Question about BIOS updates

[campcreekdude]

I just noticed on the gigabyte website that the 7970OC windforce has a F2 bios update.

I've never actually encountered an official reference bios update. But i have done bios updates from home made modifications...

But the question i have now is.... I have crossfire happening so what happens when i try to do the bios update?

does it do both cards at once? Do i have to do each card individually?
Do i have to manually remove one card?

The @bios utility says i have version F1 ....

[lenne]

safest way would be to upgrade card per card, but check the changelog first, maybe the bios update is not even worth it....

[campcreekdude]

The official @bios utility does not have any sort of selector for which video card i want to update. I believe from what i see i have to manually take one card out?

Is that what you mean by doing one card at a time?
Seems kindof a old robust way of doing it.

Edit:

I downloaded the bios and it has its own flash utility right in the bios download but the problem again is it has no talk about crossfire in the instructions or Readme and on top of that when you double click on the program it does not have any mention of second GPU.

[rflair]

AMDs own flash program lets you chose the card.

I don't know about Gigabytes so it would probably be best doing one card a t a time, removing the other.

[campcreekdude]

Okay thanks i will flash using the AMD program. I never knew that they had that.

Thanks alot!


Edit: at this moment i cant find this program but im certainly looking for it.
Link would have been nice.


Nevermind its ATI WINFLASH

thanks

[kn00tcn]

GV-R797OC-3GD?

ATI Source BIOS Version:015.012.000.006
ECLK/MCLK: 1000/1375 Mhz
Release For HYNIX Memory
Modify FAN speed

hmm... what you could do is save the bios that's on the card & load it in RBE, compare it to the F2 one

[campcreekdude]

RBE doesnt and will not support the 7000 series

Edit:And i flashed it and i did both cards at the same time right after each other...


After flashing the video cards bios the system becomes really slow and almost unusable...


It got stuck on restart so i manually had to press the restart button. I can see why you only do one card at a time now. If it would have froze during my second flash it would have been hooped but luckily it didnt.


BUT when i restarted everything works fine and dandy.
@bios now says i have the F2 version.

[campcreekdude]

Interesting now...

I have crossfired enabled..

After i ran the bios update i didnt check CPUZ to see what it was doing...

BUT i did update to Catalyst 12.4

I dont think this is normal... but

CPUZ is reporting my second video card at x1 1.1 for PCIE
and its reporting


Texture fillrate at 128 GTexels
and bus width of 32-bit
and bandwidth of 22.0 Gbs

thats for the second video card but the first one is normal.

When i disable catalyst the second card goes to normal


PCIE x16
128 Gtexels
Bus Width 384
Bandwidth 264 GBS...


GPU z is saying ULPS is active... is that effecting my second GPU?

i dont know if any of this is normal.

[campcreekdude]

TURNS out the install of catalyst 12.4 screws up crossfire.

i am back to 12.3 and its working fine.

okay okay okay

I guess its normal 12.3 does the exact same thing.
I definately am a nube when it comes to crossfire...

Texture fillrate at 128 GTexels
and bus width of 32-bit
and bandwidth of 22.0 Gbs

Thats normal when your not playing video games for the second card thats not in crossfire.

[jbmcmillan]

It's just downclocking when not gaming/load totally normal for AMD or Nvidia.

[kn00tcn]

gpuz has an info box about that, make sure you're on latest

it also has a feature to open some rendering window to kick in 3d clocks

[adrock311]

i had the same question about flashing the bios of crossfire last week, it turns out you can use a switch for dos program atiflash to specify which card you are trying to flash