No signal after vbios flash

[SaintKr0]

So I've been enjoying my sapphire radeon 6870 HD graphics card for a few days before I start getting this annoying driver stopped and restarted itself error which would stop anything I was playing. At first it was happening when I would skype and surf at the same time but then it wouldn't let me play skyrim anymore. So I looked on sapphiretech.com for updates and found this method for flashing the vbios. The site has me download some software to help create a bootable USB then has me load a few files on there with simple instructions as to what to do. I follow them without any hiccups until I get to restarting after the flash and now I have a no signal message floating around on the screen. There is definitely hard drive activity due to the wizzing sounds I always hear and of course the indicator light that blinks rapidly on the front of the case.

I have an ASUS mobo m4a79xtd evo
amd x4 955 black edition processor
4g of RAM
250g unkown hard drive
sapphire 6870 HD radeon 1g gcard
500watt PSU
I think thats all the relevant stuff right>

got any leads?

 

[Supernova1138]

You probably bricked your card when you flashed the vBIOS. Generally speaking you should never flash the BIOS on your video card, even if you're having issues it isn't worth the risk, you're better off RMAing the card if it is a hardware issue. For the 6950s you could flash the BIOS to unlock extra shaders on some models, but you ran the risk of bricking your card if things went south.

I take it you didn't back up the old BIOS before you did this. If your system has integrated graphics or a second PCI-E x16 slot you can get another GPU and try to reflash your 6870 back to the earlier revision. If that doesn't work, you're probably going to have to replace the card. Remember next time, if you are having issues, update or rollback the drivers, do not play with the BIOS.

 

[SaintKr0]

I do have another graphics card that I was using prior to getting this card...AND I do have the second slot. how would I reflash the card?

 

[Kkkk1]

Flashing the VBIOS is always risky. You may well have knacked the card. Can you find the file at all that you downloaded to check it's the right one? (If you have another PC that is). I doubt you will be able to flash it back as it won't finish it's test in order to re flash it.

 

[SaintKr0]

so heres the update. I contacted the tech support at sapphiretech.com and told them the suggested procedure on their site bricked my card and a technician from the company had me look up the part number, SKU and marking on the memory chip. I guess he used these to match me up with the exact file I needed to flash and instructed me on how to reflash the card using the same atiflash utility and a second card. I had to have my good card in the first slot and the bricked one in the second slot and I had to force it to flash and specify the slot number. The atiflash utility has commands to look this information up so for as scary as it was supposed to be, it was farely easy.

Are you always able to recover from a brick if you have the correct file or no? and if no, why?

 

[SaintKr0]

Update:

I finally found a fix for this frisky graphics card:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=33&post=384067&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0