Mavke
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/01/31 17:49
Boiler wrote:
I had a board that the first PCI Express slot had failed when a faulty card blew, to get to boot from second slot I had to set in BIOS to boot from Peg2 otherwise it kept looking for the first boot device in slot one though no card there, I hope ya get it fixed, then charge the noob... 
Cool, thanks for sharing that info mate, so that would be something to try and make sure you have a good working PCI Express card that it can boot from and the other in the other slot and see if you can flash it that way. Now make sure you don't flash the good card, first check which card and GPU has which index so you flash the right one. 
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Booboo
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/08 23:59
Hi all, thanks for the advice so far... Problem solved. Didn't do anything clever, just bought an old ASUS X38 Maximus Formula mainboard for the two PCI Express slots. I was expecting to have to play with BIOS settings for the mainboard, but all I did was to try using the old PCI video card again in the new Intel X38 board and set it to boot from PCI then PCI Express. My old Gigabyte P35 mainboard only had one PCI Express slot, and clearly the motherboard just doesn't have the same level of control as the Maximus.
My old P35 board would not let me boot as the Radeon HD 4870 X2's power warning interrupted the boot and could not be skipped. The X38 board seemed to ignore the power warning of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, used the PCI card for the display and allowed me to boot. Straight in to my ATIFlash USB key, used the index option and it found both adaptors. Re-flashed with the original HIS BIOS and got the master and slave GPU's sorted, et voila! Just goes to show you what a decent quality motherboard can do for you I suppose... Now then, about that charge.
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Booboo
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/09 00:49
It gets better, I thought it worked, I sorted the master and slave BIOS problem, and then found the real problem, actually as my friend has taken until now to point out, this other problem was why he flashed the BIOS in the first place. Eugh, I can feel a headache coming on. Booted into Windows with the new BIOS's, installed the Catalyst 8.12 drivers and restarted. We get to the Windows logo, blackscreen and blue screen infinite loop. Yeah, a favorite on these forums by the look of it, here's what I did. I used the Windows menu VGA boot to see what's going on.
You can't do much in VGA, but GPU-Z does work. Both GPU's were detected and seemed okay, however I noticed that the slave GPU was running at 99%, but the machine is idling with the master at 0%-5%. So, I decided to disable the slave GPU from the device manager display adapters, it will show two Radeon HD 4870 X2 adapters, but when you check properties they have a different location on the PCI bus. I restarted, and booted to Windows with no hassle, GPU-Z found the master card, but gave a null/weird set of values for the slave card since I disabled it.
So I ran a benchmark on it, seemed fine in fullscreen with 200 frames or so, no idea what options as I was just testing it. At this point I noticed that my PCI card was still in the list of adaptors, as I had forgotten it and left it in the PCI slot. This gave me an idea, so since I was blue screening with the Radeon HD 4870 X2 I set the PCI card to be my primary adaptor in display settings. I then re-enabled the slave GPU and re-booted. Now, with the PCI as my primary adaptor, Windows booted fine into my desktop. Yay, now I have full access to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the Catalyst drivers.
I used display settings to set the master GPU to be my primary adaptor and the slave to be an extended desktop, you don't have to restart to do this. With this setup, I ran two instances of the benchmark, the master got again around 200 frames, the slave was getting like 20 frames at most. So, the upshot of all that? The slave GPU is having a terminal brain fart, most likely a hardware failure, any attempt to enable CrossFire results in the infinite loop of blue screens. I very much doubt that anything will fix it short of soldering new components or a even new core.
It would most certainly have been time for an RMA, if he hadn't botched his warranty so horribly. The master GPU is actually fine though, so in the end, he handed me a bricked Radeon HD 4870 X2 to fix, I'm handing him back a very hot, very big, very noisy, highly inefficient, Radeon HD 4870. Thanks for all your advice, and hope some of all that essay up there may be useful to someone struggling with similar issues.
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Boiler
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/09 07:22
With the correct BIOS's on the card you may be able to RMA the sucker now, as is not a bricked card, is obviously failed... Should still have some sort of warranty unless someone knows about it...
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Mavke
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/09 08:44
WilBar wrote:
It would most certainly have been time for an RMA, if he hadn't botched his warranty so horribly. The master GPU is actually fine though, so in the end, he handed me a bricked Radeon HD 4870 X2 to fix, I'm handing him back a very hot, very big, very noisy, highly inefficient, Radeon HD 4870.
Well done mate, you tried a lot of things but got to the main issue with the card finally which is as you say the second GPU, being the slave one. And I would confirm that I would still use the warranty now that it has the right BIOS's and RMA it as not working as it should and never has if we go from your friends story. So get it replaced. 
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Booboo
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/09 19:00
Hiya, well no receipt, no box, no accessories, I've been very lucky and never had to RMA anything, but surely they aren't going to help without any evidence of ownership?
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Mavke
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/09 19:08
WilBar wrote:
Hiya, well no receipt, no box, no accessories, I've been very lucky and never had to RMA anything, but surely they aren't going to help without any evidence of ownership?
Hehe, correct on that one mate. You should at least keep all the stuff, like box, receipt and serial number to profit from the warranty. So yes in that case it is a pitty, but who buy a product and doesn't keep the box and so on to be able to use the warranty in case of something going bad, cause that is always possible? 
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Booboo
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/14 10:07
The same kind of guy that would try to fix a serious fault with a BIOS flash, then flash the slave and master the wrong way round. I think he bought it as card only from someone, looks like he was sold a dead card right from the start, poor guy hasn't done very well...
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Mavke
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Re:Radeon HD 4870 X2 with a BIOS bricked, any ways to fix this!? - 2009/02/14 14:59
WilBar wrote:
The same kind of guy that would try to fix a serious fault with a BIOS flash, then flash the slave and master the wrong way round. I think he bought it as card only from someone, looks like he was sold a dead card right from the start, poor guy hasn't done very well...
Yeah, well normally if it doesn't work you return it even when you bought it from someone else. You just shouldn't take it that someone sells you stuff that isn't working. At least that is how it should be, but some just let it happen while they shouldn't. And that is a pitty, but yeah neither would I sell something to someone that I know is somehow not working as it should. 
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