Flashing my BIOS

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Doobz

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hey guys, i need some help

well, i've been getting very low 3dMark2003 scores considering my card (9800 Pro), around 2648 marks to be exact.

i've uninstalled all drivers and removed all the little bits of them from my registry and reinstalled the 3.5 drivers several times now with minimal performance increase

i've decided that the best course of action is probably going to be a reformat and a flash of the BIOS

well, problem is, i've never flashed a BIOS before, and i hear it can be dangerous, i've checked and my BIOS can be flashed

can anybody here help me in flashing my BIOS? tips? guide?

my specs: 1.8 Ghz P4, 512 mb RAMBUS, Radeon 9800 Pro, 400w PSU
 
Hey, You got almost my exact computer except for the Radeon, lol. Anyway yeah it is pretty dangerous, you should just follow the readme included with the bios you download. Make sure its from the offical motherboard site. It tends to vary from mobo to mobo but the readme is enough to get you through it.
 
yeah, i got a Gateway 700s, originally came with a ti4600, just recently installed the power supply and radeon

the BIOS versions are right on the gateway site, so i think they're safe, it's an Intel 850 (Lexington) mobo btw

do BIOS flashes usually yeild performance increases, perhaps remedying my situation?
 
Actually no they do not. That is unless you have a bios that is damaged.
 
huh, well it seem to work for that spamboo guy, who was in the same situation as me, seemed to have doubled his score
 
He might have had some driver issues which a format would clear up. He also could have messed with some key settings in the bios that affected his hardware in negative ways. The bios is not a place to go changing settings at will.
 
yeah, well, not that i can change many settings, the only video option i have in my BIOS is setting AGP or PCI as my primary display interface
 
What motherboard do you have and did you build it or buy it from a company (IE Dell, Gateway).
 
it's an 850 Lexington intel motherboard, and yes, i bought it from Gateway
 
Ahh yeah thats what I thought. Usually they are loaded with generic Bios'. I hope your getting the new bios from Gateway, and not the mobo manufactuer. Conflicts can arise if you try to flash a mobo thats been modified by a company like that.

I never knew Gateway made RDRAM PCs....
 
yeah, don't worry, i'm getting the flashes direct from gateway

there's several of them though, i should probably do them all in the sequence they were released, right?
 
No no, Just get the most current file. Usually they work with all of them. You should check the readme though to see if its somehow not compadible with your current bios. It probably is though.
 
If you screw up flashing your bios your out of luck, This guy on guru3d forums didnt like his score (9700 pro) flashed and then had to buy a new card.
 
Hes talking about flashing a motherboard, not a video card. Hes not out of luck at all, All he has to do is contact Gateway and ask for a new bios chip with the latest revision. They will send him it and with a little hands on work he can get the old chip out and plug the new one in.
 
i Emailed Nvidia and they said that sometimes the new detonator drivers (v44.03 i think) have to have your bios flashed to work properly. i dont know how it is with radeon si i would be VERY careful, try emailing radeon and see what they think.
 
ok, now i have a problem

i downloaded the flash, followed the instructions in it to the letter, but when i restart the computer with the flash boot diskette in, i get a non-system disk error

any help on this new issue?

btw, i'm 99.9% sure that the disk is IBM preformatted
 
what? you mean take the disk out and reboot? what good will that do?
 
when you start your comp. it reads the floppy drive for a boot disk (like if your system crashed). thats not a boot disk re-read the instructions, and try puting the disk in after you start your comp. has booted, other wise im all out of ideas.
 
i've read the instructions, you put it in before the comp boots
 
it says nothing about resetting BIOS jumpers, not that i have any idea what the hell that is
 
well you might off fu<ked up your mobo, i dont know. ask northwood he seems to know what he doing.
 
no, i have not ****ed up my mobo, it boots normally without the flash disk

you seem to misunderstand me

i can't begin to flash unless it recognizes it as a system disk, which it doesn't seem to be doing, therefore, i cannot have ****ed up my mobo yet
 
oh now i get, sorry im a little tired (and cranckey, need... sleep....) i dont know what to do man, sorry.
 
yeah, xp

any bits of advise on how to remedy the situation
 
Well..I ran into the same problem 2 years ago but for the life of me I cant figure out how I fixed it..Have you downloaded the latest boot disk off of www.bootdisk.com ?

EDIT: Go into your bios and change the "First boot device" to your floppy, second to CDROM and third to Hardrive. If thats not the problem then please give me more information on what happens.
 
do those format my disk using windows?

in the readme is says specifically not to use a disk formatted in windows, but an IBM preformatted disk
 
i'll try what you said about the boot priority stuff

and also, those bootdisks look like they're for installing windows, how exactly would those help me?
 
Im pretty sure when you load it onto the disk it creates its own format so You shouldnt worry about it. The boot disk is just so you can get into dos.
 
well, it seems he's formatting his to a boot disk in windows, which my flash stuff tells me specifically NOT to do, so now i don't know what to do

maybe my disk isn't IBM preformatted, i'm gonna buy some tomorrow, try it then
 
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