Bitcoin Forum

I just bought two Gateway Acer 5850's on ebay for a pretty good price. I'd really like to unlock the extra shaders by flashing the bios to a 5870 bios to reap the extra megahashes. Does anyone know if there is a premade bios I can use? All the tutorials I've seen online seem to only cover boards made by MSI and Asus. I know some non-reference designs are laser cut so doing this would be impossible, but its worth a shot. Here's the card for reference: http://www.ascendtech.us/gateway-acer-radeon-hd5850-1gb-ddr5-pcie_i_vc1gbvgapc58501.aspx  Thanks

I'm sure that only 6850s have the possibility of being unlocked.  5850 bios mods just let you modify clockspeeds and voltages beyond stock in MSI afterburner.

It was my impression that the only advantage to flashing a 5850 to a 5870 bios was unlocking higher clock speeds, back when OCing these above 775 was a pain. However, CGMiner can set any clock speed and voltage in windows or linux, so at this point there's not need to flash anymore.

No, we can always use a lower difficulty as a result of the stupid tax !

Ok thanks for the info haha. I'll post the results from the card on the hardware comparison so others know if its a decent card to buy

You can't unlock shaders. You can't change the clocks or memory without a bsod in windows. You can use a 5870 flash to get higher clocks if the card can handle it. There's a risk to brick the card and you'll need another card to flash from dos.

You can use rbe to edit the voltage registers to get a higher default voltage and use cgminer or afterburner to overclock.