OC your 59xx to the MAX.

hey guys. I been doing ALOT of research in like a million forums for my 5900 LX. So I found info on all the 59xx cards and here is what i found.

All the 5900 cards including the XT, LX and SE version can be flahsed to the 5950 bios. That does not mean they are stable. the XT, LX and SE cards have 2.8ns or 2.5ns ram. The 5950U has a ram of 2.2ns. For what I have seen some ppl have succesfuly flashed their cards and some get artifacts because their ram cant handle it or because their stock cooling sucks. Using the 5950U Bios relaxes the RAM stettings so you can run your Ram higher than with your 5900 bios. The 5950U Bios also increase the Voltage going to the GPU and thus allowing for a greater OC.
Here you can find out how with more detail.

Now lets look @ Voltmoding for both cards.

The 59xx cands can adjust their Voltage through software, for exmaple the 5900 runs at 1.2V in 2D applications and 1.4V in games. the 5950U 1.2V in 2D and 1.6V in 3D. but you can modify they voltage using some resistors.

5950U
Core
Usining a 10K ohms Variable resistor will increase the voltages by .1 so now 3d mode will be 1.7v and 1.3v for 2D
the Red arrows indicate where to connect the resistor.


The Vmem
using a 5.6K ohm resistor will increas the Voltage of the ram from 3.2V to 3.44V. the Yellow arrows in the previous picture indicates where to connect the resistor.

Also, you want to increase the the Voltage of the I/O circuit.
Attach a 4.7KOhm resistor to it. The I/O circuitry will increase from 2.53V to 2.88V.
The orange arrows in the pic show where to connect it.




5900s
Core
Using a 33K ohms variable resistor you can increase the Voltage comming from the ISL6569 chip. The variable resistor allows you to increase the voltage of the GPU as high as you want. Dont overvolt because you can actualy lower your OC speed since they higher the voltage the higher the heat your card produces. I like 22K ohms as a resistance for my card that is aricooled. But for you guys with water or pelts 22k-10K ohms should be fine.
Here is a pic on where to Mod.




Also what you might want ot try is to get the volt moded bioses. this bioses increrase your voltage without having to do a phisical mod on the card. They dont always work. Some ppl reported that it did not work for them and others say it did. I know it worked for me.
here is the link to get the Bios with the volt mod and some extra info on them.

I personaly found out that using the Voltmoded bios that uses relaxed Memory settings in combiantion with a 22K ohm resistor in my Voltage mod gave me the best results. 540 Core and 950 Ram

as of right now I have my Card With a 5950 Bios, volt moded with a 15K ohms resistor runnig @ 540/970. this gives me score of 6517 in 3dmark03. Not bad for a card that was only $150 for me.


Cool Thing. The ASUS 5950U bios does not have Thermar THROOTLING, this is a feature that is in the FX cards that makes the Card stop and Down Clock it self when serntain temp is reached. The Bad things about this is that it gets in the way of Overclocking. That is because it might be runnig @ like 50 C @ 500Mhz Core in full load and it will throotle it. while it can also berunnig @ 50 C with 400 core and wont thootle. See what I mean. Anyways this bios does not have it Enabled which is freaking good.


UPDATE
this has for ALOT of info on XT,SE adn LE cards.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/faq.html


This is for Voltmoding your XT,SE and LE card with even more good stuff and with lots of detail.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/fx5900xt-modding.html

Cool Thing. The ASUS 5950U bios does not have Thermar THROOTLING, this is a feature that is in the FX cards that makes the Card stop and Down Clock it self when serntain temp is reached. The Bad things about this is that it gets in the way of Overclocking. That is because it might be runnig @ like 50 C @ 500Mhz Core in full load and it will throotle it. while it can also berunnig @ 50 C with 400 core and wont thootle. See what I mean. Anyways this bios does not have it Enabled which is freaking good.

Click to expand...

nvidia's thermal throtling doesn't take effect till the card reaches 120-160C (depending on card model and drivers, I belive my 5900U is 140C), at 50C it doesn't do anything, not having it is a bad thing because if you card did get to the tempurature that it's suposed to kick in and it doesn't you're gona kill you're card.

actualy no. Overclock your card to lets say 560 and you will see that the image frezzes for a couple second. then it continues. that is the throotling in effect. It stops your card downclocks and lowers voltage then it continues. anf if you look @ your temps they are not Even close to 100C.
and if you use Riva tuner you can see how low it clocks down your Video card.

please try to help. i think i flashed bad bios!
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=101726

Someone posted in another thread with similar flash problems using wfflash. Use nvflash, if you get the vendor id errors etc use the -p -u switches.

i.e. nvflash -p -u 5900xt.rom

This will tell it to ignore the vendor ids and continue with the flash.

I personaly use wfflash with no problems.
wfflash nm biosname.rom
but if it is not working for you, just do what sanctus says.
remember, use a PCI card if your card is not booting up so that you can flash it back.