SOLVED When flashing Bios?

Hey guys,

I have over the past weeks had issues when flashing my 7970's.

I have made a few mistakes, and learnt from them, but it seems like i may be making yet another one.

When I flash my cards, and i flashing from the Stock bios ( Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X 6Gb) to the Toxic Boost version (Sapphire 7970 Toxic 6Gb)

The new bios runs 1200/1600, instead of the 1050/1500. Unsure if volts are changed? I got to here one night late, trying out a few settings to mine, but nothing helped, but the cards ran great with the toxic bios.

Now, at first running the toxic bios wasnt an issue. All gaming was good, no issues anywhere.

One day i started to have a few issues in BF4, wether this is down to the game or my cards, or the screen, or (as highly suspect) the miniDP to DVI i cannot be sure.

But when moving fast, i was getting a cutting of a sort in the graphics, similar to when refresh rate is too low.

I headed out, disabled CFX, and flashed both cards back to stock 1050/1500 bios. This was fine, until, i turned on CFX. Turning it back on, would cause BSOD.

I tried to uninstall the 13.9 drivers, that caused BSOD.
I tried to update to the 14.4, that caused BSOD.

Then i did a system restore, to before i flashed my cards back to stock bios.

The system booted, both cards (of course) ran the stock bios, and they were running fine in CFX.

I went back into BF4, same issue, and it just annoyed my eyes to look at. With 2x 7970's i dont see how or why i should be getting such graphical issues when playing 1920x1200.

I left it alone, and didnt play much again.

Few days later, i re flashed to the toxic bios. Same story, disable CFX, flash and then try to enable CFX.

Same deal, BSOD, i thought, ok, i'll do a system restore. Worked fine, toxic bios, and back in CFX.

Last night, i got my third 7970 card for tri-fire.

Installed it, and wham, BSOD, from the get go.

I thought, **** it, and did a full system format and reinstall, as i had come to the conclusion that it was something in the system reg, messing it all up.

I formatted, installed chipset drivers, and then 14.4 driver. System booted, and i jumped into CCC to enable CFX on my newly installed system.

BSOD.

This was with 2x cards running Toxic and last card running stock bios.

Now, i got kinda annoyed. I ripped out the CFX bridges, flashed the cards, uninstalled 14.4, installed 13,9 drivers, system booted with 1920x1200 for once, and all 3 cards showed up in GPU-z with correct stock bios settings.

I turned off, hooked up the CFX bridges, booted up, and held my breath.

Booted into windows fine! Then i went into CCC, enable CFX, once more held my breath as i clicked ok. Flsahing of the screen's and to my amazment, i had tri-fire with no BSOD.

I ran a few benchings and all seems to work like it should.

Now, to my original question.

Can it really be true that i need to remove the CFX bridges when flashing my cards, or do i have a much much deeper issue?

This is why we say don't run multiple cards unless one NEEDS to, LOL!

You do not need to remove the bridges to flash. At least, I never did and it worked.

EarthDog said:

This is why we say don't run multiple cards unless one NEEDS to, LOL!

You do not need to remove the bridges to flash. At least, I never did and it worked.

Click to expand...

I have never done so in the past, but not it seems to be giving me driver problems.

I am going to Format the rig again today, because some has changed, so make my main SSD second in line, so i will get to test all this again.

That said, i NEED more than one card

2, fine. 3.................... you are out to lunch on 1900x1200... LOL!

EarthDog said:

2, fine. 3.................... you are out to lunch on 1900x1200... LOL!

Click to expand...

Oh dear no, just bacause i play BF4 in 1920x1200, doesnt mean i never play in 5760x1200 when i play car games. Latly, i just havnt been playing car games.

Oh that's right... you are multiple monitors...

EarthDog said:

Oh that's right... you are multiple monitors...

Click to expand...

I play BF4 in 1920x1200 cos i get a headache from the side screens. They are pointless in BF, and only add confusion.

So the issues is the same.

I need to remove all bridges to get anywhere.

Atikmpag.sys is what causes the BSOD. Turns out im not the first.

I have a sneeking idea its the 2 "old" 7970's giving issue.

When i get my new block, i'll put my new card in position 1, and run the others as 2nd and 3rd. See how that goes.

I am starting to think one or two of my cards are bad. Since one less than 6 months old, i am going to change the cards around tomorrow. So far i out the new card in slot one, running on air. Then my oldest card center and the rma one bottom. Switching my watercooled cards around i can test cfx with the last and final untested combo.

Can faulty ram cause this?

When i moved the air cooled card from slot 3 to 1, the bsod stopped, now it just restarts when i try to enable cfx. All this is 100% down to when i activate cfx. 14.4 drivers are worse than 13.9, at least 13,9 will allow me to cfx the carda, they run bf4, but i am unsure if they do the job like they should? When testing borh cards 2 and 3 got stuck at 99% gpu usage.

I am going to sleep, ik all goes to hell, well i still got rma as a last resort.

When cards get stuck at 99% gpu usage it's a problem with ulps. Also, if ulps isn't disabled and you try to overclock, it can cause bluescreens. For me, changing bios was enough to make Windows see it as a new card and amd drivers would re enable ulps.

I've had a ton of problems with ulps even with my 290s, but I had to go through and disable it for my 7950s too. It's been my experience that if you use trixx or afterburner to disable it then reboot the problems go away.

Supertrucker said:

When cards get stuck at 99% gpu usage it's a problem with ulps. Also, if ulps isn't disabled and you try to overclock, it can cause bluescreens. For me, changing bios was enough to make Windows see it as a new card and amd drivers would re enable ulps.

I've had a ton of problems with ulps even with my 290s, but I had to go through and disable it for my 7950s too. It's been my experience that if you use trixx or afterburner to disable it then reboot the problems go away.

Click to expand...

My biggest issue is that.

All this has happened after running Toxic Bios on my cards.

Now i have 2 cards that have run the Toxic bios, and one card that has not.

I know that one card accepts the 14.4 drivers, i can get CFX to work with all 3 cards when running 13.9.

Could ULPS be what is causing my BSOD during change from 1 to 2 or 3 card CFX?

It can be. Ulps is for the second/third/fourth cards in crossfire setups. It's to reduce power consumption at low load by shutting down the extra cards. If you havent yet, try installing trixx, hit the checkbox to disable ulps, reboot, then try enabling crossfire.

Okay, so i seem to have fixed the CFX problem.

So heres what happened once i got home.

I tested all the ram sticks one by one.

Then I took the rig out to try and change around the GPU's one last time.

I took the rig out, and then thought, hell no, i got my new and never bios modded card in slot one, it should at the very least take the 14.4 driver without b****ing. I plugged it all back in, booted up, when to uninstall 14.4 and wham, BSOD, just like all the other times.

I sat back and thought about it. This issue happened even before i changed anything, what could it be, what i have i changed lately.


I then thought, could it be, the bios, locked in some stupid setting, to do with OC, and remving of parts. Since i was on 1302 bios and 1403 is out, i figured, i'd at least update the bios, before i went crazy on the GPU's and RMA.

I updated the bios, did the basic setup, used ROG to completely wipe my SSD, clean install, and all the good stuff.

Installed the chipset driver, and then installed 14.4 drivers.

They installed fine, i did a restart on the rig, went into CCC, and to my amazement all cards, running in CFX!

I then clicked disable, and apply! Success!
Then Enabale - Success!

Installed more drivers, did another test of off and on, and still no BSOD!

Seem to be working now!