Seller Note “Suffered PSU power surge, both BIOS damaged, cannot reflash using software, BIOS id missing in GPU-Z”
Summary
- It’s this one https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/xfx-rs-rx-570-black-edition.b5238
- Resistances
- Vcore – 0.8
- Vmem – 28
- Display Rail or VDCCI? – 26.7 or 25.6 ?
- 1.8V
- 5v – 820
- 12v – 2K+
- 3.3v – 2.5K
- Voltages
- Vcore –
- Vmem –
- VDCI –
- Display Rail- 0.91v
- 1.8V –
- 5V –
- The card is detected, code 43, but the BIOS id is not present in GPU-Z indicating a likely BIOS error.
Trying to re-flash as a second card using amdvbflash:
c:\gputesting\amdvbflash_win_3.31>amdvbflash.exe -fp -p 0 XFX.RX570.4096.170419.rom
AMDVBFLASH version 3.31 EXTERNAL, Copyright (c) 2021 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Old DeviceID: 67DF
New DeviceID: 67DF
Old Product Name:
New Product Name: D00034 Polaris20 XL A1 GDDR5 128Mx32 4GB 300e/300m
Old BIOS Version:
New BIOS Version: 015.050.002.001.000000
Flash type: M25P20/c
Write fail
0/40000h bytes programmed
ERROR: 0FL01
This was unsuccessful. Possibly re-flashing will work directly using a CH341A flash programmer.
I noticed some other dirt or signs of possible overheating or a previous repair near the PEX VRM. Hopefully is nothing serious, there are similar deposits where the VRM thermal pads sit (above the VCore VRM).
The selectable dual BIOS can be seen below.
One BIOS chip (U3) has 2.77v on pin 1 (chipselect), the other (U4503) has 3.3 on pin 1. Guessing U3 is the selected one. I will try re-flashing it with my CH341A programmer, but I am starting to suspect the seller could be right in their suggestion that the BIOS chips themselves are somehow damaged.
BIOS chip U3 had an error when flashing:
rupert@Ubuntu-XPS-13-9300:~/gpustuff$ sudo flashrom --programmer ch341a_spi -w XFX.RX570.4096.170419.rom
flashrom v1.2 on Linux 5.13.0-37-generic (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
===
SFDP has autodetected a flash chip which is not natively supported by flashrom yet.
All standard operations (read, verify, erase and write) should work, but to support all possible features we need to add them manually.
You can help us by mailing us the output of the following command to [email protected]:
'flashrom -VV [plus the -p/--programmer parameter]'
Thanks for your help!
===
Found Unknown flash chip "SFDP-capable chip" (256 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents... done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x55, Found=0xff, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0003ffff: 0x24420
Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
Please report this on IRC at chat.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or
mail [email protected], thanks!
BIOS chip U4503 - had the same error when flashing.
OK, so the next step will be to replace the chips. Seems strange to me that both should fail together? Perhaps the seller damaged them when trying to re-flash them himself. The BIOS chip is FM25Q02 http://www.fmsh.com/nvm/FM25Q02_ds_eng.pdf, I will order some new ones.
Update 07/06/2022
OK, so I have the spare VBIOS chips now, but something seems strange about this story so I did some checking with an oscilloscope. It looks like only VBIOS U3 sees activity on pins 1, 2 and 5. Whereas VBIOS U4503 looked to be missing any pin 5 activity (Data Input).
Well, I must have misread that missing pin 5 on U4503, because replacing both VBIOS chips with brand new reprogrammed ones seems to have lead to a fully working card! (both BIOSs tested)
Testing
- Bechmarks (Kombuster HD, Furmark HD, Heaven HD Ultra, 3D TimeSpy) all looked very good.
- Sunautica fine, decent looking temperatures ~70 degrees C
- Now in my main machine, behaving nicely, Fortnite running well. The RX 570 is actually quite a nice card for my sort of games.