HIS 7950 Ice-Q Bios Flashing Guide - Remove the Boost Voltage of 1.25v, Stop Usage Spiking/Throttling - Give your card a Permanent +50% Power Line -
Here is a step by step guide to flash a bios to your HIS 7950 Ice-Q card which removes the boost part of the bios. So no more high stock voltage of 1.25. It also adds a permanent +50% power line to your graphics card so you dont need to do the power line tweak each time you install a new driver.
Just remember this bios uses stock clocks of 1000/1400 so you need to be sure that your memory can reach 1400 safely.
I will ask Kaboom to create us a new bios using the stock clocks of 925/1250 but removing the boost part of the bios as well as lowering the stock voltage a bit. Everyone should then be able to use that bios safely.
Solutions
You're suffering from the boost bios throttling problem. There are three different solutions.
1. Dial back your overclock and voltage significantly. Not ideal i know. Ensure you have the power limit at +20% all the time.
2. Use
tommys power hack to increase the power limit to +50%. With boost cards +30% is enough usually to remove all throttling from the card at large overclocks like you're running.
3. Use a custom bios created by someone over at oc.net. It will remove the boost part of your bios and remove the throttling. It will also give you a power limity of 50% by default. The problem is the person who is creating this bios is afk atm, so he's not making them currently. The thread on oc.net is located
here.
4. If you want you can try my custom bios. Uses clocks of 1000/1400 by default. Flash this bios to your card. Ensure your card is on bios switch one before flashing. Bios switch two is your backup in case anything goes wrong. I've uploaded my custom bios which Kaboom made me. It removes the boost part of the bios and adds 50% power limit to the cards bios via default so you don't need to do the power limit hack from 2.
Bios Flashing Instructions
You might want to write this down...
You need to create a bootable usb stick.
1. Download and install the USB disk format tool
here.
2. Download the Windows98 system files
here.
3. Create a folder called Win98boot on your desktop, extract the files from step 2 into the folder.
4. Plug in your usb stick. Launch the USB disk format tool. Copy these settings, then click format. You need to select quick format, tick dos startup and select the Win98 folder, like ive done below.
5. Click start, then ok and it should do it.
6. Download
atiflash. Extract it onto the usb stick.
7. Download my [URL="http://www.sendspace.com/file/x2swov[/URL]. Extract it and cut and paste it into the usb stick.
8. If you've done everything correctly your usb stick folder contents should look like this. (except the bios should say Matt.rom instead of HIS7950.rom) Do not worry if you have more or less files than what appears in the screenshot. As long as you have the bios file and atiflash thats all that matters. Windows 8 users might have extra files like in my screenshot.
9. Make sure all gpu's in your pc are switched onto bios 1.
10. Uninstall gpu drivers and any overclocking apps. Do not keep settings delete everything.
11. Restart your pc. Before you hear the beep keep tapping F8. Boot from the usb stick.
12. You should be at dos prompt. Type atiflash -i to get the adapter number for both your gpu's. Typically it will be 0 and 1, unless you have a gpu in a third pci-e slot. You need the adapter number to tell it which gpu to flash.
13. To flash gpu 1 type atiflash -p -f 0 Matt.rom and hit enter.
Wait for it to finish. It will prompt you to restart but before we do that we need to flash the second gpu as well.
Now do the second gpu (if you have one)
Type atiflash -p -f 1 Matt.rom
Once that has completed and you get a notification saying you can restart press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart your pc.
All going well you should get a display and boot back into windows. Now you can reinstall fresh new drivers etc. Boost voltage and boost clock is disabled, your card thinks its a non boost card from now on in and you have the option to select 50% power setting as standard with every driver install.
If something goes wrong and you get no display from the cards after flashing the bios. Turn the pc off and flick both cards bios switch to position 2 to use the stock backup bios. Turn the pc back on and all will be ok.
Good luck.
