Dude, your write up is very much appreciated. And the context you gave makes a lot of sense and is likely a very good explanation of how i got into that predicament. Just for the record, i send the card off to the retailer one hour ago, but, the things you suggest i try i did try in abundance already, but thanks for typing it up anyway.
And you already gave the explanation why i ran into that damend write lock and you didn't. I did not first flash the updated 5700 oc bios and then flashed again with the 5700xt default bios. I went straight to the XT since i had spent 3 days already on trying to find out why that card was more often than not not starting the fans and reachign 100c+. So i wanted to see what the XT bios was like assuming i could go back easiyl to my backup. So, in all likelyhood you are correct and the faulty 2000rpm/fans don't spin-up at all half the time factory bios was not write protected and thus i could flash the XT bios on the 5700 default OC bios. The XT default bios on the otherhand in all likelyhood was write protected from the beginning, thus i could not flash one damned second time on this one. I call that damend unlucky i guess. And the worst part....i actually rather prefer my card cool and quiet and if i can choose i'd rather go with the 5700 silent bios isnteand of the 5700XT OC bios.
Anyway, i consider this mystery solved, though i'd really like to understand how a vbios flash memory module can become write protected by purely flashing a new bios on it. From a hdd or ssd perspective, you assume that you can override anything by formatting, putting a new filsystem on it and writing new data afterwards. So i am not clear why this is not possible with amd/atiflash. Unless the program is purposefully build that way and the only hardway of doing it is by going full on SPI flashing that chip.
Concerning the bat files you linked on reddit. The codein side those bat files contains excatly the usual atiflash commands i haved used over and over again. So i doubt very much that doing it via bat would have made any difference.
Concluding; you did it right by first flashing the updated 5700 OC bios and by doing so write locking that bios position. I write locked the OC bios position by flashing the current XT OC bios.
And i wonder, can you actually flash anything at all to the OC postion now? You said you cannot flash the XT OC bios on there, only on the silent bios position. Can you either flash the old 5700 factory default OC or the old or new silent bios on the default OC position, now that it apparently has bevcome write locked?
ONE more thing: @
yamahaboy22 Do you want to try and dance with the (Red) Devil and try to flash the "XT performance bios" on the silent bios position?
I assume you flashed the 5700XT silent bios on the silent bios position of your card, right? Because that way we would finally find out whether this write lock business is really about the bios code only, or whether there is some hardware difference between vbios 1 and 2 positions. But if you try this...thats on your own risk, because if this damned write lock is really only softwarebased, chances are good that you lock you silent bios position with the XT performance bios.
