How to recover ATI Radeon HD 4870 from bad BIOS flash

[W1zzard]

Introduction
This article applies only to users who flashed their HD 4870 (GDDR5) with a 64 KB sized BIOS (created by GPU-Z, Winflash or Atiflash) and ended up with an 800 shader paperweight.

The Problem
In the past all (consumer) graphics card BIOSes were smaller than 64 KBytes. With the introduction of GDDR5 additional space was required for the memory training code. Since ATI could not fit that piece of code into the 64 KB available, they increased the BIOS size to 128 KB (1 MBit).

For an unknown reason ATI's flashing software Winflash/Atiflash does not correctly detect those extra 64 KB and forgets to save them when you dump your BIOS to a file. The same happens to GPU-Z (fixed in 0.2.5 and newer). So everybody who extracted their HD 4870 BIOS ended up with no GDDR5 microcode.

The Fix


Download the full 128K BIOS here (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/152/images/4870.bin).
Flash it to your dead card.
Done.


Since the dead card will not POST anymore you have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it.
Then go into DOS and find out which adapter number your dead HD 4870 has using Atiflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123/ATIFlash_3.60.html)): atiflash -i. Now flash the BIOS using: atiflash -f -newbios -p [index] 4870.bin. Replace [index] with the number of your graphics card from the -i command.
Another way is using ATI Winflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1122/Winflash_2.0.1.2.html)) from Windows. Start Winflash, select the correct card and flash away.
After the flash is done, remove the second card and boot from your now working HD 4870.

Please note: RBE 1.11 works fine for these 128K BIOSes, just make sure you do not work with a broken 64K BIOS in the first place (check the file size). The HD 4850 does not have a 128K BIOS, only the HD 4870.

Thanks for helping to make this possible go out to: Dave Baumann, Golden Tiger and xMrBunglex.

[lemonadesoda]

Good man! This calls for a TPUpaypal address so that peeps can send you a $1 for a SERIOUS helpout there!

[btarunr]

Okay I spoke with no source, but my guess was right, had something to do with the EEPROM changes. :o

[W1zzard]

if you plan on donating to tpu, donate it to some charitable organization or use it for your own entertainment (drugs, booze girls).

[CyberDruid]

if you plan on donating to tpu, donate it to some charitable organization or use it for your own entertainment (drugs, booze girls).

My kind of admin :rockout:

[lemonadesoda]

TPU sponsored booze girls FTW

[purecain]

thankyou.... everyone involved including me, can now carry on benching.... perfect!

[Steevo]

if you plan on donating to tpu, donate it to some charitable organization or use it for your own entertainment (drugs, booze girls).

What drugs do you reccomend, or can we get a review with W1zz shots? :laugh:

[overclocker]

if you plan on donating to tpu, donate it to some charitable organization or use it for your own entertainment (drugs, booze girls).

good job wizz keep up the good work !!!

[W1zzard]

What drugs do you reccomend, or can we get a review with W1zz shots? :laugh:

http://img.techpowerup.org/080705/tpu.jpg

[ShadowFold]

I dont think thats sugar :laugh:

[purecain]

it looks good to me.... can i buy this in the classifieds.... lol

[envagyok]

I have a serious problem.
Hav a P45 board with bricked 4860, and when i try boot the pc with pci vga card, it not booting.
At bios the first vga is set to pci, and the option disabled unused pci clock i try set to both option.
I can change the bios settings just with an other pci-e vga card.
With 4870 just 2 beep i hear, with pci vga card turn on the monitor when i turn on the pc, but no picture, no booting.
What can cause this problem?

[mitsirfishi]

it sounds like what paggered my hd4870 when i did my 4870 it ran 1st time then wouldnt after playing crysis for abit black screened even though i had my arctic s1 on it sent it back and got a new shiney one waiting for me at home :) after i get back from crete

tried different ram ? made sure none of the irq's are conflicting and putting power connectors to your 4870 ? you should just be able to wack your 4870 in and it run fine why mess with the pci clock ? it should auto sync leave that alone and finally just make sure nothing is earthing and everything is sat in right

[str1k3r]

Introduction
This article applies only to users who flashed their HD 4870 (GDDR5) with a 64 KB sized BIOS (created by GPU-Z, Winflash or Atiflash) and ended up with an 800 shader paperweight.

The Problem
In the past all (consumer) graphics card BIOSes were smaller than 64 KBytes. With the introduction of GDDR5 additional space was required for the memory training code. Since ATI could not fit that piece of code into the 64 KB available, they increased the BIOS size to 128 KB (1 MBit).

For an unknown reason ATI's flashing software Winflash/Atiflash does not correctly detect those extra 64 KB and forgets to save them when you dump your BIOS to a file. The same happens to GPU-Z (fixed in 0.2.5 and newer). So everybody who extracted their HD 4870 BIOS ended up with no GDDR5 microcode.

The Fix


Download the full 128K BIOS here (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/152/images/4870.bin).
Flash it to your dead card.
Done.


Since the dead card will not POST anymore you have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it.
Then go into DOS and find out which adapter number your dead HD 4870 has using Atiflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123/ATIFlash_3.60.html)): atiflash -i. Now flash the BIOS using: atiflash -f -newbios -p [index] 4870.bin. Replace [index] with the number of your graphics card from the -i command.
Another way is using ATI Winflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1122/Winflash_2.0.1.2.html)) from Windows. Start Winflash, select the correct card and flash away.
After the flash is done, remove the second card and boot from your now working HD 4870.

Please note: RBE 1.11 works fine for these 128K BIOSes, just make sure you do not work with a broken 64K BIOS in the first place (check the file size). The HD 4850 does not have a 128K BIOS, only the HD 4870.

Thanks for helping to make this possible go out to: Dave Baumann, Golden Tiger and xMrBunglex.

sounds like my kind of problem and my kind of plan.

However, i've tried three different (incl the sapphire HD4870) cards to get picture back on my screen(s) but nothing.

The PC starts up and all fans start working, but the screen stays blank. not even a hint of a visual. The power button is also flashing whereas it should be constantly lit.
Weird thing is that if no signal (DVI or old style blue cable) passes from the PC to the screen due to the PC being disconnected from the power I get constantly lit power button on my screen and a message saying I need to check the signal cable.

I can't even get into my bios to set different boot devices or anything.

Anyone have any ideas or should I just reset me motherboard (MSI P45 platinum) and hope this resets what seems like a PCI-e slot problem (I have two slots and have tried them both and both er f-ed.
And would resetting my mobo result in my RAID mirror config being screwed?

many many thanks

[tnt23]

hi everybody

i have a ASUS 4870 512 on which i flashed the bios in windows...(i know 2 stupid things not to do)

Right now i dont even have a PCI card to fix this...but will be looking for one...

Can anybody confirm that i cannot connect a NVIDIA 6800 on my SLIi board at the same time as the ATI ? (that would help)

Also wondering where i can find the original bios ??? on asus site there is only the bios update...


Another question : 4870.bin linked on this site is a modified one ?

thx for answers

[E0x]

i have a XFX HD 4870 with 1GB GDDR5 , this bios will work for that card too ? are the the bios the same not matter what vendor are ?

[Arucarde]

Today I was flashing my Sapphire 4830 bios and it restart resulting on a dead card:banghead:..., will this solution work? And if so, can I do it whit an nvidea card?

[E0x]

Today I was flashing my Sapphire 4830 bios and it restart resulting on a dead card:banghead:..., will this solution work? And if so, can I do it whit an nvidea card?

my card is a XFX 4870 doing a bios update i f**ck the bios i post a ticket in the XFX support center and they send me a ISO that i need burn in a cd and boot with it , the iso will boot and do a force update in the first pcie device that it find , but my board dont do post without video card so i need find a old pci video card to get boot and use the ISO and work fine , maybe you can do that , find a pci video card boot with it and use some DOS boot ( Iso or floppy ) with the flashing too and the bios of you video card ( the correct one ) and reflash it maybe it will work , and if the nvidia have the same problem you can do the same too.

pd: maybe you board dont get boot only with put the pci video card , so you need take off the pcie card first ( the ATI one ) and boot just with the pci video card enter in the bios and change the primary video device to PCI ( maybe will be set to PCIE so change it ) and go back and put the PCIE card and continue the process

pd2: ask to the support crew of saphire if they can send you the correct o stock bios for you card.

[Arucarde]

I did boot whit an pci card and try to flash the 4830 like this method and it can detect device,can some one give me something?Should Itry whit an pci-e?

[Arucarde]

IT´S ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!Thank you E0x and W1zzard

[K91NE]

Ok i am having a simlar problem i tried to flash my 2nd 4870 in PCI-E slot 2 with XFX bios so they will match.The problem i am haveing is when i did this winflash it didnt let me choose what card and it gave pci-e SLOT 1 A BAD BIOS FLASH.Now i can get WINFLASH 2017 or 2012 to open.When i click on it nothing happens and with ATIWINFLASH i get a ERROR Resources files missing.Im lost on what to do.ATI RBE_121 opens finds the path to Winflash and opens the crashes with the BSOD.

[noor98]

Introduction
This article applies only to users who flashed their HD 4870 (GDDR5) with a 64 KB sized BIOS (created by GPU-Z, Winflash or Atiflash) and ended up with an 800 shader paperweight.

The Problem
In the past all (consumer) graphics card BIOSes were smaller than 64 KBytes. With the introduction of GDDR5 additional space was required for the memory training code. Since ATI could not fit that piece of code into the 64 KB available, they increased the BIOS size to 128 KB (1 MBit).

For an unknown reason ATI's flashing software Winflash/Atiflash does not correctly detect those extra 64 KB and forgets to save them when you dump your BIOS to a file. The same happens to GPU-Z (fixed in 0.2.5 and newer). So everybody who extracted their HD 4870 BIOS ended up with no GDDR5 microcode.

The Fix


Download the full 128K BIOS here (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/152/images/4870.bin).
Flash it to your dead card.
Done.


Since the dead card will not POST anymore you have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it.
Then go into DOS and find out which adapter number your dead HD 4870 has using Atiflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123/ATIFlash_3.60.html)): atiflash -i. Now flash the BIOS using: atiflash -f -newbios -p [index] 4870.bin. Replace [index] with the number of your graphics card from the -i command.
Another way is using ATI Winflash (download (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1122/Winflash_2.0.1.2.html)) from Windows. Start Winflash, select the correct card and flash away.
After the flash is done, remove the second card and boot from your now working HD 4870.

Please note: RBE 1.11 works fine for these 128K BIOSes, just make sure you do not work with a broken 64K BIOS in the first place (check the file size). The HD 4850 does not have a 128K BIOS, only the HD 4870.

Thanks for helping to make this possible go out to: Dave Baumann, Golden Tiger and xMrBunglex.

Dear;

- I have the same issue with Gigabyte ATI card HD4850 1 GHz, can I follow the same procedure above with my case?
- does the ATIflash tool works with this Gigabyte model? Gigabyte has its own tool called VGA @BIOS.
- I have backup the original version before going through updating to F7 version , can I use as my original file or I do have to look for a new one?

appreciates your kind help.

[maskulo]

hi man!
today i have just tried to flash my ati 4870 sapphire on my pc (wuìith an Asus p5k pro motherboard).
but unfortunately, after i have flashed bios my video card doesn't work anymore.
the upgrade of bios was ok but after i try to start pc but my monito was all black!!!
pc starts, and also window i think start but no video signal appear on the monitor...
i have read your post and you say that "i have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it. "
"have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it. "
sorry but i am not expert...:-)
can you explain me this better?
now i have just installed an nvidia gts 8800 and it work properly and i have upgrade bios directly from usb with alt+F2 as bios start up and i have used the bios file downloaded from the website of my motherboard.
thank for your attention!

[Dubious]

First up, I'd like to say this thread saved my bacon hardcore. I was experiencing the symptoms that seem trademark of the 4870 - anywhere from 1 minute to several hours into a graphically intensive program, my machine would lock up accompanied by vertical bars or a strange pixelation - and decided to look to fix it. I read somewhere else about flashing, downloaded Winflash, a new BIOS and figured I was good to go. Went in all gung-ho like the flashed the card ... however it locked up again followed by the blue screen of death. Wouldn't POST no more and I was freaking. Researched alittle more on my roommates machine and came across this site. I opened my machine and found that I only had the one PCIe slot and no AGP slots, so I had no idea how I was to fix this. I tried booting the machine without any video card (and my mobo doesn't have any integrated graphics), getting to Windows (I could hear the start-up sound), plugging my card in at that point (which was probably a real foolish thing to do) and navigating to command prompt, copying and different BIOS from my flashdrive (as I figured the first one I had was bad) and flashing it blind from there. Tried this a few times and it didn't work. All today at work I was asking if anyone had an ancient machine around that had a PCI graphics card, to no avail. Hit the computer stores around town, to no avail. Was with a friend, walking around, heading to get a cup of coffee and we past a computer repair place. He suggested I try, just in case they have one. I was ... dubious, but did nevertheless. To my surprise, they did, though it had just been sitting there for ages. He just gave it to me. A glimmer of hope! Had coffee and took this sucker home. I could finally see again ... though my further efforts yielded no tangible results ... seems WinFlash wasn't working, neither in DOS shell or Windows (there was a process, but nothing happened) and Atiflash would bring up some error signal message. Downloaded RBE and GPU-Z, the latter of which could see my card, but the analysis in RBE using WinFlash didn't find anything. Nearly resigned to defeat, thinking I maybe fried my card earlier, I read alittle more and saw that Atiflash required an actual DOS enviroment. I decided to try that, as the final struggle, and made a bootable flashdrive. Copied the BIOS and Atiflash. Booted it up and ... HUZZAH! It flashed no problem. Ripped out the PCI card, restarted, and bam ... I was back in business, writing to you now, as some sorta testimonial, I guess.

A big thanks to all who've contributed to his resolution. I am a smilling cat now. And to boot (ha!), I've more than a vague idea about graphics card flashing.

I've an Ati Sapphire Radeon 4870 GDDR5 512mb

hi man!
today i have just tried to flash my ati 4870 sapphire on my pc (wuìith an Asus p5k pro motherboard).
but unfortunately, after i have flashed bios my video card doesn't work anymore.
the upgrade of bios was ok but after i try to start pc but my monito was all black!!!
pc starts, and also window i think start but no video signal appear on the monitor...
i have read your post and you say that "i have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it. "
"have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it. "
sorry but i am not expert...:-)
can you explain me this better?
now i have just installed an nvidia gts 8800 and it work properly and i have upgrade bios directly from usb with alt+F2 as bios start up and i have used the bios file downloaded from the website of my motherboard.
thank for your attention!

I figure I'll take a shot at helping ya here ...

You'll need another graphics card plugged into your motherboard, as well as your dead one. If like me, you've only a single PCIe slot on your motherboard, you'll have to acquire a card that'll fit in another slot. I'd be willing to bet you've a regular old school PCI slot in there, to which you'll need to find a card with that connection. When you do, you'll need to tell your motherboard BIOS to load that card as your primary video adapter (for example, I can elect to boot a PCI or PCIe slot first). You can access BIOS as the first screen comes up after you start ... where it shows you the memory check and all ... press F8 or DEL ... one should bring up BIOS - it should tell you how somewhere on that screen. This might require you to remove your dead card first in order to access the BIOS, in case it tries to boot that one up. Get the second card as your primary (and put your old one back in, of course) and load to Windows. You'll want to download RBE (Radeon BIOS Editor) and load the BIOS file you want to flash. There will be two BIOS Checksum numbers ... write these down. I'm not sure how Winflash works, as I've not actually been able to sucessfully run it (it caused a failed flashing that landed me in this soup in the first place ... did this in DOS shell). Create a bootable device, such as a floppy disk if you have the drive, or a USB flashdrive - this will require a specific program to do e.g. I used HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and a copy of some DOS system files. Copy Atiflash and the BIOS file to the drive and write down the command line to flash the drive (atiflash.exe -p [index] [bios file].[ext] (my command line looked like: atiflash -p 0 1e8501sa.002) ). Restart your machine and it should boot to the USB. If it doesn't, you'll likely have to go into your mobo BIOS again and assign USB priority as a boot device over your harddrive i.e. make USB or USBHDD your Primary Boot Device, which should be located in the Advanced BIOS Setup. Save changes and restart. You should boot into DOS prompt. At this point, type: atiflash -i . This should display all Ati cards you have installed into your computer (in your case, one, right?) Check the first colomn (I think) for a single digit number, which corresponds to the location of your card. You may want to check your BIOS checksum at this screen too ... if you have two Ati cards in your machine (i.e. the second card you put in), make sure you find the don't flash that one. Look for a corresponding BIOS Checksum to the one you wrote down earlier. Once you have the location of the card, type in your command line to flash: atiflash -p [location of board] [bios file].[ext]. With any luck, this should fix your card right back up - this is how I finally fixed mine.

Hope that helps ... may be alittle convoluted.

And again thank you to the creator(s) of the above fix.

[enobhsiw]

I had purchased a ati sapphire 4870 512mb GDDR5 more a year ago. My system used to run fine, and had no real problems. Somewhere bout 6 months ago, i started facing problems that when i played games like UT3 or games of similar caliber, the graphic drivers would die down on me, and sometimes i would recieve an error message saying that the same had happened. I faced a similar problem when playing not-so-graphic demanding games like World of Warcraft, i would face random disconnects, and if i was multi-tasking on the pc, the system would hang or i would get a message saying my graphic drivers had stopped responding. As this became increasingly frustrating, i searched all over the internet for a solution to the problem, and finally happened to stumble across a post in a forum of someone saying that they had found a way to fix my kind of problem, and it was a patch from ATI that requires a firmware flashing to solve the problem. I tried it out and it worked like a charm, till yesterday. 2 days ago i got a hit by a really bad virus and my system had to be formatted and win xp reinstalled. I noticed that i started facing problems again with relation to my drivers. Thinking that the patch had somehow been linked with win xp, i tried to install the firmware flash again. This time i received a blue screen and i was forced to manually shut down my system. Now my graphic card wont boot up. However when i boot up the system, i see 3 led's flash for 2 seconds (d1601, d1602 and d1603).

So i tried flashing my card and another 4870(1GB) as primary and used the methods suggested and it flashed fine. It even detected my "dead" card in device manager. But when i restarted my system after trying the flashing using the atiflash, the system boots all the way to windows tries to detect my card (mind you both cards are still in, with the 1gb card still as primary), and then the screen goes all blank with a blinking cursor at the top left. So i tried booting up the system with only my "dead" card and still no display, but it does go all the way to windows.

and suggestions?

[purecain]

when you load up windows use safe mode... then uninstall any ati drivers.... see if that lets you in....

[enobhsiw]

the problem is...if i load up using any card, and as long as my ati card is plugged in as 2ndry it gives me the blank screen...but without the "dead" card it works fine. if i try booting up with my dead card alone, it still gives me no display, but i know it has gone to windows

[enobhsiw]

just wonderin if there was a different bios for te 512mb models and a different bios for the 1gb ones?

[eric84]

I don't know much about computers, but from what I understand I may have the same issue as some of these posts. I have the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and running windows 7. It auto installed the drivers, and everything was working great for a week, and while playing a game, it started to lag real bad, then locked up. I restarted, and awhile later the same problem happened, but when I went to restart, I could get no display from it. I tried the next day, and it worked, but within an hour, the same thing happened, and since then I have not been able to get a display from it. I have an onboard vid card so I removed the radeon and the onboard works just fine. I'm hoping the card isn't burnt up, so if anyone has any info on this, that would be great. I also checked all the cables, and everything else should be compatible with it.

[purecain]

sounds like a psu issue eric84....

i take it your temps were ok as you havnt mentioned them...

@enobhsiw- yes the 1gb models use a differant bios... it would be very bad to flash a 1gb bios to a 512mb card and vice versa...

[eric84]

Ya, the temps seem fine...and I apologize for being so ignorant about computers, it has been awhile since I worked on any. What's the psu(the processor?).

[nortino]

eric84 - The psu is the power supply - he's saying that the problem may be your power supply isn't getting enough juice to your card.

OK, I just bought an xfx hd 1GB 4870. I had the problem with flickering on the desktop, in IE etc. Saw that XFX have a bios update that 'fixes' this. Downloaded and ran their .exe, whereupon Windows BSODs and bricks my card. Great. I've followed the instructions in this thread (and huge thanks to w1zzard and others for posting here); created a bootable USB with atiflash and the 4870.bin on it; ran this with an old pci card providing the display and installed the bios. atiflash reports success and tells me to reboot.
Now when I reboot with the 4870 I get no display at all (not even POST screen), but the PC goes into Windows (I can hear the start-up music) which is an improvement because before it wouldn't even POST with the 4870. If I put the old PCI card in, that works and when I get to the desktop the Windows plug 'n play starts telling me it's found a VGA adapter (the 4870). However, when I run the XFX CD installer it says it can't detect an XFX card.
I'm kind of out of ideas now and starting to feel sick; this is the first card I've bought for years, it's a lot of money to me and I'm very unhappy with Radeon and XFX in particular. Before I do battle with XFX to try to get them to replace it, has anyone got any ideas? I reran atiflash and it says the BIOS is already installed, so it looks like that worked. Can I try a different BIOS (e.g. an ASUS one?). Can I have fried my card?
Please help!

[purecain]

@nortino- sorry to hear of your problems, the good news is i doubt you will of damaged your card....

try flashing some of the other brand 'referance'bios files to the card...

let me know how you get on....

[nortino]

Well I'm a happy bunny; got home from work today and followed your advice purecain. I can't find an XFX .bin file with the bios for an HD 4870 1GB, so I looked on the VGA bios database, and downloaded the sapphire version for the card (chose this cos it looked more recent than some of the others). Copied this onto my bootable USB, booted from that into DOS, used atiflash to flash the sapphire bios onto my card . . . at this point I had to use the -f flag to force it which made me a bit nervous. Rebooted the machine and to my relief and happiness it's working perfectly. Wonderfully, the original problem I had which started all of this off - namely the flickering on the desktop - appears to be fixed too. I'm very happy.
Thanks so much purecain, w1zzard and everyone else on this thread for your help, please know there are lurkers out there who really appreciate it :)
To anyone else who has reflashed a bios and still not getting any joy, it's probably worth trying a couple of different ones before you give up.

[purecain]

now you can mod your bios... my old 4870's are fine @ 820mhz core...

with a voltage bump you could get 840+

its a pleasure to of been assistance nortino....

[enobhsiw]

bahh...i was so happy that ATI helped me solve my problem, that i forgot to post here.
Well, ATI helped me fix my issue. I was asked to make a bootable Memory Stick. I then had to put the "correct" bios into it. I got a 4750 HD from a m8, set it as primary graphic and my dead one as secondary, and then flashed my dead card. Worked like a charm.

[shivaa]

i was tried to update the bios on my xfx 9500gt graphics card... using 95udf*.exe after i reboot the system display clashed? what would be the solution? can anyone help me to recover the bios?

[DomagojX]

i have 2 4870, can anyone say how can i get know which one gpu is which number...because one card is death and i'm trying to flash original bios but when I in DOS put command atiflash -i i become this????
http://www.imagesforme.com/show.php/716063_DSC00910.JPG
plizzz help

[P4-630]

now you can mod your bios... my old 4870's are fine @ 820mhz core...

with a voltage bump you could get 840+

its a pleasure to of been assistance nortino....

I get a stable 882MHz, maybe I could have reached a stable 900+ with overvolting but my card does not support overvolting. If I set the core to 903 it will crash with 3dm Vantage.

[Schattiz]

Hey,
When I load your bios in RBE v1.22 it says:
"YOU HAVE NOT CONNECTED ONE OF YOUR VIDEO CARD POWER CONNECTORS TO THE POWER SUPPLY. PLEASE REFER TO THE 'GETTING STARTED GUIDE' FOR PROPER HARDWARE INSTALLATION."
But when I save the bios I'm using now with GPU-Z v0.3.6 and then loads it up in RBE it says nothing.
What's up with that?

My bios is from 07/20/09 22:33, is there any need for me to update?
XFX 4870 512MB HD-487A-YWFC

Thanks.
/Schattiz