Holy cow vBulletin allows long thread titles... But yeah, yesterday was the last day of warranty for my graphics card, TRUE, RAM, and case, so I'm on my own from now on... But that also means I can finally lap the HSF, mod the case, and reflash the VGA BIOS! The latter one, I'm going to do it soon, and I need a bit of help/advice on it. It will solve the fan issue. Basically the fan just spins too slow and lets the GPU too hot (~90°C during gaming). It isn't that bad, but the VRMs are usually hovering at ~100°C during gaming and hitting 120°C in one minute when runing FurMark. I will be using Radeon BIOS Editor to mod the ROM. So my first question is: - Where can I download the BIOS image? I've found this ( http://bios.techpowerup.com/vgabios...ufacturer=&model=HD+4870&interface=&memSize=0 ) but is it 100% reliable? I don't want to mess up the card that cost me 250€... (yes that is unbelievable, how could it cost that much just a year ago! ) Although bricking graphics cards is pretty hard, you can always reflash with a spare PCI card as the main one, right? I'm aware of the risks involving this and I pretty much know how to do it. Specs in sig. Thanks in advance!
What is the exact manufacturer / Model of your 4870? As long as you can match them up with the available BIOS files on techPowerUp, i'd say it should be ok. Be worth finding out which BIOS your card currently has to unsure you don't already have it. Failing that, after market cooling?
The exact model is Club3D Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and there is a BIOS for that exact card on techPowerUp. I don't know what the version of the current BIOS is, GPU-Z doesn't say it very clearly. Oh wait, saved it to a file and opening with RBE... Their version numbers seem to match EXACTLY. Oh, even their MD5 hashes match! But now I have another question: - Can I use other manufacturer's BIOSes on this card? For example let's say I want to put the MSI overclocked card's BIOS into it, would it work? techPowerUp's BIOS page says that most of the other BIOSes are the same thing.
I can't give you a definitive answer on that one. You could try with an overclocked BIOS and see if it works. You know the risks involved
grab a cheap PCI graphics card, there great to have lieing around if your flash GPU bios's Try here, there the guys in the know about tweaking GPU's to there limit.
