How to FIX & RE-Flash BIOS of Bricked GPU on RX 470 / 480 Series
Have you bricked your RX 470 or RX 480 because of bad BIOS or the flashing went wrong? In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to fix the bricked GPU by restoring the original BIOS and then to flash again a modded version.
A few days ago, I was helping a friend to flash a modified BIOS on two Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 8GB OC for a better mining hashrate on Ethereum, and not only. The thing is that flashing the BIOS on the first card went perfect, but for the second card, we spent like 3-4 extra hours to figure what is wrong with it. We followed the same steps like we did with the first GPU (same steps I am showing in my tutorial).
What really happen? Well.. the flashing went well with no errors, but after the restart, we got a strange blue or black screen.. after few more restarts had the same results and at that point, i knew that there was something wrong with BIOS.
For the first GPU, I used 1500 timings (copied to 1625, 1750 and 2000), which went great, hitting around 30 Mh/s on Ethereum.
As for the second GPU I used the same timings on the first try but went bad, then I tested with 1625 timings copied to 1750 and 2000, getting 27-28 Mh/s on Ethereum (unstable).
How I recovered the broken BIOS? What I did to re-flash again the BIOS for few times until I found the best combination?
If this happens to you, no worries, you will get the GPU back up and running in a matter of minutes.
Here is how to fix bricked GPU BIOS on Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 & 480
CAUTION:
Alway backup BIOS before any modification
Always use ATIflash to backup BIOS
Always use Polaris Bios Editor to modify BIOS
Recommended tools:
- Sapphire Trixx http://www.sapphiretech.com/catapage_tech.asp?cataid=291&lang=eng
- ATIFlash 2.74 https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-atiflash/
- Polaris Bios Editor https://github.com/caa82437/PolarisBiosEditor
- GPU-Z https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/
I hope you did not flash the ORIGINAL BIOS and before that, you switched the BIOS jumper to “silent” position, to HDMI ports side. Also, I hope you created a backup of both BIOS versions!
- Shutdown your PC
- Switch the jumper back to original position (OC version)
- Turn on the PC
- Wait for full PC boot
- Switch the BIOS jumper to the “silent” position, to the HDMI/Display Port cables side (yes is safe to switch the BIOS while the system is running, it is meant to work like that)
- Start ATIflash as Administrator
- Flash the original BIOS ROM that you backup-ed before to modify it
- Reboot, that’s it
Once you complete this steps, your GPU should be running with no problems.. feel free to flash a different modded BIOS version with different timings, like I did.
In the end the card was faulty, maybe from the manufacturer and was replaced.
Hope this was helpful! Good luck!
Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.
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