The ATI Radeon To ATI FireGL Mod Guide!

[Chai]

Want a FireGL workstation card but can't afford to pay ATI's exhorbitant prices? Well, why don't you grab a Radeon desktop card and mod it into a FireGL card? Yes, you can easily mod a Radeon into the FireGL with just a simple BIOS flash!

Our guide will go through all the possible FireGL mods for the Radeon 9500, 9700 and 9800 series of cards and teach you just how to mod your Radeon into a FireGL! Check it out!



Link: The ATI Radeon To ATI FireGL Mod Guide!

[ginsawa]

The article stated the differences between the various models of cards and the speed of the memory and core clock speed but I was still left with some questions as to what good is the firegl mod for. I mean obviously if your a cad person your probably going to be in heaven but will it hinder gamers if they try this?

I've read in other forums about doing a firegl mod and if they mod didn't involve overclocking the core or memory it turned out that 3dmark scores went down or the fps also suffered in games. I do have a radeon 8500 and a standard 9800 (unfortunately without the samsung chips) so I might give the 8500 a try first but I was wondering if you did any benchmarks on the card you did mod and what the differences were, If any, in the scores.

Also after modding the cards does the tv-out options in the drivers still work?

[Babalou]

I gave the "TyanFireGLX2-128" BIOS a try so far but got garbage on my screen

My card is an BBA ATI Rad 9800 Pro R350, 128 meg Samsung memory.
I had problems at first when flashing, I was getting an error that it could not open file.

I then renamed the BIOS file to something shorter and it flashed.

Too bad, was hoping to get me a FireGL

[Max_87]

Originally Posted by Babalou

I gave the "TyanFireGLX2-128" BIOS a try so far but got garbage on my screen

My card is an BBA ATI Rad 9800 Pro R350, 128 meg Samsung memory.
I had problems at first when flashing, I was getting an error that it could not open file.

I then renamed the BIOS file to something shorter and it flashed.

Too bad, was hoping to get me a FireGL

Weird.....My Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro is using the reference PCB, the bios should work on your card.

Did you try any other bios images?

[gd96]

I have a 9800pro from ATI, it has the samsung memory , I flashed it just fine...the drivers were a bit weird....I'm running windows 2003 server , made into a workstation and hacked even further to make it think its windows xp professional, and yes I'm using a real code....why? cause its faster and not as bloated as windows xp...after rebooting it detected new video cards, I downloaded the specific drivers from ATI(the fireglx ones) and of course as with the older versions of atis drivers on w2k3 it thought it was installing it on a 64 bit OS(I've run into the problem months ago when I first installed 2003) I just had to browse to the directory that ATI makes, and point the os in the right direction and reinstall the drivers by hand, not a big deal.....

Its a fresh install of 2k3, so as I get games on it I'll post some fps(If I have time, kinda busy lately, no time for games)

btw for those interested my system specs

AMD 1800+ hacked to mp's
ASUS a7v266D
1 Gig registered ECC Samsung memory
9800pro 128 er...fireglx now 8^)
pioneer 4x dvd burner / Plextor 12x burner
120 WD 8meg cache w2k3
40 gig WD Gentoo
Audigy 1



thats all folks!!!

-GD


Allrighty, after some testing, first the all mighty finger test on the back of the card, I nearly burned it off, the card gets alot hotter than normal , and yes I did check the bios to see that it flashed it to a core temp that my card could handle....Second, since I really only play City Of Heroes right now when I have the time I fired it up, and low and behold it produced errors, obviously looking for code that the glx drivers cannot provide....would it have worked maybe...I'll stress test it after I install the water cooling in my system again, cause the card is getting way too hot..( my poor finger) , as I type this I have reflashed my card to its original state and am installing the drivers again....
Hey I have to get my CoH in ...

[Max_87]

Originally Posted by Babalou

I gave the "TyanFireGLX2-128" BIOS a try so far but got garbage on my screen

My card is an BBA ATI Rad 9800 Pro R350, 128 meg Samsung memory.
I had problems at first when flashing, I was getting an error that it could not open file.

I then renamed the BIOS file to something shorter and it flashed.

Too bad, was hoping to get me a FireGL

I edited my card's bios, changed all the product IDs. Try this, see if it works

If it still doesn't work, i hope you can upload your card's original bios here and i will see what i can do. I will try my best.

[Max_87]

Originally Posted by gd96

I have a 9800pro from ATI, it has the samsung memory , I flashed it just fine...the drivers were a bit weird....

Glad that it worked for your card

You only play games? If you don't use applications such as CAD i suggest that you should just flash your card back to Radeon 9800 Pro. FireGL does not perform as good as the Radeon when running games.

[Max_87]

I could be wrong

By the way evstar, this does not affect gaming capabilities in any way. Games will still use your video cards Direct X 9.0 (maybe in your case 8) capabilities. The hack lets you use more professional data "use", for lack of a better word.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/33777

[BRB]

Hey guys.

Great article on the Fire GL mod. I'd love to try it but the links for the Fire GL X2 256 are dead. Any alternate locations where I might find the .bin file?
I'm an AutoCAD operator with a 9800 Pro 256MB DDR II card. A Fire GL X2 256 would be fantastic!

Thanks.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by BRB

Hey guys.

Great article on the Fire GL mod. I'd love to try it but the links for the Fire GL X2 256 are dead. Any alternate locations where I might find the .bin file?
I'm an AutoCAD operator with a 9800 Pro 256MB DDR II card. A Fire GL X2 256 would be fantastic!

Thanks.

Hello BRB,

The files are hosted locally so you shouldn't have any problems downloading them.

In fact, I just tried downloading some of them. They all worked.

EDIT : Looks like the last three links are dead. Chai's fixing them now!