PLEASE HELP!!!I Is my 4870 DEAD for good?

Ray Charles

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A metal (gigabyte esata bracket) touched my 4870 with in close proximity to the back of the card (from inside the case) near the DVI port WHILE IT WAS RUNNING! (the bracket somehow slipped out it was freakish) The screen went black it has never worked since (NO POST) is it dead for good or could the bios have been wiped and I just need a flashing or is their some other fix? PLEASE HELP me recover my 4870 it is the best!!! I saw this article below is recovery via this possible?

How to recover ATI Radeon HD 4870 from bad BIOS flash
Author: W1zzardDate: 2008-06-29 16:55:34

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IntroductionThis article applies only to users who flashed their HD 4870 (GDDR5) with a 64 KB sized BIOS (created by GPU-Z, Winflash or Atiflash) and ended up with an 800 shader paperweight.

The ProblemIn the past all (consumer) graphics card BIOSes were smaller than 64 KBytes. With the introduction of GDDR5 additional space was required for the memory training code. Since ATI could not fit that piece of code into the 64 KB available, they increased the BIOS size to 128 KB (1 MBit).

For an unknown reason ATI's flashing software Winflash/Atiflash does not correctly detect those extra 64 KB and forgets to save them when you dump your BIOS to a file. The same happens to GPU-Z (fixed in 0.2.5 and newer). So everybody who extracted their HD 4870 BIOS ended up with no GDDR5 microcode.

The FixDownload the full 128K BIOS here.
Flash it to your dead card.
Done.
Since the dead card will not POST anymore you have to use another graphics card as your primary VGA adapter to boot from it.
Then go into DOS and find out which adapter number your dead HD 4870 has using Atiflash (download): atiflash -i. Now flash the BIOS using: atiflash -f -newbios -p [index] 4870.bin. Replace [index] with the number of your graphics card from the -i command.
Another way is using ATI Winflash (download) from Windows. Start Winflash, select the correct card and flash away.
After the flash is done, remove the second card and boot from your now working HD 4870.

Please note: RBE 1.11 works fine for these 128K BIOSes, just make sure you do not work with a broken 64K BIOS in the first place (check the file size). The HD 4850 does not have a 128K BIOS, only the HD 4870.

Thanks for helping to make this possible go out to: Dave Baumann, Golden Tiger and xMrBunglex.
 
Solution
I wouldn't even bother trying for a bios flash. You most likely got an electrical short which may have killed the display circuits. The card might have a little life in it but would only function in crossifre as a slave. If you have a second slot on the board and an spare card that is at least a 2k series. Place the known working card in top slot and the damaged card in the lower slot. If it has any life left windows would detect it and would be visible under device manager with out a yellow exclamation mark. If mark or not there at all its a paperweight.
I wouldn't even bother trying for a bios flash. You most likely got an electrical short which may have killed the display circuits. The card might have a little life in it but would only function in crossifre as a slave. If you have a second slot on the board and an spare card that is at least a 2k series. Place the known working card in top slot and the damaged card in the lower slot. If it has any life left windows would detect it and would be visible under device manager with out a yellow exclamation mark. If mark or not there at all its a paperweight.
 
Solution

Ray Charles

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SO IT'S POSSIBLE TO CROSSFIRE IT WITH ANOTHER 4870 AND USE THE NEW ONE AS DISPLAY OUT?
HOW DO YOU THINK THIS WOULD PERFORM (LIKE HOW IT SUPPOSED TO) AND IF THIS WORKS I DEFINATELY WOULD BY ANOTHER 4870 OVER A 5850 OR A GTX 470 BECAUSE IT'S CHEAPER AND (4870X2) PERFORMS LIKE A CHAMPION!!!
DO YOU KNOW ANYONE ELSE THIS MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO?
 
Why 2k and up simple they use the same driver. I had this problem once before but under sli. The lower 7900gs had a damaged power stage and would blue screen when used to display as a single of a master but however it worked in sli with out issue and would overclock as well as the top card which was in mint condition. Crossfire will behave the same way so long the top card is in working condition. However you need to find out if it responds at all to windows and the driver. If the system blue screens on the first try or two with it in the lower slot with no display hooked up to it then it might as well be paper weight.
 

Ray Charles

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Tried it with the pci card!!! (an old riva) just to see if it detects and it is detected but it blue screens in XP 1-3 minutes after booting ater the monitor flashes black 3-5 times (connected to the riva) conecting to the 4870 does nothing different except no respone on the monitor, BUT IT DOES NOT BLUE SCREEN IN WINDOWS 7. It is detectd as a Radeon 4800 series in device manager (device is working properly) just like xp but it does not blue screen. Hopefully it is still good!!!

NB: COULD NOT HAVE TRIED IT IN THE SECOND PCI E SLOT BECAUSE IT WOULD NOT FIT PROPERLY WITH THE RIVA! I ACTUALLY TRIED IT IN THE FIRST SLOT MORE REASON FOR HOPE!!! I AM GOING TO TRY TO SOURCE ANOTHER CARD BUT IF THIS ONLY WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Ray Charles

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SEEMS SO !!! FUNNY THING 4870 SEEM HARD TO COME BY IS THE DIAMOND 1GB VERSION GOOD (MINE IS A HIS 512MB) GOOD?
I MAY ALSO HAVE TO CHANGE THE SIGMA SHARK 635 PSU (ONLY 2 20A 12V RAILS DON'T THINK IT IS ENOUGH) TO PROBABLY A CORSAIR 750 OR SOMETHING JUST AS GOOD!!!
 


The 1gb has a price premium so looking for another 512mb is best unless the one you found is the only one you can get.