Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT - BIOS Flashing (P25Q80H eeprom)

[nuka02]

Hi,

I have 6 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT (Base Edition) GPUs which were used for mining. When I got them they had a modded bios installed (BITBY.RU-MODBIOS). After I stopped mining they have been sitting in my drawer and I would like to sell them now. I cleaned them physically (also changed thermal pads and paste) and I would also like to install the original BIOS.

Here is the thing, on 2 of 6 cards I flashed the bios with no problems. I used amdvbflash 2.93 (last version supporting force flash), and the weird thing for me was that it had worked on some cards but not on all of them.

I figured out that the cards have different EEPROM chips. The GD25Q80C ones worked just fine on 2.93 version, while the P25Q80H ones do not. The test shows fail and it is recognized as SOC15 SPI.

amdvbflash (2.93):

amdvbflash (3.04):

I am not able to flash the bios using newer versions of amdvbflash because of SSID mismatch and they do not support the -f command.

I have also tried modding the original BIOS and changing it's SSID to match the one on the GPU but then the system does not boot at all. I recovered them using a second GPU to boot, and then flashed the previous (modded) one back on the bricked GPU.

These cards do not have a dual bios. At this point, I believe that the only option is buying a bios programmer like CH341A and try with that.

Do you guys have better ideas?

 

[VuurVOS]

Hi,

I have 6 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT (Base Edition) GPUs which were used for mining. When I got them they had a modded bios installed (BITBY.RU-MODBIOS). After I stopped mining they have been sitting in my drawer and I would like to sell them now. I cleaned them physically (also changed thermal pads and paste) and I would also like to install the original BIOS.

Here is the thing, on 2 of 6 cards I flashed the bios with no problems. I used amdvbflash 2.93 (last version supporting force flash), and the weird thing for me was that it had worked on some cards but not on all of them.

I figured out that the cards have different EEPROM chips. The GD25Q80C ones worked just fine on 2.93 version, while the P25Q80H ones do not. The test shows fail and it is recognized as SOC15 SPI.

amdvbflash (2.93):
View attachment 383681
amdvbflash (3.04):
View attachment 383682

I am not able to flash the bios using newer versions of amdvbflash because of SSID mismatch and they do not support the -f command.

I have also tried modding the original BIOS and changing it's SSID to match the one on the GPU but then the system does not boot at all. I recovered them using a second GPU to boot, and then flashed the previous (modded) one back on the bricked GPU.

These cards do not have a dual bios. At this point, I believe that the only option is buying a bios programmer like CH341A and try with that.

Do you guys have better ideas?

Does the bios share the orginal part number? If yes, then you can still use a newer version of AMDVBFlash.
If the part number is different, you must use CH341A v1.7 programmer. Dont buy the black version!

 

[nuka02]

Does the bios share the orginal part number? If yes, then you can still use a newer version of AMDVBFlash.
If the part number is different, you must use CH341A v1.7 programmer. Dont buy the black version!

They do not share the same model number. The BITBY (modded) bios shows ASRock as a subvendor as well, so my guess is that they modded their bios and installed it on these Sapphire GPUs.

Can you please lmk why should I not buy the black version? Just curious about the difference.

 

[VuurVOS]

They do not share the same model number. The BITBY (modded) bios shows ASRock as a subvendor as well, so my guess is that they modded their bios and installed it on these Sapphire GPUs.

Can you please lmk why should I not buy the black version? Just curious about the difference.

The black version has a design flaw which prevent proper voltage selection. Watch this video:

 

[eidairaman1]

Since they were mined with, give them a thorough cleaning, to include the heatsink, fan, replace thermal pads and paste make sure ram isn't burned up, and make sure you state in your ad they are x mining cards now

 

[nuka02]

The black version has a design flaw which prevent proper voltage selection. Watch this video:

Thank you so much. Will watch this.

Since they were mined with, give them a thorough cleaning, to include the heatsink, fan, replace thermal pads and paste make sure ram isn't burned up, and make sure you state in your ad they are x mining cards now

Did all of that, took everything apart and cleaned thoroughly, installed new thermal pads and paste.

The last thing to do is install the original BIOS so I can properly test and benchmark each one of them. They were mined with for around 10 months with optimal settings. I did not want to kill them by pulling every single MH/s possible. Will mention that they were used for mining tho.

 

[nuka02]

The reason for this thread is because I have looked at many simillar ones where people could not get to flash the bios using 2.93 but managed to fix it.

They all had the same error message like me (Could not read ROM).

I figured that even though I have 6 of the same GPUs they had different EEPROM chips which is the reason why it's not working and wanted to see if someone had the same or simillar problem. Seems that the only solution here is using CH341A programmer

 

[eidairaman1]

Thank you so much. Will watch this.


Did all of that, took everything apart and cleaned thoroughly, installed new thermal pads and paste.

The last thing to do is install the original BIOS so I can properly test and benchmark each one of them. They were mined with for around 10 months with optimal settings. I did not want to kill them by pulling every single MH/s possible. Will mention that they were used for mining tho.

Yeah the issue is there are many (not stating you) who are deceptive with the cards when they sell them online.