So, How Does Flashing a GPU BIOS Actually 'Brick' the Card?

[boddole]

I can guess on some 'basic' reasons:

Power Outage / System Crash - Enter incomplete and or corrupt values in memory addresses such that the card can't figure out what to do anymore.

Using a Different Card / Maker BIOS - Different order of memory addresses and or different sizes of memory addresses causing nonsense data and or overflowing and corrupting other memory addresses.

Setting some base value so high the card shuts down for protection and or constantly crashes.

1. But beyond that. I don't know. Curious to hear your thoughts / info.

Other Bits:

2) Have you ever 'bricked' a card by starting with that card's own default BIOS and modifying values from that (with non 'totally crazy' values)?

3) What seems to cause the biggest / most frequent issues with your past attempts?

4) What is preventing some cards from ever being re-flashed again?

 

[Blaylock]

1. As you mentioned 'Bricking' a GPU generally involves a partial flash, whether the reason is a power outage or PC crash/freeze. It is also possible to brick a card by flashing an invalid or incompatible VBIOS (Trying to flash an RX 580 with an RX 6700 XT VBIOS).

2. I have been fortunate. I have flashed about 6 different cards (several multiple times) but have not created the brick. I'm praying that me typing this does not jinx me in the future.

3. See above

4. Some cards can be recovered if bricked. Unfortunately, most aren't aware of how. In some cases, you can re-flash a card if you set it up as a secondary GPU in Linux. I have not had the opportunity to try this (see #2) but there are several videos on Youtube explaining how this can be done.

 

[BugFreak]

The last time I tried to flash a GPU was my AMD 290. I was so terrified of bricking it and it gave me such a small gain I never tried again.