5900 flash to 5950?

[Roliath]

I just bought a 5900 off this board, (fast shipping ftw!) for a backup rig I have.
3200XP, 1GB Corsair XMS, crappy mobo, onboard sound, etc etc..
Well, I remember that some people were successfully flashing 5900s to bonafide 5950's.

I probably won't do it, but I would like to know that I can.. the card's stock clocks were I believe 400/800 and coolbits autodetected 475/950 (artifact free).
Now, is this pretty good?

So has anyone here actually done this flash? Sorry for the not soo organized post, but I am writing my Mid-Term Paper right now aswell.

[ruff97]

i see you like the card

[snowmanwithahat]

yes, it's possible, especially if it's a 5900 ultra you'll have a good success-rate, but if you can just overclock to 475/950 then it won't matter if you flash it, flashing will just set the default speeds to that and raise the vcore, which i wouldn't do if i were you. while it probably will work fine, it will shorten the life of the card, if you can overclock, then go ahead and do it, but don't flash unless you really "need" to get the high clock speeds

btw wrong forum for this, but doesn't really matter to me :lol:

[Roliath]

Well i have it clocked at 475/950 right now, and its pretty stable.
It sure is big difference from my 7800GTX 512MB, but than again I really don't play games on that rig.
Its mostly for anyone to use the internet, and do light gaming and getting some quick LAN action going!

Thanks ruff!

[The Bigman]

I Used the 5900 PNY XT and its not a bad card i used it in a Nvidia Nforce Box with a xp2000 and was ok in ut2k4 so so 12-10 not bad don't bother just oc with cb2. its nothin like 7800 but ok.

Cheers

[snowmanwithahat]

Well i have it clocked at 475/950 right now, and its pretty stable.
It sure is big difference from my 7800GTX 512MB, but than again I really don't play games on that rig.
Its mostly for anyone to use the internet, and do light gaming and getting some quick LAN action going!

Thanks ruff!

yeh the 5900 ultra i had was a joke compared to this 6800 GT, but they're not horrible, they get the job done as long as you're not a serious gamer with high-quality needs, or as long as you don't use it all the time

hope it runs ok for ya

[Roliath]

Yeah, I won't be using it for awhile.
Like I said, mainly for when someone comes over and needs to use a computer.
I hate having people use my rig, I dunno why but it bugs me.
And its in my dad's office so its doesn't bother me much :).
I installed BF2, Fear, CoD2, and WoW on that rig and its going pretty good.
Its good for low to mid resolution gaming, with decent graphics.

[jimmor]

I just bought a 5900 off this board, (fast shipping ftw!) for a backup rig I have.
3200XP, 1GB Corsair XMS, crappy mobo, onboard sound, etc etc..
Well, I remember that some people were successfully flashing 5900s to bonafide 5950's.

I probably won't do it, but I would like to know that I can.. the card's stock clocks were I believe 400/800 and coolbits autodetected 475/950 (artifact free).
Now, is this pretty good?

So has anyone here actually done this flash? Sorry for the not soo organized post, but I am writing my Mid-Term Paper right now aswell.
You will have NO problems flashing your 5900nu with a 5950u bios. The 5900nu was the most versatile and upgradable version made. And its easy ability to be turned into a 5950u is why it was discontinued and replaced with the less good 5900xt type.

So, apart from your card only having 128Mb of memory, the flashed 5900nu will become a 5950u card. And very good 5950u bioses to flash with are those from MSI or BFG.

The extra core volts from using a 5950u bios, and because a 5900nu is fitted with 2.2ns memory chips, should easily allow overclocks to 500+/1000+ levels. But if intending to go that high, I suggest you first fit better than stock heatsinking.

The 5900nu is in fact an excellent, very overclockable and tweakable, card which for its time could be made to perform extremely well. For example, my highly overclocked and tweaked Aopen 5900nu, flashed with a bfg5950u bios, achieved the following.

Driver, 75.90 :-

Aquamark3, 55347
Codecreatures1, 67.3
3Dmark05 v120, 1482
3Dmark03 v360, 8077
3Dmark2001se v330, 20709


And for comparison, apart from the DX9 scores of 3Dmark05, these scores are better than those from my newer 6800le out of the box.

Aquamark3, 46207
Codecreatures1, 55.9
3Dmark05 v120, 2521
3Dmark03 v360, 7345
3Dmark2001se v330, 18858


So if wanting to look more into what is possible with a 5900, I suggest you check out the linked thread below,

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=29230

[Roliath]

your the guy I was looking for...
I remember your threads about the 5900xt bioses.

Thanks, and I think I'm going to flash it.

[ruff97]

let us know how it going

[Thoreau]

The card I'm on now is a flashed Asus 5900 to 5950 Ultra with 128 MB's of RAM. The card actually runs better than before. No more lockups. Some cards don't like to be underclocked, and I found out that this card is one of them. It's helped tremendously.

[Redeemed]

What I'm stumped on is this:

I've always wanted to flash the VGA bios on my 5950U. Mine is the ASUS V9980Ultra, the SECOND revision- which in my opinion never should have been released.

Anyways, I hear about how the e-VGA and BFG bios for the 5950Ultra's were the better ones. This might be true and nice and all, but WHERE DO YOU FIND THESE BIOS? I've looked every where I can think to look, but no where do I see anything about a BFG or eVGA bios. Is it even a download? Or what?

And, yes Jimmor, I've read your guide to flashing the 5950U bios. I'm just stumped on where the new bios comes from. Does it work ANYTHING like flashing the mobo bios? Or am I thinking about this whole thing the wrong way?

[Thoreau]

For generic:

http://www.whitebunny.net/hardware/chipset_nvidia.html

For brand specific:

http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,selectfolder/cat,4/

The vgabios will allow you to test it first without writing it.
nvflash will allow you to write it. Use a DOS bootable disk and copy the utility on there. Copy the firmware to another disk if it's too big to fit on the same one.

The file for your 5950U BFG card Rev 2 is here:

http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,download/filecatid,199/chk,efbd181dea7d4f5d78de14f9660e5d83/

I recommend doing the brand specific one first. The generic will sometimes disable your fan speed modulation and power management stuff, but it's model specific, so you have to read up.

[Kev1]

I flashed my Albatron 5900nu to a 5950 using an Albatron 5950 bios and following Jimmor's instructions. Worked perfect! Big boost in performance! Its in my sisters computer now and has been running fine as a 5950 for the past 2 years :thumbsup:

Jimmor is the expert at doing things like this. Follow his guide lines and you'll be fine. I even used the info Jimmor posted to tweak the memory latency setting in the 5950 bios to get even more performance out of it :cool:

The 5900nu, and 5900 series in general, were much better video cards than most people thought IMO. We have 2 Athlon XP computers running 5900 series cards, and both run Doom3 fine @ 1024 x 768 on high :thumbsup:

[Redeemed]

Thanks for those links. I'll try flashing the card sometime later today. Of course, using Jimmor's guide. ;) Thanks again! :D :D :D