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!
differences between firegl and regular ati cards? 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?
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?
Got it... 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 ...
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.
Re: Got it... 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.
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!
whoa boy hehe, should never attempt a mod when your tired, I actually forgot that whne installing a new vid card in 2k3 you have to enable video acceleration again, lol, which is why I was getting the errors, and I don't really play games that much(though I like city of heroes) I've been breaking into 3d modeling and rendering, so I am very interested in hacking the card, and I will hack it back after I install the watercooling in my system.....just gets too hot, and this little 9800 is a hell of an overclocker more to come
Sorry it took so long. I had to find out the hard way that this won't work booting to a CD boot disk. I finally gave up and slapped a floppy in there and presto!, instant Fire GL X2 256. Thanks again for a well written "How to" that really works as described.
Hi guys, Currently i own a Radeon 9800pro DDR-2 Video card and just finished reading about the article which states that my video card can flash perfectly to a FGL X2 256 card bios as these two cards are identical right down to the exact same bios. I was wondering what the pro's and con's are of doing this. First off im a gamer so most of my games are DX9ish with a few games being OGL (ive had some problems with OGL games stating the radeon series dont use a robust enough OGL drivers) Would there be any negitive impact in my gaming? would there be any possitive impact to my gaming? Also what type of impact would this have on OCing this video card as ivehad great success with this card on stock cooling and have hit 400 (800) on the ram with ease which i have been told is good for the DDR2 this card uses. Any imput is welcome and wanted, im not fearful of the flashing process as i dont need to use a hacked Bios for this card because of its native configuration matching that of the "Real" FireGl card but im currious of what changes this will actually make. Thnx guys !
Did the FireGL 8800 mod...but... I used the mod on my radeon 8500, and it did work, windows detected the "new" card, and I had no issues installing the proper drivers. One thing that was affected was my cards overclocking, for the worst. I usually can run the card at 290/325 but when I tried that setting and went to benchmark in 3dmark2001se , I ended up with a very weirded out screen, tearing textures, blue sparks dripping from the dragon fire, then I started getting ghosted images and weird blue and purple lights on the buildings... then lockup... I had to reduce the memory clock rate to 315 to get rid of the tearing and other stuff I just mentioned, I reflashed my card back to the original, and its running at the same 290/325 used with the firegl8800 bios, and all the weird graphic errors are gone....
I am entirely not sure about this, some claimed that the performance decreased, some said the performance increased! If i had time i would try to do some game benchmarks on the FireGL X2 But the FireGL X2 will run the programs (etc. CAD) much faster than the Radeons
Hi Guys, sorry for my bad english but i will try my best i started to use some 3d-software with my 9800pro 128MB and in my opinion a mod into a FireGL would be a huge help for this. i'm so hot to try out this mod but i'm also a little bit afraid of destructing my card. what changes the BIOS, only the name of the card in my system or will the BIOS switch on some hidden features ? and guys, what about some banchmarks !!!?? has nobody tested the difference ? and the last question .... i'm also a gamer, will this mod influence my gaming-performance in a negative way ? THANKS
