7900xtx bios 7900xtx bios help

[ki8aras]

Hey everyone, i recently got a 7900xtx pulse and wanna do something more than just undervolt it .I'm planning on waterblocking it and building a custom loop, so i was searching of ways to get into the 500-550w power range.

 

i know i need an external programmer to flash the bios and im prepared for that, my question to you guys is, is there a sapphire bios out there with an increased power limit?

 

if not, is cross-flashing possible? (maybe with the asrock aqua bios or sth)

[RONOTHAN##]

12 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

i know i need an external programmer to flash the bios and im prepared for that

AFAIK AMDVBFlash does support crossflashing vBIOSes. It's probably a good idea to have one on hand anyway since you don't have a dual BIOS card if anything gets screwed up during the flash, but it's not a necessesity. 

 

16 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

is there a sapphire bios out there with an increased power limit?

AFAIK the only BIOS that exists with a max power limit over ~400W is the Aqua BIOS, so if you want to increase the power limits of that card to 500W+, the Aqua BIOS is your only bet. 

 

17 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

if not, is cross-flashing possible? (maybe with the asrock aqua bios or sth)

Yeah, crossflashing is totally possible. The only thing that can be an issue when doing a crossflash is the display outputs can be messed up, so on some cards if you flash the Aqua BIOS you end up with only 1-2 working display outputs on the back of the card until you go back to the stock BIOS. The way you determine this is if your card has a different rear IO order or quantity, and since your card has an HDMI where the Aqua has a DP, you're likely going to lose that port and maybe another. 

 

 

The solution that would probably make more sense here though is getting an EVC2 in order to raise the power limits so you don't have to worry about losing display outputs. 

[PDifolco]

26 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

Hey everyone, i recently got a 7900xtx pulse and wanna do something more than just undervolt it .I'm planning on waterblocking it and building a custom loop, so i was searching of ways to get into the 500-550w power range.

 

i know i need an external programmer to flash the bios and im prepared for that, my question to you guys is, is there a sapphire bios out there with an increased power limit?

 

if not, is cross-flashing possible? (maybe with the asrock aqua bios or sth)

I can't find any other 7900XTX Pulse VBIOS in TPU library than the stock one, so indeed question is if any other brand OC model VBIOS is compatible

Even then, flashing VBIOS on NVidia cards was user possible with NVFlash, dunno if something similar exists with AMD

My ASUS OC is limited to PPT 315W in the specs vs yours 303W yet at PL +15% I already reach 430W TGP, so you still have plenty of headroom

imo to get above 450W you need a shunt mod (physical)

[WereCat]

RDNA3 is very locked down so you can't really do much besides physical mods to increase power limit unlike with RDNA2 where you can tweak it fully with just 3rd party software like MPT.

 

https://www.igorslab.de/en/statement-from-team-no-morepowertool-mpt-for-rdna3-and-the-reasons/

 

That said, AMD is open sourcing some parts of their Firmware so maybe something will come up in the future but for now I don't think it's possible to flash BIOS on RDNA3 cards.

 

edit:

 

maybe check out this thread here though it seems like you'll need an external BIOS flashing tool and a bit of luck

https://www.overclock.net/threads/official-amd-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-xt-owners-club.1802706/page-157

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

to get above 450W you need a shunt mod (physical)

Shunt mods don't actually work on AMD cards since they measure their power output much differently than Nvidia cards do. You'd need to use something like an EVC2 in order to tell the voltage controller to under-report the power consumption by ~20% if you want to see ~500W. It's still a physical mod as you'd need to solder to get access to the I2C bus, but this is at least a much easier job as you're not trying to solder to massive power planes and it's much easier to remove the 3 wires if you need to return the card back to stock. 

[PDifolco]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Shunt mods don't actually work on AMD cards since they measure their power output much differently than Nvidia cards do. You'd need to use something like an EVC2 in order to tell the voltage controller to under-report the power consumption by ~20% if you want to see ~500W. It's still a physical mod as you'd need to solder to get access to the I2C bus, but this is at least a much easier job as you're not trying to solder to massive power planes and it's much easier to remove the 3 wires if you need to return the card back to stock. 

Didn't know that, thanks !

You mean this thing, how do you connect it to the GPU ?

https://www.elmorlabs.com/product/elmorlabs-evc2se/

[ki8aras]

18 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The solution that would probably make more sense here though is getting an EVC2 in order to raise the power limits so you don't have to worry about losing display outputs. 

to be honest i don't really mind losing an output or two (im only using one monitor anyways)
 

i am aware of the evc2 as im pretty sure i saw derbauer using it, but i haven't ever really thought about it as a set and forget solution, although i guess it can be

[ki8aras]

16 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

I can't find any other 7900XTX Pulse VBIOS in TPU library than the stock one, so indeed question is if any other brand OC model VBIOS is compatible

Even then, flashing VBIOS on NVidia cards was user possible with NVFlash, dunno if something similar exists with AMD

My ASUS OC is limited to PPT 315W in the specs vs yours 303W yet at PL +15% I already reach 430W TGP, so you still have plenty of headroom

imo to get above 450W you need a shunt mod (physical)

after a bit of searching around on overclock.net i found a guy who flashed the asrock aqua bios on the pulse

[ki8aras]

13 minutes ago, WereCat said:

RDNA3 is very locked down so you can't really do much besides physical mods to increase power limit unlike with RDNA2 where you can tweak it fully with just 3rd party software like MPT.

 

https://www.igorslab.de/en/statement-from-team-no-morepowertool-mpt-for-rdna3-and-the-reasons/

 

That said, AMD is open sourcing some parts of their Firmware so maybe something will come up in the future but for now I don't think it's possible to flash BIOS on RDNA3 cards.

it is possible, but you need to physically reset, then program the EEPROM bios chip on the board, with something like a CH341a flashing tool

[WereCat]

3 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

after a bit of searching around on overclock.net i found a guy who flashed the asrock aqua bios on the pulse

WARNING!!!!

 

By the way... Sapphire cards typically have fuses for each 8-pin connector. Typically 240W per 8-pin and you will blow up the fuses and brick the card if you exceed these limits. Better check if your card has them.

My 6800 XT Pulse does and I know that even the Nitro cards have them on 6950 XT, they had them on 5000 series and it's very liekely they also have them on 7000 series.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, PDifolco said:

You mean this thing, how do you connect it to the GPU ?

 

Yeah, that thing. There's going to be some pads on the back of the GPU that you can solder to in order to get access to the I2C controller. It should be these three pins on the back of the 7900 XTX Nitro+, though I'd want to verify with a multimeter first that they do lead to the I2C pins on the voltage controller. 

Spoiler

 

 

[ki8aras]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah, that thing. There's going to be some pads on the back of the GPU that you can solder to in order to get access to the I2C controller. It should be these three pins on the back of the 7900 XTX Nitro+, though I'd want to verify with a multimeter first that they do lead to the I2C pins on the voltage controller. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

damn thats a heck of a soldering job

[ki8aras]

3 minutes ago, WereCat said:

WARNING!!!!

 

By the way... Sapphire cards typically have fuses for each 8-pin connector. Typically 240W per 8-pin and you will blow up the fuses and brick the card if you exceed these limits. Better check if your card has them.

My 6800 XT Pulse does and I know that even the Nitro cards have them on 6950 XT, they had them on 5000 series and it's very liekely they also have them on 7000 series.

i wasn't aware of that, but even with 240w fuses, 3x8pins=720w, i doubt ill get that high without killing the card

[ki8aras]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah, that thing. There's going to be some pads on the back of the GPU that you can solder to in order to get access to the I2C controller. It should be these three pins on the back of the 7900 XTX Nitro+, though I'd want to verify with a multimeter first that they do lead to the I2C pins on the voltage controller. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

afaik, the pulse has the same board as the nitro+ (minus the dual bioses) so that could work

[WereCat]

2 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

i wasn't aware of that, but even with 240w fuses, 3x8pins=720w, i doubt ill get that high without killing the card

Yeah with 3x 8-pin should be fine. I only have 2x 8-pin so I dared to only go up to 400W with my 6800 XT to keep some headroom just in case of power spike.

I can cool the card on air with the Pulse cooler just fine at 400W with 100% fan speed for overclocking after changing paste for PTM7950 and using washers for extra mounting pressure. Could probably go to 450W on air but I don't wanna risk it  

 

That said, I found that more often than not the card is current limited way more often than power limited in DX12 games and using MPT to increase current limit helps a lot in games. I'm assuming there will be some TDC increase on the XOC BIOS but not sure to what extent.

Even setting Power Limit to 400W and TDC to 370A resulted in Time Spy being current limited in some parts of the test and not being able to hit 400W because of it.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, ki8aras said:

afaik, the pulse has the same board as the nitro+ (minus the dual bioses) so that could work

That connector is on most 7900 XTXs as it's on the reference card, and most AIBs heavily base their designs on the reference PCB. Not everyone does, but it's only a handful of cards that don't have that in roughly that exact same location.