HD 7990: Can you flash FirePro S10000 Bios on it?

[luci5r]

Someone I was speaking with in another forum had suggested the idea that an HD 7990 is essentially very similar to the FirePro S10000 professional card and due it's dual BIOS ability, it should be possible to flash the FirePro BIOS as a secondary BIOS on the card to use the professional driver features for pro apps (like Maya etc.).

He suggested that it has been "done" before; however, collectively, we couldn't find any resources pointing towards the same.

I was wondering if there's anyone here who may know anything about this or any experience with such a possibility.

Thanks.

 

[Kamen_BG]

I've heard of people succesfully flashing other cards, but i haven't yet heard of anyone doing it with a HD 7990.
I don't see why it wouldn't work though.

And even if it doesn't, you're still left with a warking secondary BIOS.

 

[luci5r]

I've heard of people succesfully flashing other cards, but i haven't yet heard of anyone doing it with a HD 7990.
I don't see why it wouldn't work though.

And even if it doesn't, you're still left with a warking secondary BIOS.

When you say "flashing other cards", are you talking about flashing FirePro BIOS on other Radeon HD cards?

This is a critical issue for me as I'm building a Gaming / CGI Development rig and I've been battling the choice between GTX 780 & HD 7990 - both are equally priced. Two separate forums; over 100 responses later, I was quite convinced going with the GTX 780 route. I planned to put in 1 now; and add a 2nd one later down the road to SLI.

This was all good until my fateful conversation with the person who brought up the subject of flashing 7990 w/ FirePro BIOS. That would essentially give me the "perfect" card. Excellent gaming AND Advantages of a professional card/drivers when needed (for pro apps like Maya, etc.).

I'm looking for the very basic information, from scratch, from the ground up, regarding this. If this is even a possibility, it's going to change my decision of going with a GTX 780 and instead going with an HD 7990.

I don't know where to begin and how this is achieved at all; and somehow Google has not been a good friend. I'm not finding anything.

Would really like some help here.

Thanks!!

 

[Kamen_BG]

Yes, I've seen threads of people successfully flashing radeon cards and turning them into FirePro ones.
However, I remember the guy who did it had "limited success".

Anyway, the Nvidia card isn't really better than the AMD one even with the stock BIOS.

In my opinion it would be best if you buy a real Firepro card instead.

http://www.fireprographics.com/experience/us/index.asp
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195118

If you can get the promotion on two of these cards, it's a hell of a deal.
As far as gaming performance goes, they perform on par with the HD 7870.

So essentially you're getting GTX 780 gaming performance and excellent program support.

 

[luci5r]

Yes, I've seen threads of people successfully flashing radeon cards and turning them into FirePro ones.
However, I remember the guy who did it had "limited success".

Anyway, the Nvidia card isn't really better than the AMD one even with the stock BIOS.

In my opinion it would be best if you buy a real Firepro card instead.

http://www.fireprographics.com/experience/us/index.asp
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195118

If you can get the promotion on two of these cards, it's a hell of a deal.
As far as gaming performance goes, they perform on par with the HD 7870.

So essentially you're getting GTX 780 gaming performance and excellent program support.

Quite honest, I don't want to revisit the Pro vs Desktop discussion in totality again; already been through that. But here's a jist:

My CGI Development is not at a full Studio Scale; it's in an infancy stage. The machine is severely divided between Gaming & Work. Not one takes a huge amount of precedence over the other -- so I have to think from both points of view.

The component that has the most amount of utilization for the CGI aspect of things is actually the CPU, not the GPU, as I use Maxwell as the renderer and Maxwell is a 100% CPU only renderer - uses 0% GPU. GPU will only be supporting the Viewport Display in Maya & RealFlow. ZBrush uses it's own proprietary Pixologic library for Viewports which is heavily CPU dependent.

If this was a full-scale, studio-effective CGI machine, it would make total sense for me to go with a Pro card. But in my particular case, it doesn't make sense. I would be better off with a Desktop card that excels at Gaming but can support non-studio scale Viewport Display.

Although I'm no authority on this subject, as I'm still learning, I can also state that your statement about the HD7870 giving essentially a GTX 780 performance will be very heavily refuted by a lot - right here in this forum itself.

That offer undoubtedly is attractive; I actually did come across it early. For now I think for my needs, a Desktop will suit me the best. If however this BIOS swap was possible -- and it's looking like it isn't -- that would have been great! Would have definitely made me pick up the 7990. But right now I'm not sure.

Thanks though; appreciate it.

 

[Kamen_BG]

I was not talking about a single HD 7870.
A single HD 7870 is not nearly as fast as the GTX 780.
It's a day and night difference.

Two of them however are proven to significantly outperform the HD 7970 which is not that far behind the GTX 780.

And now on topic, the main reason to go for a professional card is support in applications.
If that matters to you, go pro, if not go with a gaming card.

I still think that going with two Firepro cards as you are still going to be able to max out any game out there (if not all of them).

 

[luci5r]

I was not talking about a single HD 7870.
A single HD 7870 is not nearly as fast as the GTX 780.
It's a day and night difference.

Two of them however are proven to significantly outperform the HD 7970 which is not that far behind the GTX 780.

And now on topic, the main reason to go for a professional card is support in applications.
If that matters to you, go pro, if not go with a gaming card.

I still think that going with two Firepro cards as you are still going to be able to max out any game out there (if not all of them).

I didn't think you could SLI pro cards - like FirePro?

I'm not writing it off; the offer is attractive - let me do a little research on FirePro's gaming capabilities, especially for RTS (SC2, CoH2, Diablo, etc) games that I play.

Thanks.

 

[Kamen_BG]

There was a test conducted here at tomshardware and the W7000 behaved very much like the HD 7870.
They should scale in Crossfire too.

And yes, you can use multiple professional cards.
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIREPRO-3D/W9000/Pages/w9000.aspx
Gaming support should be there too.

 

[luci5r]

There was a test conducted here at tomshardware and the W7000 behaved very much like the HD 7870.
They should scale in Crossfire too.

And yes, you can use multiple professional cards.
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIREPRO-3D/W9000/Pages/w9000.aspx
Gaming support should be there too.

Thanks! This is helpful. I'm looking into all of this now.