WEEEEH!!!!
 

Hiya guys! [first post]
I read alot about this stuff when I was away from my own comp and therefore had alot of spare time. When I got home I couldn't resist trying.

I flashed my MSI5900XT (yes it's the XT) to a 5950U (5900u flash first to be exact) and it worked! I benched and no artifacts etc!
I run at stock 5950U speeds (475/900) and with stock cooling ( still no ramsinks on) and it works ^^

Just thought some wanted to know in case they were reluctant to try with an XT. Besides if you have a PCI card and make a bios update, it's really easy to revert any bad changes! Just be sure to reinstall the drivers when you get back so that all will work. Really, do try ! :P

BTW! I have some homemade (cut a large processorsink apart) aluminium ramsinks, they cant cover it all cause of the cooler, about 3mm - 2mm cant be covered, and they are around 1.3cm tall (tacks not lines so theres SOME airflow). Should I mount them on the card ? I have some tape stuff I got from a Thermal Take package. Would it help ?

I think the direct airflow over those ramchips will do more good then putting tape on them.

nice to hear the XT -> 5900U flash worked out fine :super:

It did but I went all the way to 5950u thats what amazes me :P I just started with a cautious 5900u flash, saw everything worked and proceeded to flash with a MSI 5950U bios, hehe :P

Today I TRYED to modd my Gigabyte FX 5900XT to 5950Ultra but NO. The bios was good but after i installed the new drivers i got a lot of artifacts all over the screen. Now I'm searching for a 5900Ultra bios. Can u help me????? I'm pretty sure that will work. Anyway I sure hope so!!!

Aww well I guess you used the Gainward bios no ? At least that is the best approach (to use bios's from the same manufacturer)
Really all I say now will be stuff I repeat.
You could try to rip the card out (just to be sure!) and look at what ram you have on it (yea yea some peeps say that this and this cardf has these kinda ram and that's it, well not quite, MSI for example, started making these cards with 2.8 but quickly changed to 2.5ns ram)

HOW TO CHECK YOUR RAM:
While having the card out, turn on a strong lamp cause this text is small :P Then read on the ram chips. It will most likely have a string like:
HY5DU283222
Below that is something like:
AF-XX
Depending on what the xx's are, you can see what your chips are rated at. Mine is AF-25 meaning I have 2.5ns chips while Leadtek cards usually are AF-2 meaning they have 2ns chips and so on

If yours say AF-28 you have to be really lucky (I'd say that won't work) for it to work out right.

What to check:
That you correctly uninstalled any previous used (manufacturor specific or generic) drivers and reinstalled them after the reboot correctly. If not you can have all kinds of various glitches. I for example, can only clock my card in powerstrip since it bypasses the system and talks to the hardware directly. Anything else would make my drivers screw up since I didn't correctly remove previous drivers (so I still have the MSI clock tab even though it does NOT work at all!)

Also the classical:
Do check on that cooling! There is a reason the 5950U's have all that cooling and ramsinks on! I managed to run mine without ramsinks or any extras but I do suspect that to be halfway the brilliant MSI stock cooler (really a masterpiece) and the airflow I have in the lower section of my case.

Running a flashed card with no ramsinks, makes the card depend highly on the existing cooling!

A good example would be that I have a cpu cooler with a button to adjust speed. I noticed that as soon as I pushed my flashed cards stock speeds just a little (ram being as little as 10mhz) I immidiatly began to see artifacts all over the screen. I opened the case and found the side facing the bottom to be cool while the top side was quite hot, I then discovered the CPU cooler was set to minimum cooling and turned it back up. After that I had no problems pushing my card further!

If the ram seems ok, and so does the airflow, yet you still can't push it to the speeds. I'd suggest settling for a 5900U bios. They aren't all that bad really! I think they run something like 850mhz on the memory as opposed to the 950mhz on the 5950U (but due to relaxed memory timings used on these two bioses don't expect the difference to be as big as a 100mhz memory overclock on a 5900XT bios!)

The best of luck to you!

Oh btw you should've checked this thread, just a few posts back there was a site with MANY graphics cards bioses. www.mvktech.net (It's a good site ! ^^ )

My experience

Evga FX5900NU flashed with BFG FX5950U Rev1 works perfect..... and i reach an OC of 520mhz Core and 1000ghz memory ...no artifacts :D

P4 2.4c@3.0
256x2 HyperX PC3500
Abit IC7

3DMark2001 ... 17183
3DMark2003 ... 6880

Ps: XFX FX5900 owners try this bios .. it may work ;)


Saludos:D

Strange thing when instal Detonator
 

Hi, ppl, I need some sugestion..
1. I have Noname (without name) FX5900XT (card is black color) strange but true.
2. I Flash card first with Gainword gw203508.rom for FX5950 Ultra then I tray Leadtek bios for FX5950 Ultra, lt203200.rom but same things happens...

I have same results after flash bios with NVFlash 4.41.

When turn on my comp I see bios info FX5950 Ultra, Windows XP say "I found new hardware NVidia FX5950 Ultra". AND ALL IS OK....BUT..!!!... I download Detonator (Forceware version 60.72, 04/04/2004) then I install drivers, restart XP..BUT when Windows XP start I dont see nothing just many vertical lines (some garbage) And XP is FREEZ. I try older drivers Detonator Version53_03 but same things XP is Freez.

But if I uninstal drivers Windows work OK. No freez and say FX5950 Ultra. And If I go to Safe Mode all work OK I see Screen Ok..but when I instal Detonator XP Freez.

Now I turn back my old bios and go back to FX5900XT.

Any sugestion, where is the problem, ...how I can flash and to work ok..please...

Re: Strange thing when instal Detonator
 

Your card probably can't handle the FX5950 clocks.

overclock it to FX5950 speeds, if it works, then flash it, not the other way around :)