Diagnosing locking problems after X850 Flash

  • Thread starter Thread starter BD
  • Start date Start date
B

BD

Hey, all.

Bought an X850 Pro last week, an Arctic Cooler 5 and Some Arctic
Silver.

Installed the cooler. I used the Cooler's pads on the RAM, and did not
try to use any AS on anything but the GPU.

flashed it to X850XT PE BIOS (one which purported to include 'fan
control'), and the flash process appeared to work - I now had 16
pipelines instead of 12, and my default speeds were 540/590 instead of
500/500.

Reinstalled the 5.6 OEM Catalyst drivers, and found that the Overdrive
panel was now available. I'd done some reading and it had been
suggested that only the XT will let you into the Overdrive area of CCC.

Ran the latest 3DMark, and got a roughly 10% overall increase in
performance. That kind of an increase is nice, but I'm not convinced
it's worth it, given subsequent behavior.

Ran some games, and got my first VPU alert - I'd been running FEAR I
think, and it locked up.

Tried Half-Life 2 this morning and it also locked up once - but
previous sessions in that game had gone for far longer than this one,
and HL2 is a little wonky sometimes, so who knows if it was heat that
caused it.

I ran ATITool - the GPU temp was idling in the mid-40s. It went up to
63, and then my system locked. It had run for about 3 minutes at that
point, and no errors had been reported. Not sure if it was the vid card
that siezed or the CPU, but I had to do a hard reset.

Next step will be to use ATITool to bring the speeds back down to
500/500, and see what that does to ATITool's behavior. If _that_ makes
no difference, I'll try to flash back to the original firmware (which
I'd backed up previous to flashing).

If anyone has any other ideas/suggestions, I'm all ears. ;-)

Thanks,

BD
 
....
Next step will be to use ATITool to bring the speeds back down to
500/500, and see what that does to ATITool's behavior. If _that_ makes
no difference, I'll try to flash back to the original firmware (which
I'd backed up previous to flashing).

If anyone has any other ideas/suggestions, I'm all ears. ;-)
Click to expand...

Look for a firmware with all 16 pipes but with 500/500 or even better
500/590 default speed.
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,selectfolder/cat,1/
Otherwise ATITool will work.
 
Yeah, I think ATITool will let me set that as default. I'll experiment
over the weekend.
Click to expand...
The only way to work is for ATITool to be set to run at Windows startup.
Otherwise the card will be at firmware default.
 
BD said:
Installed the cooler. I used the Cooler's pads on the RAM, and did not
try to use any AS on anything but the GPU.
Click to expand...

The RAM chips don't end up at a uniform height after soldering. To use a
common, flat heat sink on all the chips, you need flexible pads to take up
the varying gaps. Nothing else to do there.
Next step will be to use ATITool to bring the speeds back down to
500/500, and see what that does to ATITool's behavior. If _that_ makes
no difference, I'll try to flash back to the original firmware (which
I'd backed up previous to flashing).
Click to expand...

Consider the GPU and RAM speeds separately.

For the GPU, remember those pipes were locked for a reason. Either they were
defective out of the fab (not the case with yours), or they just can't hit
the 540 MHz to qualify the GPU for XTPE usage. In some cases you may even
have to run it *lower* than 500 to achieve stability, but the performance
will still be greater than a default X850 Pro because you now have 33% more
rendering pipelines.

Since the RAM chips are lower-rated (and less costly) than those on XTPE
cards, they probably won't hit 590 MHz. Ultimately this will limit
performance in some games - 33% more rendering pipelines without a
corresponding increase in memory bandwidth.
 
Since the RAM chips are lower-rated (and less costly) than those on XTPE
cards, they probably won't hit 590 MHz. Ultimately this will limit
performance in some games - 33% more rendering pipelines without a
corresponding increase in memory bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. I presumed that this was simply a firmware distinction, and
that the actual hardware between the Pro and the XT was the same.

I've decided this isn't worth the risk. For the brief time the flashed
fw was present, I was getting maybe 10% more in 3DMark, and the
difference in game performance was negligible.

If I can find a firmware which opens up the 16 pipelines, does not
compromise fan performance, and keeps the clock speeds at 500/500
without the need to keep ATITool resident, I may try again. But the
marginal increase in performance on my system (which is likely
CPU-bound as I'm running an Athlon 2500+) coupled with the dicey
behavior is making me rather gun-shy. ;(
 
BD said:
Oh, I see. I presumed that this was simply a firmware distinction, and
that the actual hardware between the Pro and the XT was the same.
Click to expand...

The GPU and PCB are essentially the same. However, the RAM chips are
commodities purchased from the likes of Samsung. In fact, the price
difference between Pro and XT cards primarily comes from the lower-rated
RAM.
If I can find a firmware which opens up the 16 pipelines, does not
compromise fan performance, and keeps the clock speeds at 500/500
without the need to keep ATITool resident, I may try again. But the
marginal increase in performance on my system (which is likely
CPU-bound as I'm running an Athlon 2500+) coupled with the dicey
behavior is making me rather gun-shy. ;(
Click to expand...

Ultimately this is your choice. However, as you noted earlier, the card had
no problems running at XTPE speeds in 2D, so there's no real danger in
booting to 540/590 to the desktop.

Simply set ATiTool to load a profile, consisting of 500/500 and forced
constant 100% fan speed, at Windows startup. There's no need to keep ATiTool
in resident memory. And since the Arctic Cooler is essentially silent,
there's no need to throttle the fan.
 
Ultimately this is your choice.

Yep; I think that I'll coast on 12 pipelines. I haven't overclocked
'just for the numbers' in years, and I think that this is mainly what
that extra 10% would be about. Games are running much faster than with
my 9800, and I think I'll just enjoy the 850 at its stock settings for
awhile... I may feel braver down the road. ;-)
 
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