If you're like me and bought a TwinFrozr 7950, only to be disappointed by the card having it's voltage locked, horrible hash rate, almost no overclocking ability at all, and are one UPS visit away from cutting your losses and returning/selling it; take a deep breath and prepare to turn these cards into one of the most efficient 7950's out there.
To start off, all credit most be given to the guys over at coinrigs.com.au, who have unfortunately gone offline recently,
for providing the modded bios for the TwinFrozr 7950. I would have been SOL without them.
This guide will show you how to flash your MSI TwinFrozr 7950 so the max voltage you hit while mining is 0.962V.....kinda. See, the people over at coinrigs.com.au that created these bios say that they max at 0.962V. While CGWatcher/CGMiner will agree, GPU-Z does not, and will display a varying VDDC reading anywhere between 1.031V-1.098V.
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w586/msiflash/volttest2_zps3d020276.png Even though this was taken shortly after the miner was started, CGWatcher/CGMiner will always display 0.962V. Technicalities aside, this is
MUCH better than our stock voltage of 1.188V.
Now, with all that out of the way...
You will need:
Step 1: Setting up USBInstall the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Once installed, start it up and insert a USB drive that you don't mind formatting.
Next select your USB drive under device and:
- Select FAT32 for your file system
- check the box by "Quick Format" and "Create a DOS startup disk".
- Now select "Using DOS system files located at:" and navigate to your extracted win98boot folder, and select the whole folder.
- Click start
It should look something like this.
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w586/msiflash/usb_zpse661841e.pngIf done correctly, you should now have a bootable thumb drive.
Step 2: Gathering Necessary FilesNow, if you grabbed the 4 bios files from above, you will notice 2 of them are backups and 2 have 0.962V after them. Since there are 2 versions of the TwinFrozr, we have 2
different versions of the bios, the V276 and V277. You must use the correct bios for the correct version of card, which we will determine later. For now, just transfer both versions over to your USB drive, as well as the atiflash.exe from the atiflash_407 folder.
For the sake of remembering the names of the bios files later on, you can rename them something nice.
For example, I renamed mine like so:
- From bios.7950twinfrozr.V276_18S.SB.v962.rom to bio276.rom
- and bios.7950twinfrozr.V27717S.SB.v962.rom to bio277.rom
Your thumb drive should look something like this.
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w586/msiflash/atiflashusb_zps65f969a1.jpgStep 3: FlashingNow that everything is set up you're gunna want to restart your computer, and boot up Windows98 from the USB drive. Depending on your motherboard, you may have to change some settings in your motherboard's bios so that it can recognize the USB as a HDD.
Once you have booted up Windows98 you should see Windows98 DOS.
For reference, the following commands we are using are:
-ai [NUM]Display advanced information of ATI adapters [NUM] if specified
-f Force flashing regardless of security checking BIOS file info check OR boot-up card
-p <NUM> <FILE> Write BIOS to image <FILE> to all appropriate adapters
-reboot Force a reboot of the system after successfully completing the specified operation
A full list can be found here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57750From here, type the following (without quotes):
- Type "atiflash.exe -ai"
- For this example we'll say we have two cards, one being V276 and the other V277. The output should look like this.
- C:\atiflash.exe -ai
Adapter 0 (BN=06, DN=00, PCIID=679A1002, SSID=27611462)
Asic Family : Tahiti
Flash Type : W25X20 (256 KB)
Product Name : 113-MSITV276MS.1A1 7950 BOOST EDITION
Bios Config File : V276-18S.SB
Bios P/N : 113-xxx-xxx
Bios Version : 015.029.000.005.000000
Bios Date : 12/06/12 01:59
ROM Image Type : Legacy Image
ROM Image Details :
Image[0]: Size(65536 Bytes), Type(Legacy Image)
Adapter 1 (BN=07, DN=00, PCIID=679A1002, SSID=2hatt7731462)
Asic Family : Tahiti
Flash Type : W25X20 (256 KB)
Product Name : 113-MSITV277MS.270 TAHITI B0 PROH2 C38613 GDDR5 3GB 500E/150M
Bios Config File : V27717S.SB
Bios P/N : 113-C3861300-X03
Bios Version : 015.031.000.001.001867
Bios Date : 03/08/13 00:47
ROM Image Type : Legacy Image
ROM Image Details :
Image[0]: Size(65536 Bytes), Type(Legacy Image)
- The "Bios Config File" is what we want to look for.
Adapter 0 shows "Bios Config File : V276-18S.SB" meaning (if renamed like recommended above) use the bio276.rom
Adapter 1 shows "Bios Config File : V27717S.SB" meaning use the bio277.rom
- After identifying which card you have, type "atiflash.exe -unlockrom 0"
- Next, if type "atiflash.exe -f -p [Adapter Number] [Bios File Name]" where "[Adapter Number]" is the video card you want to flash, and "[Bios File Name]" should be one of the two:
- For V276-18S.SB type "atiflash.exe -f -p 0 bio276.rom"
- And for V27717S.SB type "atiflash.exe -f -p 0 bio277.rom"
- Now you just wait for it to finish. You will know it's done when it asks you to reboot, but if you have multiple cards to flash, it's safe to do them all at once.
Just repeat the steps, starting from "atiflash.exe -unlockrom", and just changing the adapter number.
- (ex. "atiflash.exe -unlockrom 1")
- (ex. "atiflash.exe -f -p 0 bio276.rom") or (ex. "atiflash.exe -f -p 0 bio277.rom")
- Once you've flashed them all, type "atiflash.exe -reboot" and boot back into windows.
And that's it, your all done. It is worth noting that when I flashed my 4 cards I had to reboot my pc twice. Don't know if that's common or not, but if your cards don't seem like they were flashed, give it a shot.
Another thing, you need to change the voltage in your cgminer settings to
0.962 (
Thanks MrJay)
If you use cgminer.conf files for your settings, feel free to try mine out:
"intensity" : "20,20,20,20",
"vectors" : "1,1,1,1",
"worksize" : "256,256,256,256",
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt,scrypt,scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2,2,2,2",
"thread-concurrency" : "22400,22400,22400,22400",
"shaders" : "1792,1792,1792,1792",
"gpu-engine" : "0-1070,0-1070,0-1070,0-1070",
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "1250,1250,1250,1250",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0,0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20,20,20,20",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.962,0.962,0.962,0.962",
"temp-cutoff" : "95,95,95,95",
"temp-overheat" : "85,85,85,85",
"temp-target" : "75,75,75,75",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"queue" : "0",
"scan-time" : "1",
"expiry" : "120",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"no-submit-stale" : false,
"scrypt" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
Here is a screen shot of 4 days of straight mining to show consistency with these settings.
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w586/msiflash/4daytest_zps0dcac3ab.pngJust let me know if you have any questions.
If you found this guide helpful feel free to tip at:
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