Hi all
I recently got some cheap cards for mining - Sapphire Nitro+ with 4GB of Elpida memory which was originally clocked at 1750MHz.
As Polaris Editor doesn't work with Elpida cards, i started fiddling around with the Hexeditor and managed to copy the 1500MHz memory timing straps to the higher ones.
it flashed with no problems - command line:
> atiwinflash -f -p 0 almarley.rom
My test card was first running smoothly @ 29+MH/s while drawing only 77 Watts over the PCIe lines while clocking @ 1145/2050MHz with WattTool.
Funny thing is, that after a few hours it even speeded up to 34MH/s all by itself!! idk how that happened? Any ideas??
Unfortunately Claymore was then also throwing "incorrect shares due to overclocking" messages

Feel free to test my BIOS at your own risk.
All modding was done with switch on "silent mode" (towards the connector plate).
My card has PN: 299-2E347-100SA
MD5 of my rom is: 1f9e665e790df58349786a7db641ffb9 for checking
I'm on Win10x64 with Crimson-16.10.1 drivers. No further patching needed.
BIOS download:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhVnWzjB8iG4lXd1uJwBK1TIG1xwhave fun
al
Comments
Edit: never mind; googled your card number and see that it is the 480
underclocking/volting didnt help just figured the 1500 strap timing were too tight and just let it go
it doesnt do it anymore but that card has also moved around 3 rigs since then so maybe it was hardware incompatibility
No more mysterious speedup seen since then.
keep going on your test lap please
also i would do as u did to my reference sapphire rx 480
1 eth for u if it sucess with me
i suggest do not use 1500 straps for elpida. start from 1625
In my rom i edited both straps in (what overclock's op say) Elpida and Hynix areas to the 1500 timings but i had no chance of testing it on a Hynix card yet - so be careful!
btw: Nanopool 6hr AVG shows 30,9MH/s in Dual mode - claymore shows only around 29.3
- feel free to test: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhVnWzjB8iG4lXm8dNi_jLVt36GZ
Scary is flashing - (
I tried once and windows booted into bluescreen.
Open windows cmd and type while being in the atiwinflash folder : atiwinflash -f -p 0 bios.rom (-f = force / -p 0 = gpu0)
1. you can learn from that
2. you can share some photos and more experienced members will tell you the reason and everybody can learn from that.
All the warnings, guides and formulas (for power calculations) are written in this forum for a reason, they can save you some money and help to avoid damage to your hw, etc.
reporting back after a few days:
Card is running stable in dual mode 29MH/s with the 1500 bios from the first post.
Clocking is now at 1145/2000.
Some incorrect ETH shares are occurring - about 3 in an hour - is that normal?
Although I never experienced the funny 34MH/s glitch again - too bad - i'd love to do some experiments with that.
It seems that this card has some sort of internal tampering protection - if you fiddle around too much with Watttool, it suddenly stops responding to all new settings.
Funny thing is, all software tools showing the new values as if they were there, but on hashrate and electrical measuring no more changes can be noticed. It's obvious that parameter changes are no longer executed in the hardware.
Im pretty satisfied with the performance of this 200 bucks card and starting to build my new rig with 6 of them.
greetings al
You going to be working on a ZCash GPU miner?
I suppose shorting XMR now is a good idea
and yeah I just think if ZCash can out anonymitize monero, the days for monero could be very limited
people think its a good buy now cause its low... but heh... it could go a lot lower soon