Leaked BIOS easily turns Radeon HD 7970 into GHz Edition

I did it once it was about 8 years ago.. I flashed my Leadtek 6600LE with Inno3d MX4000 PCI card in hand, it worked....

THE GUIDE​

0).......be cool and relaxed...and dont panic while performing these steps...

1) You will need to find a PCI graphics card/display adapter from somewhere to act as a temporary video output until you can get your PCI-E card functioning properly again. This might involve going out to buy one or pulling one from an older machine or your stash.
*Feel free to use a PCI-E card instead of a PCI card if your motherboard has two or more PCI-E slots.
*You can also use onboard video if you motherboard has an IGP. The method for switching to it should be similar to the one outlined below.

2) Once you have found a PCI GPU go ahead and open your case. Remove the retention bracket of your PCI-E card and take the card out of your system. Remember to ground yourself first by touching the metal part of your case before handling any components in order to avoid damaging your components.

3) Once you have taken your PCI-E card out, insert your PCI card into a PCI slot, preferably one that is far away from your PCI-E slot so that it doesn't interfere with letting you put your PCI-E card back in.

4) Hook up your monitor's cable to the appropriate output on your PCI card and boot up your computer. Hopefully you should POST. If you don't and are getting a strange number of beeps from your motherboard, you might not have inserted your PCI card correctly into the slot and your motherboard is telling you it doesn't detect a VGA.

5) Right after you post, enter your BIOS by pressing the appropriate key. Find the setting in your BIOS which sets the primary display adapter. On my motherboard, this is found under Advanced -> Chipset Configuration -> North Bridge Settings, although it may be different for your motherboard.



6) Change your primary display adapter from PEG to PCI. This step will let you POST with your bricked graphics card inserted as the Power-on Self-test will not fail due to the incomplete BIOS present on your PCI-E card because you have switched the primary display to the PCI card.

*Disregard this step if you are using a PCI-e backup card instead of a PCI card.

7) After you have changed the primary display adapter setting, shut off your computer and insert your PCI-E card back in. You might want to put the retention bracket back on to make sure the card doesn’t get bent.

8) ....have your motherboard manual in hand....
Boot up your computer again and hopefully it will POST if you have done Step #5 correctly. Continue on into Windows. (Note: If your PCI-E card is ATi card and your PCI card is an nVIDIA card or vice-cersa, I WOULD NOT recommend installing nVIDIA (or ATi) drivers to accommodate your PCI card as the generic Windows display drivers will serve fine for the purpose of this guide).

9) When booted into Windows you will need to first of all make a bootable DOS disk. Creating a bootable USB drive is the easiest way, in my opinion, so follow this guide to make a bootable USB drive.

10) When you have made a bootable USB drive, download your favourite BIOS flashing software. (Eg. ATIFlash for ATI users and NVFlash for nVIDIA users)

11) Copy the folder with the software in into the root of the USB drive. Make sure to rename the folder to a name with a max of eight characters due to the limitation in DOS.

12) Find your backup or download an original BIOS ( TechPowerup Bios) for your graphics card and copy it into the SAME FOLDER as your flashing software and give it a name that is also under eight characters and easy to remember.

13) Restart your computer and boot into the USB drive. On my computer, this is done by pressing F8 and selecting the USB drive when I see the BIOS splash screen but it may be different for your motherboard.

14) Navigate to your folder using “cd [foldername]”.

15) Finally, you can go ahead and flash your old BIOS. (Using ATIFlash, first find the adapter number done by using “atiflash –i”, then you can flash by “atiflash –f –newbios –p [adapter number] [BIOS_filename].ROM”).

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Here are some descriptions of commands that you will use.

atiflash.exe -i - This will get your device ID(s) for your card(s).

atiflash.exe -s backup.bin - This will make a backup of your OLD BIOS just encase the new BIOS doesn't work correctly. (you will not do this, as u want to get rid of the current BIOS in the PCI-E card)

atiflash.exe -f -p 0 newbios.bin - This command will be flashing your card.
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* Make sure the BIOS file you are flashing has a *.ROM extension. If it doesn't, ATIFlash will not recognize it.
** NVFlash commands are different from ATIFlash but are well documented in its guide and readme included with it. So please READ the NVFlash guide before using it.
*** If your GPU is not detected by ATIFlash or NVFlash see the further troubleshooting section below.

16) Shut down your computer using your power button.



17) Reboot and then go back into the BIOS. Change the primary display adapter back from PCI to PEG. Save BIOS settings then shut down.

*Disregard this step if you are using a PCI-e backup card instead of a PCI card.

18) Switch your monitor cable from the PCI card back to your PCI-e card and remove the PCI card if you wish.

19) Boot up your computer and you should now be running back on your original GPU again.

20) Should work

 

Not familiar with your card but does it have a dual bios switch? If so switch it to the failsafe backup original bios. That would keep you going till you get the borked bios reflashed.

 

yes, guru...... i did it surely it worked....
I just wanted to help(not with that guide)... that member, guru..

I 'm really sorry for "john07" work to be annotated with the guide....

 

21) All works goes to (john07)

 

wow.... at least his 2X salary dnt go to bin..... (sorry again)

..........guru3d.com: meant to solve.....not to probs... (kidding)........

 

Hi, can i use this bios for my Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD ?
http://ca.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4102#ov

Thanks in advance.

 

Not a reference pcb ( blue one ), i will not take the risk for 50mhz more .

You can reach the 50mhz gain, even without overvolting by the CCC...

 

Does anyone know if this card has been known to take the ghz bios? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3242918&Sku=P450-7976 Im thinking about cf. The card i have now has the ghz bios in the second bank would be nice to have both at 1050 / 1500 and hopefully lower voltage if im lucky enough to get another high asic chip.

 

Doesn't look like it will. There is a couple of people here warning of the voltage lock on this card: Brian (about midway) and one 4 below him.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=(keywords)&Page=2

Plus it appears it doesn't have a bios switch option.

 

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but it is a stickie
I'm running with two XFX R7970 and the temptation has come to flash them to a GHz ED.
I can easily run them at 1125/1500 with stock bios in CCC, but when it's free to flash i have to give it a try.
So have anyone else flashed a XFX 7970 and is it safe? I don't have the biod switch so there is a chance for "brick"

Or should i just run it as it is?

 

You could use Afterburner to overclock instead of flashing.

 

I flashed both my Sapphire 3gb refrence cards and they OC pretty well now. Stock firmware, I was not able to change the Core clocks with a system crash. Pre-flash, i could change the core + - 10-15mhz and would start to artifact, after i flashed i am now running 1150/1825 stable through MSI after burner. I dont use Trixx because there is a bug where the software will not control the GPU 2 fan with GPU 1.

My OC gave me an additional 12-15 avg fps on Tomb Raider benchmark and my temp stay under 70c with my fan settings.

 

accelero rules my friend and almost no noise i have my xtreme 3 on a 570 classy and im very happy

 

Huh?

 

So is this "guide" still up to date or is there newer and more secure ways? And which bios should i choose?

 

So randomly decided to give it a shot again today, worked flawlessly first try. 13.3 Beta 3, Diamond 7970

 

I flashed my sapphire 7970oc to the Ghz bios so i could use the ultra fast boot On my pc but the cards working fine but my pc is saying the bios is not correct and reverts back.

 

I presume this card will not be able to be flashed to GHz ED

http://www.powercolor.com/global/products_features.asp?id=465

 

Right on!!! I mean, I know these are "enthusiast" cards with dual BIOS's. BUT why risk it, when you can just slliiiiiiiiideeee it this way------->? Save and bamm... Over with? You'll end up with either a bricked card, to which you'll be back from another computer looking for a way to fix your card, or you'll have one that runs faster, hotter, with more current which will bring temps up---and higher fan speeds...more likely. So whats the point?
Personally, if it's not crunching hard core games or other stuff, I like it purrin' along like it's not there...like it's supposed to do. Some lower cards, perhaps I could see it.. but these upper end cards are beasts pretty much as they are... why risk 300-600 bux on it? Unless you got it like that.. then by all means, smoke'm!! Juss saying...

 

hi to all
I have this graphic card: Asus 7970 Direct CU II (925/5500, rev.00).
this vga is not reference, have DIGI+ VRM with 12-phase and this I/O Ports



can I flash my video card to ghz edition?
can I integrate PowerTune with Boost in my video card??

I tried the bios of the Asus Direct CU II Top Edition but Ghz Edition is not only hight frequency but new features for vga.

Thank you all help me :thumbup:


PS Excuse me for my bad English, I Live to Italy :thumbup: