Old motherboards + new GPUs

[eidairaman1]

Poor kid.

Yeah exactly, ASUS doesn't seem to give a poop about this mobo anymore, and I don't really blame them. Though honestly this is one of those moments that make me question the ease of PC - or PCIe.. Because honestly ask pretty much any guy out there and we would all be like "oh no problem, PCIe is downward compatible" ... This is really fcked up.

Let me find out something. Punch up on google.com for crosshair 3 bios, grab the one from 2012.

By the way I believe Sapphire gpus still have a uefi/legacy switch, my 290 vaporx does.

 

[27MaD]

There is @XFXSupport that can help.

By the way ensure to load the latest motherboard bios in before switching to a new gpu. Some board makers had beta bios for this situation

Hi , i am switching to a GTX 750TI soon and my mobo is quite old but the last bios update was beta bios (wich i am using now) , so do you think i will not have any compatibility issues ???




and btw sorry for replying on a 1.5 year old post.

 

[MrGenius]

FOR THE RECORD: There's no such thing as a UEFI-ONLY vBIOS. ALL UEFI compatible vBIOSs to date are hybrid. Meaning they have a full and complete Legacy ROM(old school pre-UEFI vBIOS) + an EFI ROM(for UEFI GOP compatibility). So there's absolutely no need to have a "non-UEFI" vBIOS to run your card on ANY motherboard(UEFI or not). There's also no need(currently) to have a UEFI compatible vBIOS to run your card on a UEFI motherboard. You just need to disable secure boot(and/or any other UEFI GOP features) in the motherboard's BIOS/UEFI. You should be able to boot by just disabling secure boot. Other UEFI GOP features will just fail to work as they should. Typically resulting in a black screen during boot(until the desktop suddenly appears) and boot times that are no faster than without having them enabled.

However, the day is coming when you will need to have a UEFI compatible vBIOS to run your card on a UEFI motherboard. That's not due to happen for another couple of years though.
https://www.techpowerup.com/238950/intel-to-remove-legacy-bios-support-from-motherboard-uefi-in-2020

 

[jboydgolfer]

i have overcome a similar issue on two occasions by installing the GPU not in the primary PCI-e slot, but in the secondary, or tertiary. I dont know if what your experiencing is the same as what i did, but my issue was a matter of my old Asrock Z68 not liking the newer GTX970, worth a shot atleast. im not saying i know why it might work, but it did in my case.

 

[Tomgang]

i cant say much about UEFI and new GPU´s. But nvidia´s latest GPU pascal runs fine on non UEFI bios. Have a GTX 1080 TI running just fine on my old X58 motherboard from Asus and i have also testet GTX 570, GTX 660 TI and GTX 970. Different generations and all worked just fine. Cant say about AMD GPU´s cause i have never testet that.

 

[jsfitz54]

Was a Bios reset performed?

EDIT: DDU used to clear out old drivers?

 

[Readlight]

Asus doesn't make new bios updates even if there are problems whit multiple video cards.
i barely got to work my card, because needed to make extra steps and bios changes.

 

[eidairaman1]

FOR THE RECORD: There's no such thing as a UEFI-ONLY vBIOS. ALL UEFI compatible vBIOSs to date are hybrid. Meaning they have a full and complete Legacy ROM(old school pre-UEFI vBIOS) + an EFI ROM(for UEFI GOP compatibility). So there's absolutely no need to have a "non-UEFI" vBIOS to run your card on ANY motherboard(UEFI or not). There's also no need(currently) to have a UEFI compatible vBIOS to run your card on a UEFI motherboard. You just need to disable secure boot(and/or any other UEFI GOP features) in the motherboard's BIOS/UEFI. You should be able to boot by just disabling secure boot. Other UEFI GOP features will just fail to work as they should. Typically resulting in a black screen during boot(until the desktop suddenly appears) and boot times that are no faster than without having them enabled.

However, the day is coming when you will need to have a UEFI compatible vBIOS to run your card on a UEFI motherboard. That's not due to happen for another couple of years though.
https://www.techpowerup.com/238950/intel-to-remove-legacy-bios-support-from-motherboard-uefi-in-2020

Yeah some just provide the function of turning legacy off and on

 

[gb_drbob]

Yeah some just provide the function of turning legacy off and on

@MrGenius - Not all motherboards have the option to force legacy mode in the BIOS settings. I had a similar issue to the OP with a Dell Alienware Aurora R3 & an RX 480. The R3 has an early UEFI motherbboard that hangs on boot (blank screen, no POST) if a hybrid firmware AMD GPU is in the machine. Dell have abandoned the R3 with no BIOS update to fix the bug.

I worked round the issue by manually modifiing the firmware to ignore the GOP image, this allowed me to boot and use the RX 480 in my Aurora R3 (full details in this post on the win-raid forums, also spoilered below)

Spoiler: Long explantion of the manual BIOS mod

Hello,

Recent AMD GPUs have a hybrid ROM which contains two images: A legacy video BIOS (vBIOS) image and a compressed graphics output protocol (GOP) driver image. In theory this allows the card to work well on both legacy systems (which will use the vBIOS image) and more modern systems with a unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) compatible pre-boot firmware architecture (which use the GOP driver).

However some early UEFI implementations cannot cope with the hybrid BIOS, they try to load the GOP driver and fail, hanging at boot with a blank screen. I have personally experienced this with an AMD RX480 and an Alienware Aurora R3 system (other examples: RX 480 incompatibility thread on reddit, R3 with an RX580, another R3 with an RX480)

It is a particular problem for branded systems with custom motherboards like many systems from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc that no longer receive BIOS updates from the manufacturer and have no options within the BIOS to force legacy mode boot when an EFI module is detected.

Some older video cards have a physical switch on them to swap between legacy and UEFI mode. The RX 480 however has no switch and exposes both the legacy and the GOP images to the pre boot firmware. I found that by modifying the firmware ROM for my GPU to mark the legacy image as the "last" image it would hide the GOP image and render the system bootable.

Here is what I did (cross posted from the AMD and Nvidia GOP update thread):

I manually edited the BIOS ROM of my RX 480 to set the last image indicator byte to 0x80 in the PCIR header of the first (legacy) vbios image in the ROM. I found this table helpful in identifying the correct byte to set (byte offset 0x15 from the start of the PCIR header), as I found the image @lordkag posted at the top of this thread a bit confusing.

The biggest hassle was finding out how to fix the BIOS checksum. I modified a 0xFF byte in the padding at the end of the legacy image to 0x7F (0xFF-0x80=0x7F), thereby compensating for the 0x80 I had added to the total, to make the checksum for the entire legacy image match that of the original. There is probably a better way to do this, but I couldn't work out how the value at 0x21 related to the image checksum. On my RX480 the legacy image occupied offset 0x00 to 0xE5FF

After loading the modified image, my RX480 card no longer hangs at boot in my Alienware Aurora R3 and I can use it normally. Similar mods may well help others with poorly implemented EFI BIOS that can't cope with the GOP image on a stock radeon card.

I was expecting the modification to trigger the AMD driver vbios signature checks and necessitate use of the AMD/ATI Pixel Clock Patcher driver patch, but with Radeon 18.12.3 at least, this was not necessary.

To perform this fix you will need a system that will boot with the card you plan to modifiy (I had an older legacy BIOS only Q6600 system to hand). I downloaded the firmware of my GPU to a ROM file using atiwinflash (included with the command line too atiflash.exe, which would also work). I then used HxD to edit the ROM and verified that the ROM checksum matched that of the original BIOS with atiflash (atiflash.exe -cf <FILE> on both original and modified bios, or load the modified bios into atiwinflash without programming it to the card).

I programmed the modified BIOS to the GPU using atiflash.

IMPORTANT: If you plan to do this - backup your original BIOS first (make all edits to second copy) and be very careful you are modifying the correct bytes in the ROM, an error could easily brick your GPU.

NOTE: The offsets mentioned in the table I link above are from the start of the PCIR header. The actual location of this header will vary depending on your GPU rom, it won't start at 0x00. For example, in the ROM of my RX 480 the PCIR header of the legacy VBIOS image starts at offset 0x254 and the last image indicator byte which I modified from 0x00 to 0x80 is at offset 0x269 (0x254 + 0x15):


Below is an example showing how I modified ROM of my card at offset 0xE568 in the the padding at the end of the legacy vBIOS image to balance the checksum so it would match the checksum of the original BIOS. You can also see the start of the next image (the GOP UEFI driver) which begins at 0xE600:

ALSO NOTE: All the offsets and values mentioned above are in hexadecimal Don't attempt this unless you understand what that means and what a hex editor is.

EDIT: Looking at some of the other posts on this forum seems like I'm probably reinventing the wheel here....

 

[eidairaman1]

@MrGenius - Not all motherboards have the option to force legacy mode in the BIOS settings. I had a similar issue to the OP with a Dell Alienware Aurora R3 & an RX 480. The R3 has an early UEFI motherbboard that hangs on boot (blank screen, no POST) if a hybrid firmware AMD GPU is in the machine. Dell have abandoned the R3 with no BIOS update to fix the bug.

I worked round the issue by manually modifiing the firmware to ignore the GOP image, this allowed me to boot and use the RX 480 in my Aurora R3 (full details in this post on the win-raid forums, also spoilered below)

Spoiler: Long explantion of the manual BIOS mod

Hello,

Recent AMD GPUs have a hybrid ROM which contains two images: A legacy video BIOS (vBIOS) image and a compressed graphics output protocol (GOP) driver image. In theory this allows the card to work well on both legacy systems (which will use the vBIOS image) and more modern systems with a unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) compatible pre-boot firmware architecture (which use the GOP driver).

However some early UEFI implementations cannot cope with the hybrid BIOS, they try to load the GOP driver and fail, hanging at boot with a blank screen. I have personally experienced this with an AMD RX480 and an Alienware Aurora R3 system (other examples: RX 480 incompatibility thread on reddit, R3 with an RX580, another R3 with an RX480)

It is a particular problem for branded systems with custom motherboards like many systems from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc that no longer receive BIOS updates from the manufacturer and have no options within the BIOS to force legacy mode boot when an EFI module is detected.

Some older video cards have a physical switch on them to swap between legacy and UEFI mode. The RX 480 however has no switch and exposes both the legacy and the GOP images to the pre boot firmware. I found that by modifying the firmware ROM for my GPU to mark the legacy image as the "last" image it would hide the GOP image and render the system bootable.

Here is what I did (cross posted from the AMD and Nvidia GOP update thread):


To perform this fix you will need a system that will boot with the card you plan to modifiy (I had an older legacy BIOS only Q6600 system to hand). I downloaded the firmware of my GPU to a ROM file using atiwinflash (included with the command line too atiflash.exe, which would also work). I then used HxD to edit the ROM and verified that the ROM checksum matched that of the original BIOS with atiflash (atiflash.exe -cf <FILE> on both original and modified bios, or load the modified bios into atiwinflash without programming it to the card).

I programmed the modified BIOS to the GPU using atiflash.

IMPORTANT: If you plan to do this - backup your original BIOS first (make all edits to second copy) and be very careful you are modifying the correct bytes in the ROM, an error could easily brick your GPU.

NOTE: The offsets mentioned in the table I link above are from the start of the PCIR header. The actual location of this header will vary depending on your GPU rom, it won't start at 0x00. For example, in the ROM of my RX 480 the PCIR header of the legacy VBIOS image starts at offset 0x254 and the last image indicator byte which I modified from 0x00 to 0x80 is at offset 0x269 (0x254 + 0x15):
View attachment 114547

Below is an example showing how I modified ROM of my card at offset 0xE568 in the the padding at the end of the legacy vBIOS image to balance the checksum so it would match the checksum of the original BIOS. You can also see the start of the next image (the GOP UEFI driver) which begins at 0xE600:
View attachment 114548
ALSO NOTE: All the offsets and values mentioned above are in hexadecimal Don't attempt this unless you understand what that means and what a hex editor is.

EDIT: Looking at some of the other posts on this forum seems like I'm probably reinventing the wheel here....

Drawback is this will not work on Vega Cards or NV GTX 1000 series as those are locked from bios mods

 

[MrGenius]

@MrGenius - Not all motherboards have the option to force legacy mode in the BIOS settings. I had a similar issue to the OP with a Dell Alienware Aurora R3 & an RX 480. The R3 has an early UEFI motherbboard that hangs on boot (blank screen, no POST) if a hybrid firmware AMD GPU is in the machine. Dell have abandoned the R3 with no BIOS update to fix the bug.

I worked round the issue by manually modifiing the firmware to ignore the GOP image, this allowed me to boot and use the RX 480 in my Aurora R3 (full details in this post on the win-raid forums, also spoilered below)

Spoiler: Long explantion of the manual BIOS mod

Hello,

Recent AMD GPUs have a hybrid ROM which contains two images: A legacy video BIOS (vBIOS) image and a compressed graphics output protocol (GOP) driver image. In theory this allows the card to work well on both legacy systems (which will use the vBIOS image) and more modern systems with a unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) compatible pre-boot firmware architecture (which use the GOP driver).

However some early UEFI implementations cannot cope with the hybrid BIOS, they try to load the GOP driver and fail, hanging at boot with a blank screen. I have personally experienced this with an AMD RX480 and an Alienware Aurora R3 system (other examples: RX 480 incompatibility thread on reddit, R3 with an RX580, another R3 with an RX480)

It is a particular problem for branded systems with custom motherboards like many systems from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc that no longer receive BIOS updates from the manufacturer and have no options within the BIOS to force legacy mode boot when an EFI module is detected.

Some older video cards have a physical switch on them to swap between legacy and UEFI mode. The RX 480 however has no switch and exposes both the legacy and the GOP images to the pre boot firmware. I found that by modifying the firmware ROM for my GPU to mark the legacy image as the "last" image it would hide the GOP image and render the system bootable.

Here is what I did (cross posted from the AMD and Nvidia GOP update thread):


To perform this fix you will need a system that will boot with the card you plan to modifiy (I had an older legacy BIOS only Q6600 system to hand). I downloaded the firmware of my GPU to a ROM file using atiwinflash (included with the command line too atiflash.exe, which would also work). I then used HxD to edit the ROM and verified that the ROM checksum matched that of the original BIOS with atiflash (atiflash.exe -cf <FILE> on both original and modified bios, or load the modified bios into atiwinflash without programming it to the card).

I programmed the modified BIOS to the GPU using atiflash.

IMPORTANT: If you plan to do this - backup your original BIOS first (make all edits to second copy) and be very careful you are modifying the correct bytes in the ROM, an error could easily brick your GPU.

NOTE: The offsets mentioned in the table I link above are from the start of the PCIR header. The actual location of this header will vary depending on your GPU rom, it won't start at 0x00. For example, in the ROM of my RX 480 the PCIR header of the legacy VBIOS image starts at offset 0x254 and the last image indicator byte which I modified from 0x00 to 0x80 is at offset 0x269 (0x254 + 0x15):
View attachment 114547

Below is an example showing how I modified ROM of my card at offset 0xE568 in the the padding at the end of the legacy vBIOS image to balance the checksum so it would match the checksum of the original BIOS. You can also see the start of the next image (the GOP UEFI driver) which begins at 0xE600:
View attachment 114548
ALSO NOTE: All the offsets and values mentioned above are in hexadecimal Don't attempt this unless you understand what that means and what a hex editor is.

EDIT: Looking at some of the other posts on this forum seems like I'm probably reinventing the wheel here....

MAJORLY reinventing the wheel. All you needed to do was delete the UEFI GOP module from your VBIOS. Done. If you're not using it for UEFI GOP boot, it's not needed(does NOT need to be there for any other reason).

Also, you can do that on any card(even one with a locked down BIOS).

EDIT: I was wrong, you can't do it on cards with a locked down BIOS. And it might be more complicated on some cards than just deleting the UEFI GOP module(still might need to fix checksums and what not). But on some cards that basically all you'd need to do.

 

[Melvis]

I have a RX 580 running on a X58 Mobo, I could test it on a AM3+ and possibly a AM3 Gigabyte Mobos to see if they work with the card if you like?

 

[Ferrum Master]

I have a RX 580 running on a X58 Mobo, I could test it on a AM3+ and possibly a AM3 Gigabyte Mobos to see if they work with the card if you like?

They work on AM3. Tested dozens of them on GA-880GA-UD3H. I slapped a 1080Ti few days ago in that board. That's my repair testbed... at least not afraid to kill it.

 

[eidairaman1]

I have a RX 580 running on a X58 Mobo, I could test it on a AM3+ and possibly a AM3 Gigabyte Mobos to see if they work with the card if you like?

AM3+ 290 VaporX works.

 

[theonek]

tend to run for awhile before the whole upgrade a 1080Ti on am3+ platform with no issues or whatever... so everything is about software support...

 

[remdale]

FOR THE RECORD: There's no such thing as a UEFI-ONLY vBIOS. ALL UEFI compatible vBIOSs to date are hybrid. Meaning they have a full and complete Legacy ROM(old school pre-UEFI vBIOS) + an EFI ROM(for UEFI GOP compatibility). So there's absolutely no need to have a "non-UEFI" vBIOS to run your card on ANY motherboard(UEFI or not). There's also no need(currently) to have a UEFI compatible vBIOS to run your card on a UEFI motherboard. You just need to disable secure boot(and/or any other UEFI GOP features) in the motherboard's BIOS/UEFI. You should be able to boot by just disabling secure boot. Other UEFI GOP features will just fail to work as they should. Typically resulting in a black screen during boot(until the desktop suddenly appears) and boot times that are no faster than without having them enabled.

Hi! I got excited about the work of gb_drbob regarding the hybrid BIOS AMD cards. I have a dual GPU Powercolor Devil 13 390 X2 16GB. It has a Dual BIOS feature and so it has 4 BIOS chips in total! (2 for each GPU).
The motherboard is a very old Intel D5400XS which has UEFI. UEFI boot disabled. I'm having a black screen issue, even couldn't get into UEFI settings. When I did, the picture was terrible, text strings from different screens were interfering with each other. Anyway, I couldn't boot into OS.

So I've dumped and edited all of the vBIOS chips with a USB flash programmer. Then I did everything in Hexedit (replaced 00 with 80 for the legacy image, fixed checksum, even replaced GOF with FF's when the first way didn't work out) and then flashed the edited versions back. No much luck. I could get a picture of the UEFI settings screen, but since it was in the VGA resolution, the picture wasn't full size on the screen, so was small instead. I could only get into the UEFI settings in the diagnostic mode only.

What could be wrong? Should be working fine as long as the legacy vBIOS is used and UEFI boot is disabled.

 

[DR4G00N]

Hi! I got excited about the work of gb_drbob regarding the hybrid BIOS AMD cards. I have a dual GPU Powercolor Devil 13 390 X2 16GB. It has a Dual BIOS feature and so it has 4 BIOS chips in total! (2 for each GPU).
The motherboard is a very old Intel D5400XS which has UEFI. UEFI boot disabled. I'm having a black screen issue, even couldn't get into UEFI settings. When I did, the picture was terrible, text strings from different screens were interfering with each other. Anyway, I couldn't boot into OS.

So I've dumped and edited all of the vBIOS chips with a USB flash programmer. Then I did everything in Hexedit (replaced 00 with 80 for the legacy image, fixed checksum, even replaced GOF with FF's when the first way didn't work out) and then flashed the edited versions back. No much luck. I could get a picture of the UEFI settings screen, but since it was in the VGA resolution, the picture wasn't full size on the screen, so was small instead. I could only get into the UEFI settings in the diagnostic mode only.

What could be wrong? Should be working fine as long as the legacy vBIOS is used and UEFI boot is disabled.

Card is probably too new and the board doesn't like it. Why are you trying to use that on a dual 771 board anyway? That board won't even make use of half a single r9 390 let alone two.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

As long as the board has PCI gen 3 it shouldn't matter

 

[remdale]

Why are you trying to use that on a dual 771 board anyway?

In short, I just like that card and wanted to use it with the board.

Card is probably too new and the board doesn't like it.

Is there any way to figure out the real reason? Might be some flag in the vBIOS or the whole structure?

 

[Grog6]

I'm running a RX480 Nitro on a x79 system with BIOS only.

It works; you have other problems.

I have a Sapphire card,as I always buy their cards if I can.

 

[potato580+]

it can run just fine rx 4/5, im using am2+ socket for a test, problems it will start bottleneck while using higher than 1070/vega56

 

[remdale]

x79 system

Yours is much newer than mine

 

[eidairaman1]

You need to look up bios for that skulltrail. Intel stopped providing support totally.

 

[remdale]

Intel stopped providing support totally.

Yeah, I know and that's sad

 

[Dav1dw]

Hi! I got excited about the work of gb_drbob regarding the hybrid BIOS AMD cards. I have a dual GPU Powercolor Devil 13 390 X2 16GB. It has a Dual BIOS feature and so it has 4 BIOS chips in total! (2 for each GPU).
The motherboard is a very old Intel D5400XS which has UEFI. UEFI boot disabled. I'm having a black screen issue, even couldn't get into UEFI settings. When I did, the picture was terrible, text strings from different screens were interfering with each other. Anyway, I couldn't boot into OS.

So I've dumped and edited all of the vBIOS chips with a USB flash programmer. Then I did everything in Hexedit (replaced 00 with 80 for the legacy image, fixed checksum, even replaced GOF with FF's when the first way didn't work out) and then flashed the edited versions back. No much luck. I could get a picture of the UEFI settings screen, but since it was in the VGA resolution, the picture wasn't full size on the screen, so was small instead. I could only get into the UEFI settings in the diagnostic mode only.

What could be wrong? Should be working fine as long as the legacy vBIOS is used and UEFI boot is disabled.

Although it has been 3 years.Right I have a D5400xs too and i guess it does not support UEFI graphics cards. I can enter the Bios, but the disk drive cannot be recognized.Code will healt on 0_. If I use the DUET of the USB flash drive to simulate UEFI to boot it, the new graphics card works perfectly in Windows or hackintosh. AMD wx4100 and Rtx3060Ti have the same situation, but they run on another 775 motherboard.did u Have any way about this issues