(I replaced the green power LED on mainboard with a blue LED)
Athlon XP thoroughbred-B 2400+/266 (OC'd 11x200)
Thermaltake Volcano 7 HS, PC Toys 80mm adjustale speed fan
Buffalo 256MB PC3200 x3 Dual Channel Memory (Winbond ch-5) 768MB total
ATI TV Wonder PCI slot 5
120GB WD Pri-Master IDE
20GB Maxtor Pri-Slave IDE
Plextor 504a DVD+R/RW Sec-Master IDE
80GB Maxtor Sec-Slave IDE
(Yeah I know your not supposed to run a HD on same cable as Optical but I've
not had any problems)
1.4MB floppy
Lian-Li PC82COM aluminum case
2 exhaust fans
On-board Soundstorm audio
Logitech PS2 Keyboard
Logitech PS2 mouse (replaced red LED with blue LED)
PC Toys 14" Cathode Black light
BFG Technologies FX5900XT OC
Win XP Pro SP1

I tried the chaintech bios' but it ran slower, probably a heat issue.
The whole problem may be heat related ?
Will be a few weeks before I look for a cooling solution and retry.
Saved all my bios files so just a matter of flashing/testing
Thanks for all the info and help!

[jimmor]

jimmor,
power supply is thermaltake 480 (550 peak)
using forceware 61.12
As for it being a chaintech, thats what the origional bios says the manufacturer
is, so bfg just slapped fan/hs and memory hs , then upped the core/mem?

My system :

Thermaltake 480 PSU
Asus A7N8X D model Revision 2 Deluxe
Uber bios 1007
(I replaced the green power LED on mainboard with a blue LED)
Athlon XP thoroughbred-B 2400+/266 (OC'd 11x200)
Thermaltake Volcano 7 HS, PC Toys 80mm adjustale speed fan
Buffalo 256MB PC3200 x3 Dual Channel Memory (Winbond ch-5) 768MB total
ATI TV Wonder PCI slot 5
120GB WD Pri-Master IDE
20GB Maxtor Pri-Slave IDE
Plextor 504a DVD+R/RW Sec-Master IDE
80GB Maxtor Sec-Slave IDE
(Yeah I know your not supposed to run a HD on same cable as Optical but I've
not had any problems)
1.4MB floppy
Lian-Li PC82COM aluminum case
2 exhaust fans
On-board Soundstorm audio
Logitech PS2 Keyboard
Logitech PS2 mouse (replaced red LED with blue LED)
PC Toys 14" Cathode Black light
BFG Technologies FX5900XT OC
Win XP Pro SP1

I tried the chaintech bios' but it ran slower, probably a heat issue.
The whole problem may be heat related ?
Will be a few weeks before I look for a cooling solution and retry.
Saved all my bios files so just a matter of flashing/testing
Thanks for all the info and help!

my advice on using another chaintech or Aopen bios was based on peoples experience at Guru forum ? The Aopen was especially popular !

With all the load you have on your PSU, there is very little safety margin ! Also some PSU's don't work that well on all lines ? The 12v line is crucial to your cards performance ?? What is your PSU 12v rating ? and have you made sure you are not sharing your cards connection with any other loads, especially DVD/CD/HDD devices ???

[cstring]

jimmor,
tried the aopen bios too but the memory still is too hot.
I had bought some bfg heatsink kits and used the little ones.
I cut them to fit each single memory.
As bfg didnt put the thermal monitor, and I have no temp monitor
I just physically,carefully, touch the mem sinks and thier hot enough
to burn fingers if constant contact is made, way too hot.
I didnt change gpu core , is at 390/430 memory,even at bfg stock speed
736 will roast my flanges (fingers)
I know I'm running the ragged edge but obtain no problems, weather it be burning a full dvd , running a game , or just surfing the web.

As a test to see how high I could go, I ran at 390/430/930 way o/c'ing
(actually hopeing to burn it up) I already ordered a leadtech, lol

It ran w/o lockups or artifacts!!! but gpu core reset to 399.
Checking temps I first just tried to touch back of the pcb of video card
and it was extremely roasting, needless to say, I didnt get near the memory sinks but gpu core was cool !!!
I've reflashed back to stock, these are well built for taking extreme heat, I'll give bfg/chaintech that credit, although I wouldnt run like that too long,

I have this power supply
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-153-010&depa=0
5V=40A
3.3V=30A
12V=18A

Anyway I'm looking at this cooling solution
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-186-110&depa=0
but am not sure if it'll work on this card.

[Kev1]

Question:

I am currently using an Albatron 5950 bios flashed on my Albatron 5900 with 2.2 ns memory. It works great, no problems.

I want to do the memory latency mod and change the 43 to 40. Using the hex editor in XBios, I did this with a copy of the bios and saved it. Now all I have to do is reflash my video card just as I did before, right? (Using the modified bios of course, and wfflash which is what I used before).

From reading these threads this seems to be the only mod I want to do to the 5950 bios. Is it ok to just adjust the latency values and nothing else? Or must I adjust another value?

Thanks for your efforts jimmor, cstring and others. Im learning a lot and also gaining valuable performance at the same time :thumbsup:

[rewt]

you will definitely want to make sure coolbits isn't overclocking your card at startup. leave it at default (950) for the time being then after flashing you can overclock from there. point is, the lower latencies may not allow you to overclock the mem as high as before, so if you were to flash the bios with lower latencies, and coolbits or some other program is set to overclock say 1000mhz at startup, something bad could happen if ya know what I mean. just be cautious. oh, and i'd prefer use nvflash -5 -6 file.rom to flash the card.

[XanderF]

Well, for what it is worth, I DID toast a card following these mod guides (RIP card in my sig)...except for one step.

I used a third party hex editor - just a straight hex editor - instead of using the X-Bios Editor. I just changed my memory timings, and *poof*, dead card.

Well, what was the problem? I FORGOT THEIR WAS A CHECKSUM BIT! Didn't set it after changing all those memory timings, so the resulting BIOS I flashed with was essentially garbage. Dead card!

Lesson learned - USE THE X-BIOS EDITOR TO CHANGE THESE VALUES!

[XanderF]

Another note....

I now have an XFX 5900XT, so I took a look at the BIOS on it (backed it up). Instead of this:
"07 03 0F 03"

I have this:
"07 03 0F 43"

Since ending it with '40' was considered a good timing for overclocking, I suppose I have nothing to do, as mine is already better.

That's probably why I hit 960 memory on stock cooling and voltage.

I guess the question is....would it be worth anything taking this higher? 50, maybe? Or, would the timings start being too loose for the increased overclock potential to make up the difference? (IE, diminishing returns catches up with us, there?)

[cstring]

I'd hold it at 960, if you got that much, you more then got a good deal.
No sense in frying that sucker!

Can you tell what memoery you have on it?
I'd assume 2.2

[helphelp911]

jimmor,
tried the aopen bios too but the memory still is too hot.
I had bought some bfg heatsink kits and used the little ones.
I cut them to fit each single memory.
As bfg didnt put the thermal monitor, and I have no temp monitor
I just physically,carefully, touch the mem sinks and thier hot enough
to burn fingers if constant contact is made, way too hot.
I didnt change gpu core , is at 390/430 memory,even at bfg stock speed
736 will roast my flanges (fingers)
I know I'm running the ragged edge but obtain no problems, weather it be burning a full dvd , running a game , or just surfing the web.

As a test to see how high I could go, I ran at 390/430/930 way o/c'ing
(actually hopeing to burn it up) I already ordered a leadtech, lol

It ran w/o lockups or artifacts!!! but gpu core reset to 399.
Checking temps I first just tried to touch back of the pcb of video card
and it was extremely roasting, needless to say, I didnt get near the memory sinks but gpu core was cool !!!
I've reflashed back to stock, these are well built for taking extreme heat, I'll give bfg/chaintech that credit, although I wouldnt run like that too long,

I have this power supply
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-153-010&depa=0
5V=40A
3.3V=30A
12V=18A

Anyway I'm looking at this cooling solution
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-186-110&depa=0
but am not sure if it'll work on this card.

hi CString
i have bfg5900xt and i find out the chinatech mod bios(480/850) work the best. i have try to mod the bfg bios to 490/900, 485/880. all give me around 5000 score in 3dmark03 and some random lockup. Only the chinatech give me 5500 in 3dmark03 and stable. i have tried many othe rmod bios but the highest i can get is around 5500. SO i think it is because of my slow rig
Intel p4 1.7
Intel D850GB
samsung Rdram 512mb
bfg 5900xt oc
matrox 80g harddisk
Still hoping i can find a way to score 6000+ :)

PS: cstring, do what jimmor said. put a case fan blowing at the video card. I did the same thing and now the video card is COOL even i play farcry or painkiller for hoursss. :clap:

[helphelp911]

hello, i have a oc question need help. Thanks

i have bfg fx5900 oc
first i try aopen mod bios. -- not good. keep throttling back to lower clock speed
then i try few other till point of view bios and i can hit 490/900 stable and score around 5500 in 3dmark03. i have tried 490/850, 490/870,490/880, tol 490/900 and the 3dmark03 score is increase untill when i hit memory to 910. the 3dmark03 mark drop to 5000. so i assume 490/900 is my card max speed.
here come the question, why when i flash the chinatech mod bios 480/850. i can score 3dmark03 around 5500 which equal pov 490/900 score??

thanks

[jimmor]

jimmor,
tried the aopen bios too but the memory still is too hot.
I had bought some bfg heatsink kits and used the little ones.
I cut them to fit each single memory.
As bfg didnt put the thermal monitor, and I have no temp monitor
I just physically,carefully, touch the mem sinks and thier hot enough
to burn fingers if constant contact is made, way too hot.
I didnt change gpu core , is at 390/430 memory,even at bfg stock speed
736 will roast my flanges (fingers)
I know I'm running the ragged edge but obtain no problems, weather it be burning a full dvd , running a game , or just surfing the web.

As a test to see how high I could go, I ran at 390/430/930 way o/c'ing
(actually hopeing to burn it up) I already ordered a leadtech, lol

It ran w/o lockups or artifacts!!! but gpu core reset to 399.
Checking temps I first just tried to touch back of the pcb of video card
and it was extremely roasting, needless to say, I didnt get near the memory sinks but gpu core was cool !!!
I've reflashed back to stock, these are well built for taking extreme heat, I'll give bfg/chaintech that credit, although I wouldnt run like that too long,

I have this power supply
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-153-010&depa=0
5V=40A
3.3V=30A
12V=18A

Anyway I'm looking at this cooling solution
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-186-110&depa=0
but am not sure if it'll work on this card.

Your PSU is probably ok for now if it is really operating at these levels, but as I said theres not a lot of safety margin available for extra loading ?

to give an example, for a very long time I used a Qtech 550W, which although not considered amongst the good PSU's, I thought would be good enough for my use ? Well, unfortunately, my recent activities with overclocking my mobo/CPU/dimm and my 5900nu, seamed out of the blue to be causing random lockups/reboots/artifacting ? I finally got it down to be problems with my PSU 12v rail's continuous capacity ?

The Qtech 550 12v rail is rated at 14 amps continuous and 20 amps peak. Unfortunately for me it was the continuous rating that mattered ? My mobo/CPU o/c activities coupled with high overclocking of my 5900nu flashed as a 5950u was occasionally too much by overstressing my PSU's 12v rail just enough to cause me problems !! Resolved all problems by replacing my Qtech with a Vantec 520W stealth which has a 28 amp continuous rating on 12v rail ! So if ever getting random issues similar to my experiences, don't automatically ignore your PSU just because the manufacturers spec looks good on paper ? Any performance enhancing overstressing and/or overclocking we do increases PSU loading to unknown and sometimes unforgiving levels !


back to your temp problems; without proper memory heatsing/cooling you can't run at memory speeds of 930 ! Keep to no more than 850 ! Also, any kind of ramsink will give huge benefits over no heatsinking ? If you place a fan to blow over even small ramsinks, you will be amazed just how much heat can be removed ?

your GPU resetting to 399 still confuses me ? unless as I said, it is just your driver losing control of the overclocked 430 level ? and if so can be fixed by modifying your bios to 430 and it will stay fixed !

High overclocking with good temperature control with a XT card is always going to be a major problem ! the card has no accessable temp monitors and just about every XT type card has a diff kind of cooling/heatsinking and too many have inadequate or no direct cooling of memory chips ??? Because the memory stress/heat problem will be greater in proportion to the chip NS rating, it is better if considering buying one that you choose a card where the poorly cooled chips have a 2.4 or better NS rating ? preferably 2.2 if you can get it ?

[jimmor]

Question:


I want to do the memory latency mod and change the 43 to 40. Using the hex editor in XBios, I did this with a copy of the bios and saved it. Now all I have to do is reflash my video card just as I did before, right? (Using the modified bios of course, and wfflash which is what I used before).

From reading these threads this seems to be the only mod I want to do to the 5950 bios. Is it ok to just adjust the latency values and nothing else? Or must I adjust another value?

:


if you are happy to run your card at the 300/475/950 speeds of a 5950u then yes only change the latency of "43" to "40". You will gain a bit more performance, and by keeping to the standard 5950u speeds, you shouldn't have any overtemping/overstressing problems ?

[cstring]

jimmor,
whoa 14 A is way too low, for the 12, I think the min is 18 A.
And yup, 18A is continuous.
MBM shows steady
12V=12.16V
5V=5.03
3.3V=3.41
As for the oc, I reset to stock untill I can clear up heat problem.

As for the core reset, its also got me stumpped!
399 isnt in the bios , anywhere. so why its resetting to that is mystery.

Also ordered a leadtek 5900xt , I may replace this bfg and solve the
problem that way :-)
Thanks for your input, always good to have help from someone who pays attention to detail and knows what thier doing!

[jimmor]

Well, for what it is worth, I DID toast a card following these mod guides (RIP card in my sig)...except for one step.

I used a third party hex editor - just a straight hex editor - instead of using the X-Bios Editor. I just changed my memory timings, and *poof*, dead card.

Well, what was the problem? I FORGOT THEIR WAS A CHECKSUM BIT! Didn't set it after changing all those memory timings, so the resulting BIOS I flashed with was essentially garbage. Dead card!

Lesson learned - USE THE X-BIOS EDITOR TO CHANGE THESE VALUES!

nice to see you again XanderF ! Pity about your card ! Obviously you have not managed yet to find a friend with a more friendly computer than yours to try a reflash ? As I said before, I have made a number of bad flashes, and simply used a PCI based card for reflashing !

Also, you didn't tell me you were using or going to use a standard Hex Editor, or I would have warned you against it ! Of course you could have just used one of my moded bios's ???? :)

The main purpose of my advice on modding bios's at the first post of this thread was to ensure people who desire to mod their bios's, do it with some basic knowledge first !

[cstring]

helphelp911,
the bfg IS a chaintech!

[jimmor]

Another note....

I now have an XFX 5900XT, so I took a look at the BIOS on it (backed it up). Instead of this:
"07 03 0F 03"

I have this:
"07 03 0F 43"

Since ending it with '40' was considered a good timing for overclocking, I suppose I have nothing to do, as mine is already better.

That's probably why I hit 960 memory on stock cooling and voltage.

I guess the question is....would it be worth anything taking this higher? 50, maybe? Or, would the timings start being too loose for the increased overclock potential to make up the difference? (IE, diminishing returns catches up with us, there?)

you are reading the data wrong !! If your new card and its original bios shows latency values at "07 03 0F 43" instead of "07 03 0F 03" then maybe XFX manufacturers have been reading too many of my posts ? Because the "43" rating is 5900nu, 5900u and 5950u only and is due to the 2.2ns or better memory used ! The tighter "03" value of all XT's was originally done to improve the performance of slow 2.86ns memory chips !

so what you need to do is set the latency values in the eight appropriate latency words to "40" ! I have found this to be a good value without affecting overclocking and/or stability ! Experiment with lower values on an XT may improve performance, but it will be at the expense of overclocking capability ? However you may be able to find a "sweet spot" of performance for your card ? But be careful as playing with memory timings may cause serious problems ! As I don't have a XT, I have done no XT trials in this area ! Also, I doubt raising its value will achieve much, because even if it allows better overclocking, you will because of higher delays probably be reducing inherent performance ? As I have said to many others, You can't get a silk purse from a sow's ear

[jimmor]

hello, i have a oc question need help. Thanks

i have bfg fx5900 oc
first i try aopen mod bios. -- not good. keep throttling back to lower clock speed
then i try few other till point of view bios and i can hit 490/900 stable and score around 5500 in 3dmark03. i have tried 490/850, 490/870,490/880, tol 490/900 and the 3dmark03 score is increase untill when i hit memory to 910. the 3dmark03 mark drop to 5000. so i assume 490/900 is my card max speed.
here come the question, why when i flash the chinatech mod bios 480/850. i can score 3dmark03 around 5500 which equal pov 490/900 score??

thanks


first thing I would check is if both these bios's have latency mod at "40" ? All my moded bios's are not set this way, a lot probably are with latency at "43". Bios modding was a developing procedure and only when I was sure of benefits to all potential users did I start introducing appropriate bios changes ! The Aopen bios, being one of the first, is definately set at "43" !

so which modified bios's are you testing with ?

[cstring]

jimmor,
it was a driver issue, the 399 core reset.
Thinking more on what you said about it I uninstalled the 61.12 and installed
the 56.72 whql.
So far the core hasnt reset.
Must have been , like you thought, driver!
Thanks once again.

[jimmor]

jimmor,
whoa 14 A is way too low, for the 12, I think the min is 18 A.
And yup, 18A is continuous.
MBM shows steady
12V=12.16V
5V=5.03
3.3V=3.41
As for the oc, I reset to stock untill I can clear up heat problem.

As for the core reset, its also got me stumpped!
399 isnt in the bios , anywhere. so why its resetting to that is mystery.

Also ordered a leadtek 5900xt , I may replace this bfg and solve the
problem that way :-)
Thanks for your input, always good to have help from someone who pays attention to detail and knows what thier doing!

yes I knew the Qtech 12v continuous rating was a bit lean, however it was a very cheap PSU and up until my recent mobo/CPU overclocking activities and changing from using a ti4200 to an highly overclocked 5900nu I had no problems !! So we sometimes have to learn the hard way ? If only hindsight was something you could buy ?

your choice of a Leadtek XT is a good !

And not having 399MHz anywhere in your bios, certainly does confuse things, unless it is in bios as 398, 399, 400 etc ??? I assume you are using rivatuner hardware monitor to see just what is happening as your core speed is changing ? Also, remember the levels are not precise to what is set, it will be adjusted ? Rivatuner shows,my bios's binary settings of 300/500/1000 to be actually generated as 300.8/501.2/1002.4 !

However , maybe we will just have to keep an ear to the ground untill someone else experiences the same problem ?

[jimmor]

jimmor,
it was a driver issue, the 399 core reset.
Thinking more on what you said about it I uninstalled the 61.12 and installed
the 56.72 whql.
So far the core hasnt reset.
Must have been , like you thought, driver!
Thanks once again.

always glad to help !

Although I experiment now and then with new drivers, I never got round yet to trying the 61.12 driver ! Also, generally I tend to use the MSI 53.03 driver, partly because of the MSI specific goodies, and because they have shown to be pretty stable for all my current uses !

Because of the many problems people have had with using new and/or beta drivers, I usually ask them to try checking their problem against other drivers, and if possible certainly the 53.03 ??

glad your 399 mystery is now put to bed ! Need to watch other peoples experiences with 61.12 driver then ??

[cstring]

Frick! its back to 399!
Now I'm really confused.
After running homeworld 2 , no AA no AF,
open up aida32 > display > gpu , core shows 399 , again.
then I click opengl then click gpu and it shows 430 !!!
Well I cant troubleshoot anymore today, got an appointment at 3pm and I need to get ready.
The leadtek should be here in 3-4 days , that will please me !
Anyway thanks for all your time !
Take care, jimmor.

[cstring]

Good news, the appointment cancelled.
I love holidays.

Bad news , it gave me more time to experiment more and I lose money.

I tried latency setting from 07 03 0F 03 to 07 03 0F 40
also unplugged 80gb and 120gb hard drives
shut off black light.

tried bios at 390/400/737
390/395/737
no go , the way I could tell at 395 was 4xAA 4xAF was disabled, which also happens when it reverts to 399.

tried 80mm fan blowing on card, same effect any stress applied sets it to 399!
Maybe its hard coded into the board itself?
I cant wait till that leadtek gets here , that should remove all doubt.