MIRA memory

[wazzledoozle]

I was looking up the memory manufacturer for the ram on my powercolor radeon 9550, the company's name is MIRA, but after much searching i have found nothing about this company. Anyone heard of them?

[fearmywrath]

lol i have the same card as yours dude

[C&C Freak 2K]

A Google query for "Mira Electronics" gets me mostly hits having to do with electronics stores in India, heh.

[fearmywrath]

changed mine to sapphire atlantis 9600 pro but still cant o.c my memory clock lol rams are 3.3ns hynix?
can anyone help? softmode drivers+ atitool 0.22

[Bikerbob]

So, this Mira memory is 5ns... is 215 about what people have gotten out of it?

I see wazzle you have some special cooling on your card?

anyone tried any ram sinks on this card?

I just picked one up.. and was planning on doing the softmod etc..

James

[fr33ze]

wazzledoozle try searching for the code thats on the chip on google, you may come up with a tech spec sheet and find that the chips are made by someone else and mira have just relabeled them

[wazzledoozle]

Originally Posted by fr33ze

wazzledoozle try searching for the code thats on the chip on google, you may come up with a tech spec sheet and find that the chips are made by someone else and mira have just relabeled them

I have... and found nothing. Its 4ns so it SHOULD be more capable than 215.

[fr33ze]

yeah it should be, how about some ramsinks and maybe a voltmod

[wazzledoozle]

Originally Posted by fr33ze

yeah it should be, how about some ramsinks and maybe a voltmod

Any good tutorials on volt mods?

[fr33ze]

i remember the ones on this site in the knowledge base being really good but i don't know if there'll be one to match your card. If you can't find any on the web either pm w1zzard with a pic of your card and he might be able work out how to do it or post a thread at XS forums, they've helped me out a few times now.

[Ripsaw]

Originally Posted by Bikerbob

So, this Mira memory is 5ns... is 215 about what people have gotten out of it?

I see wazzle you have some special cooling on your card?

anyone tried any ram sinks on this card?

I just picked one up.. and was planning on doing the softmod etc..

James

Same memory as on my PowerColor 9600 Pro 256mb. 221 is about the best mine will do, but the GPU will go all the way to about 463mhz before getting flakey. I went ahead and used ATITOOL to optimize and test,a dn also to optimize all memory timings like CAS, RAS, etc. Then I used RaBIT v1.6 to load the BIOS image dumped by ATITOOL, went and set both the gpu and memory clocks where I wanted them (452.25/216.... would have set memory to 220 if RaBIT would let me but next increment from 216 was 222.75 which was not stable). Then saved the optimized bios image as "optibios.rom", made a boot floppy with ATIFLASH v1.6 on it as well as both the optimized bios image AND the original unmolested (factory default) image. Then I went ahead rebooted w/ the floppy inserted and flashed in the optimized bios image.

So far so good.

One thing, though, I found that it appears that to get optimal performance after flashing in a new bios image to the card, you should completely uninstall the catalyst driver you're using, reboot, and re-install the driver. I'm currently using Catalyst v4.9. When its overclocked in the bios you can use the genuine Ati Catalyst drivers and not have to use the modified 3rd party drivers that allow realtime clock changes, because the Catalyst drivers accept the device clocks set in the bios.

I did find a slight mismatch regarding one memory timing setting between what ATITOOL shows and RaBIT shows: RaBIT would show "tWL" (Write latency) @ 1.5 but in ATITOOL it would show as 2.0 (called "mem WR_LATENCY" in ATITOOL). So setting it to 1.0 in RaBIT made it show as 1.5 in ATITOOL, and vice versa. 1.0/1.5 (RaBIT/ATITOOL) is the lowest I could set it without major artifacting.

If anyone's interested, I can post all the memory timings I am using.

One more thing. I got another Radeon 9600 Pro card for my son's PC, a Sapphire Atlantis 9600 Pro "Advantage" edition (was advertised as full blown 300mhz memory Atlantis but they sent the slower 223mhz Advantage edition ).

It has VDATA 4ns chips.

I'm RMA'ing it though, because I didn't get the version I paid for.

There is SO MUCH confusion among vendors regarding different editions or versions of the Sapphire 9600 Pro cards. The one to get is the full Atlantis versio which has 300mhz (600mhz) DDR, but they make a castrated "Advantage Edition" with slower memory @ 223mhz (446mhz). Not sure what the "Advantage" is there...

[Ripsaw]

As promised, here are the optimized memory timings that my PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro 256mb card (Mira 5ns memory chips) is running as reported by RaBIT v1.6 (as noted in my above post ATITOOL reports TWL as 1.5 but RaBIT reports it as 1.0):

-- Memory bus and clocking info --
Memory: 128 bits, DDR, 256 Mb
Chipset clock = 452.25 MHz
Memory clock = 216.00 (432.00) MHz
-- Active memory timings --
tWL = 1.0
tCL = 3
tCMD = 0 clock
tSTB = equals tWrL + 1/2 clocks
tRcdRD = 3
tRcdWR = 1
tRP = 3
tRAS = 6
tRRD = 2
tR2W = CL + 1
tWR = 2
tW2R = 1
tW2Rsb = Use tW2R Rule
tR2R = 1
MemRR = 17 (NOTE: RaBIT reports MemRR in hexidecimal, ATITOOL reports it in decimal)
tRFC = 14
tRBS = CL + 3.5
tERST = CL - 0.5
tQSREQ = CL - 0.5
tDQM = WL - 1
tDQS = WL - 1
tDQM_Adv = As specified
tDQS_Adv = As specified

[Bikerbob]

OK, so lets assume I want to upgrade the bios of my Powercolor 9550 with the Mira -5ns ram.

What bios should I use? I have not seen anyone post which 9600 bios people used. Do you use a powercolor 9600 pro bios and then change memory timings as in Ripsaw's posting?

I am not an overclocking guru... but I have used the modified drivers and atitool to get my 9550 up to 425/225... which I am pretty happy with.. but I would prefer to use this in a bios and not worry about ati tool all the time.

anyone help with this?

Thanks
James

[ReconCX]

it's pretty much a guessing game on which BIOS is best for your card. Just go along the lines of clockspeed and memory and you'll get one eventually. Just remember to keep a backup of your original BIOS and also a PCI vid card too. turns out mine had to be a custom one found in the forums of my manufactorer's website.

[Ripsaw]

Originally Posted by Bikerbob

OK, so lets assume I want to upgrade the bios of my Powercolor 9550 with the Mira -5ns ram.

What bios should I use? I have not seen anyone post which 9600 bios people used. Do you use a powercolor 9600 pro bios and then change memory timings as in Ripsaw's posting?

I am not an overclocking guru... but I have used the modified drivers and atitool to get my 9550 up to 425/225... which I am pretty happy with.. but I would prefer to use this in a bios and not worry about ati tool all the time.

anyone help with this?

Thanks
James

Just use your own BIOS. Here's how:

1. Use ATITool: settings, then miscellaneous, to dump bios image. It will create a filename BIOS.BIN of your card's BIOS.

2. Get RABiT v1.6 here:

http://www.mvktech.net/index.php?opt...&func=fileinfo

3. Install it and run it.

4. From within RABit select the 'open' button and browse to wherever ATItool saved BIOS.BIN from step 1. (usually program files/atitool)

5. Once you've loaded up your bios.bin file, use RABit to set the device clocks (VPU and memory) and also if you want, change the memory timings. The settings will only take immediate effect if you check the "realtime" box, otherwise it just sets them up to be saved. Suggest you use ATITool to thoroughly test for optimum memory timings before you change them in RABiT and save them.

6. Select to Save As and give the file a new name-- don't overwrite your default bios.bin file that atitool dumped, you want to keep that for future reference if you ever need to flash the card back to factory bios. Suggest keeping the filename to 8 characters or less since you'll be working in MSDOS for the flash-in.

7. Make a bootable floppy, you can do this in wi xp by putting a floppy into A: drive, selecting to format it through right clicking its icon in explorer or my computer, then check the box in the format dialog to Create MSDOS Startup Disk.

8. From this website (tech powerup) grab ATIFlash from the BIOS image page (at bottom of page), un pack it onto a the bootable floppy you just made

9. Copy the bios.bin file to the floppy (the dump from atitool) and also copy the new bios file you saved to a different name from RABiT in step 6, to the floppy.

10. Making sure your PC is set to boot from the floppy drive first, put the floppy in and reboot. PC will boot into MSDOS. To see command line options for ATIFLASH.EXE type "Atiflash /?". But the option to flash is "atiflash -p <device number> <filename to be flashed-in>" For mine as example it was "atiflash -p 0 optibios.rom" where 0 is device number for my 9600 pro, and optibios.rom is the optimized bios image. there is a command line tag for atiflash that will make it show what device # your card is in your system, but its almost always zero (0).

11. ATIflash will confirm the byte count, something like 65535 of 65535 bytes confirmed or similar statement then it's done and you can reboot. Suggest reinstalling drivers for the card in windows after flashing.

NOTE: You have to reflash back to the default factory bios image (bios.bin) before you can flash in another modified bios image. if you try to flash another modified version in on top of a modified version, atiflash will report that the EPROM has already been programmed and will quit to command prompt. Just flash in the factory bios dump from atitool, bios.bin, then go back and flash in the newly modified version right after.

DISCLAIMER: Flashing your card voids any warranty and the risk exists of killing the card.

[Bikerbob]

Thanks Ripsaw, very nice description.

I was under the impression that the std Catalyst drivers will not support the 9550 overclocked?

Or is this not a problem because we are changing the bios itself?

ALso, if we just change the bios .... what are people talking about getting it up to a R360? or 9600 pro etc.. is there a point to this? Are there real gains to be had from changing to a 9600 bios? or no?

James

[Ripsaw]

Originally Posted by Bikerbob

Thanks Ripsaw, very nice description.

I was under the impression that the std Catalyst drivers will not support the 9550 overclocked?

Or is this not a problem because we are changing the bios itself?

ALso, if we just change the bios .... what are people talking about getting it up to a R360? or 9600 pro etc.. is there a point to this? Are there real gains to be had from changing to a 9600 bios? or no?

James

I would stick with your 9550 BIOS. The BIOS needs to support the hardware and even if the 9600 BIOS would run on your card any features of the 9600 hardware supported in the 9600 BIOS would be lost on your card.

The catalyst drivers will work okay on a card overclocked at the BIOS level. If in any case they would not, it would simply be a matter of flashing the factory bios back in.