[SOLVED] Vega 56 Nitro+ BIOS Flash

[nospecgamer]

Hey, soon going to be a Vega 56 Nitro+ owner here. I’m buying a used card for about $350 CAD and before I was going with something better but after realizing some people could overclock the 56 to match somewhat close to the RTX 2070, I was thinking to get this card. I also heard that people were able to flash the V56 to a V64 BIOS, and the card i’m getting is the Nitro+ Limited Edition (3 8-Pin connector), it has a dual BIOS switch but i’ve never flashed a card before. What should I do, and what should my process be? Or should I just enjoy a factory overclocked Nitro+? What happens if I brick the card? How do I switch back? How do I save a old BIOS?

 

[daPain58]

Hey, soon going to be a Vega 56 Nitro+ owner here. I’m buying a used card for about $350 CAD and before I was going with something better but after realizing some people could overclock the 56 to match somewhat close to the RTX 2070, I was thinking to get this card. I also heard that people were able to flash the V56 to a V64 BIOS, and the card i’m getting is the Nitro+ Limited Edition (3 8-Pin connector), it has a dual BIOS switch but i’ve never flashed a card before. What should I do, and what should my process be? Or should I just enjoy a factory overclocked Nitro+? What happens if I brick the card? How do I switch back? How do I save a old BIOS?

Use GPU Z, there is an option beside Look-up Bios, to save the bios file

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[daPain58]

Hey, soon going to be a Vega 56 Nitro+ owner here. I’m buying a used card for about $350 CAD and before I was going with something better but after realizing some people could overclock the 56 to match somewhat close to the RTX 2070, I was thinking to get this card. I also heard that people were able to flash the V56 to a V64 BIOS, and the card i’m getting is the Nitro+ Limited Edition (3 8-Pin connector), it has a dual BIOS switch but i’ve never flashed a card before. What should I do, and what should my process be? Or should I just enjoy a factory overclocked Nitro+? What happens if I brick the card? How do I switch back? How do I save a old BIOS?

If card bricks, then you have to use integrated gpu to boot system and then re flash the bios back using ATI flash. But your PC must have a integrated gpu or apu

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[nospecgamer]

If card bricks, then you have to use integrated gpu to boot system and then re flash the bios back using ATI flash. But your PC must have a integrated gpu or apu

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But what if I have a Dual BIOS Switch? How do I save the original BIOS onto the card but with the other bios also? Or is that not how a dual bios switch works?


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[TJ Hooker]

There is a physical switch on the card to switch between BIOSs, can see here:https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/sapphire-radeon-rx-vega-56-nitro-review/1/

So if you were to brick the card you could just switch to the alternate BIOS. But if you wanted to go back and restore the original BIOS that you had written over you'd probably still need an alternate GPU (e.g. integrated graphics) in order to do that.

You can use ATIFlash/ATIWinFlash to backup/flash BIOS files. ATIFlash is a DOS utility if I recall correctly, ATIWinFlash is the Windows application equivalent.

 

[nospecgamer]

There is a physical switch on the card to switch between BIOSs, can see here:https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/sapphire-radeon-rx-vega-56-nitro-review/1/

So if you were to brick the card you could just switch to the alternate BIOS. But if you wanted to go back and restore the original BIOS that you had written over you'd probably still need an alternate GPU (e.g. integrated graphics) in order to do that.

You can use ATIFlash/ATIWinFlash to backup/flash BIOS files. ATIFlash is a DOS utility if I recall correctly, ATIWinFlash is the Windows application equivalent.

How can I save two bios on the dual switch? I’ve never used any utility like this before nor have I flashed anything before. I also have a Ryzen 2600 which does not have integrated graphics


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[TJ Hooker]

You'd boot up with the BIOS switch in one position and save that BIOS file. Then you'd boot up with the switch in the other position and save that file. ATIFlash will only see the BIOS corresponding to the position the switch is currently in. So if the switch is in Position 1, if you choose to save/backup the BIOS you'd be saving BIOS1, and then if you choose to flash a new BIOS you'd be overwriting BIOS1 in the flash chip on the card.

So if you overwrite BIOS1 and then it ends up bricking the card, you can then switch to Position 2 and it will run just fine (using BIOS2). But BIOS1 and BIOS2 will be slightly different profiles programmed by Sapphire, so if you wanted to restore BIOS1 to switch Position 1, you'd probably need to use a secondary GPU of some sort.

 

[nospecgamer]

I have one last question. If I boot up with BIOS2 (Position 2) how would I overwrite that BIOS with the new one that I want? Do I have to download something and put it into ATIFlash? Cuz, I don't have the card and the program installed so I don't have like a close example to what it'll look like.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yes, you would have downloaded the alternate BIOS that you're wanting to use. You'd then use ATIFlash to program that BIOS, which would overwrite whatever is currently written in the BIOS position that is active.

 

[nospecgamer]

Yes, you would have downloaded the alternate BIOS that you're wanting to use. You'd then use ATIFlash to program that BIOS, which would overwrite whatever is currently written in the BIOS position that is active.

Wait I just downloaded ATIFlash to check it out, and where is the Flash button? It just has a Save and Load Image (I assume Image is File) button.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Load=flash.

Yes, image is the BIOS file.

 

[daPain58]

Load=flash.

Yes, image is the BIOS file.

I recommend you to keep 1 bios untouched, so that you can keep it as a fall back bios if problem occurs

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[TJ Hooker]

Yes, definitely backup the original BIOS images. When I was playing around with BIOS modding my RX 580 Nitro+ the first thing I did was save a copy of both BIOS images.