Video card BIOS

[barn3rd]

In a moment of insanity I built a new system based on an Crossfire setup of 2 gigabyte 5970s. One of the cards is an older card that I bought a while ago that has an older bios. The new one appears to have a bios that is current. I downloaded the @bios tool but displays bios information of unknown for the version. I would like to upgrade the older bios but I am unsure of the process. Some of the questions I have are " where do I get the correct version" " can I do the upgrade while they are set up in Crossfire" by the way I scored nearly 30,000 in 3DMark

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.
Can you give us the model number of the GPU please?

[barn3rd]

Thank you for the reply.

GPUs are GV-R597D5-2GD-B

I am running an I7 950 on an Asus Rampage 3 Formula with 6 gig of mem. I have a 1200 watt true power Quatro from Antec Right. Everything is running at stock speeds.
One bios has a 2009 date and the other a 2010 date. Interestingly when I built the system the initial load of the Drivers from Gigabyte caused a blue screen related to an ATI issue. I downloaded the Latest ATI drivers which worked but have some issues in a couple games I play. For instance while the 3D Mark test is certainly better in game (Battlefield BC2) FPS is not what it was with a single 5970 as measured with Fraps. I thought that I should fix whatever discrepencies the were most apparent i.e. the bios. Before I started to poke my finger into that, I thought I should check with some others.

[Dark Mantis]

If you follow this link it will explain the process of actually doing the update:

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2439.0.html

I have not been able to locate any new firmware for this card at present but I will look into it and post back.

[Dark Mantis]

I have just received a reply and they have suggested that you ask GGTS directly for the update. I really don't understand why one is not available on the website as per normal.

You can either go direct to GGTS at: http://ggts.gigabyte.com.tw/Default.aspx

or through the local UK website at: http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/support-downloads/technical-support.aspx

[barn3rd]

Thank you for the research on this question. I think the question at this point is whether the bios upgrade is advisable? Will the diparity of the bios versions affect performance in XFire? I have to comment as well that the installation of CCC has been anything but smooth and I think may be contributing to anomolies in my performance.

[Dark Mantis]

I am afraid that I don't feel competent to answer regarding the two cards with different BIOSes question as it is not something I have personally come across before. I think the best place for that question would be the ATI forum. I can enquire from our tech support but I am not sure if they would know either. I will post back if I can find something of interest out.

[barn3rd]

Thanks for the answer I will go to the ATI forums and ask the Bios question. I think though that the primary issues I am dealing with are related to the drivers. At this point I am thinking about doing a reinstall of the system to get a new start on the whole thing. One last question though. What is the difference between the drivers on the CD that comes with the Gigabyte card and the ATI drivers.

[Dark Mantis]

Probably very little in reality. The ATI drivers are for the chip that they develop and sell, so they will work with any card that uses that chip. However the different manufacturers like Gigabyte then try and customise the board to make it better and so customise the driver set too. But as I just said there is probably not a lot of difference.

I have asked  the question by the way.

[barn3rd]

Mantis, I figured that the drivers might be the issue but uninstalling and reinstalling did not seem to work. I reinstalled the operating system and tried the Drivers from Gigabyte supplied with the disk. They failed to load with an ATI.MDAG.SYS blue screen. This is the same error I had with the 10.6 drivers from ATI. Frustrated with the results, I downloaded the last drivers that I knew worked with my old system from ATI. The 10.4 drivers worked and the frame rates are where they should be for a single card. Gotta tell ya this was frustrating. I do not know if anyone else has reported problems like this but at least I found a temporary work around. I am going to add the second card and test for Xfire.

[Dark Mantis]

To be honest there have been quite a lot of issues with the later drivers for these cards. I don't know why but there seem to be many problems surfacing and often the only recourse is to roll back to previous versions. By the way the nVidia drivers are just as bad if not worse.

[barn3rd]

I agree about the drivers. Thank you for the help, it will certainly be a key point in my next purchase. BTW I increased my 3DMark score by 2500 at stock speeds with the old driver

[Dark Mantis]

Ok thats a good result then. I can't say I am suprised but no doubt they will get the new drivers sorted out soon and you can look for another boost.

[Wonderwrench]

Have you tried the 10.10 hot fix drivers? http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU86AMDCat1010dHotfix.aspx
Its worth a shot.

Bill

[barn3rd]

I believe they are up to hot fix 10.10e. I tried all of them and they did not work. I think I am going to wait a bit for the next ones to be released. It seems that the uninstall process does not remove everything. For that reason an OS reinstall seems to be the best bet. The cards are great ahh but those drivers fall a bit short. If you hear any news about this let me know.