Trouble flashing HIS x1800gto into having 16 pipes

[SornyPanafonic]

I have a HIS x1800gto that i know is unlockable with the right bios, ive acquired a bios that will do it its just that i am having incredible difficulty doing so.

My comp at first didnt have a floppy drive so i went with boot cds. The bootable cds wouldnt work for reasons unknown, i created like 5 of them, none would really get working so i jsut caved in and attatched a floppy drive.

created a bootdisk with atiflash, didnt work, reasons unknown, maybe because its a HIS ICEQ3 x1800gto and not a native (made by ati) card, so i used flashrom240, 237 and 16p. none worked. the same problems would come up-

device 0 not found
ati adapter not found
error 0FL01 when i tried to force flash.

obviously the card is there and is working fine. before this a while back and as recently as a few hours ago i attempted atiwinflash. ive heard horror stories about this program but it never really did or work for me till about 40 minutes ago. what i did was i just flashed it again with a fresh HIS x1800gto bios in an attempt to get flashrom to recognize my card. no dice.

now im at a loss since i know the card is there, its operating normally, its not overclocked, temps are prolly at 40c i would wager, so everything should be a go. anybody else have this card or been thru this?

thanks for any help my dudes.

 

[MetalX]

Flashing those cards isn't guaranteed to work. If it was, they would be sold with all 16 pipelines already enabled. Maybe MOST of them can unlock, but maybe yours just can't. Obviously, if they could ALL be flashed to 16 pipelines, they would be sold as having 16 pipelines because the company could sell them as a more powerful model and get more money from them. Those ones are cards that were made to run on 16 pipelines, but were unable to according to some test (however inaccurate that test may have been). This means that some WILL run at 16 pipes but some won't. I guess you just got unlucky

 

[Sharkfood]

The problem is- you're going to need an "unlocked" bios specifically for the HIS series cards. A Sapphire/ATI/Powercolor wont work as HIS cards vary greatly from the reference design and thus have a very custom BIOS.

Whether or not it will flash is still a question mark. Realize that of most R5xx chips, they haven't acquired the kinds of yields of R4xx or prior so those that come with pipes disabled are more often because they indeed have problems on those pipes and shut off intentionally. This isn't the case much anymore with older series R4xx chips, where most of the pipe-reduced models are just for budget bracket supplies and work fine.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

i see what both of you mean, but the bios i have was changed by someone with the very card i have and his unlocked, i also realize some cards will and some wont, the problem is that this card wont even be recognized. so effectively flashrom wont flash it even with its own bios. its like its not there for these utilities. i am going to try it once more to flash it with its own bios and see if it works. then try it with the new bios.

as for the HIS card, i read half a dozen reviews and the card works great with all 16 pipes open, just 20mhz slower and it wont overclock as well but thats something im willing to compromise on. lose 20 then overclock it 20 to be back at normal with all 16 pipes.

and by the way ive been attempting force flash so its not even like it should ask for the right bios. if anything, it should be a paperweight. not that i want that.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

alright folks, thru some searching and finally mustering up the nerve to edit or change my own bios, i did it. the bios i got for another his didnt work but by changing 19 into 18 on line 00..0070 and using RaBit i changed my HIS.

i also decided to take advantage of what is supposed to be damn good cooling and take it from 520/500 to 550/570. ive read several places its safe to take it to ~563/600 but i dont care to over do it. finally. now if anyone has any idea on how i can get my g.skill ddr800 to stop running at 667 i can finally have things running at what they should be running.