Gx640 Vbios Beta

Just make a bootable disk that boots into DOS. Then run the vbios batch file. You have to add the BIOS files to the boot disk of course.

 

haha if only things always worked like they were supposed to.

Also kosti, dont worry about any of us bothering u when things go wrong. We all know these things are risky and its our own fault if we mess up our notebooks. All of us read these forums at least somewhat in part because its fun to mess with stuff and teh intellectual curiosity of maximizing everything.

 

i just want to go back to the old bios haha. how do you flash back to it? all i got is that disk i made from the link kosti gave.

EDIT: temps used to sit around high 40's for cpu and high 50's for gpu. temps went up about 5-10 degrees idle.

 

tree, i only know how to do it if ur using a usb, maybe a cd-rw might work too?

 

i can use a flash drive, what do i do? haha. I don't have any rw's, just some DVD+R's

 

Tree, here's how I did it. I used Hiren's Boot CD to boot into DOS. If you've never heard of Hiren's Boot CD, basically it's a bootable CD with a buttload of utilities for troubleshooting and repairing pc issues. It also has a basic DOS on it. Download it from here:

Download Hiren's BootCD


Then I just burned a separate CD with the 3 VBIOS files from the MSI website (the files are atiflash.exe, BR36533.006, and VBIOS.BAT). Make sure you extract the files to the root of the CD. Then, just boot with the Hiren's CD. When the menu appears, look for DOS tools, then find DOS and click it. It will start DOS. Then pop in the CD with the VBIOS files, navigate to the CD drive in DOS, and just type VBIOS. It will run a script for flashing the VBIOS. That's it. Very simple really. Let me know if you hit any snags.

EDIT: Just realized you said you don't have CDs, you should be able to use a DVD for the boot cd, and you can try putting the BIOS files on a USB drive, but I am not sure if the DOS that comes with Hiren's supports USB volumes. It probably does. If not, then just use another DVD for the VBIOS files.

 

Hirens cd pulled my a** out of the fire many times. There's a win 98 boot CD floating around that works pretty good too.

Isn't there some info on making a bootable usb stick on MSI's website?

 

for a flash drive, make it bootable (google how to using CMD)

use ultraiso to burn kosti's iso onto it
open the usb, locate PKG.zip
replace BR35701.028 with BR36533.006
rename BR36533.006 to BR35701.028 (erase the original BR35701.028)
Boot off of it like you did before to update the vbios. It will locate the old vbios as the one to be updated to and you'll be back to normal

 

awesome. thank you very much

 

Am i safe to assume that when the vbios goes "live" it will be installed via some sort of executable?

 

No

10 char

 

I've never seen MSI use a windows utility to flash the bios. I would never flash anything from windows. I've bricked everything from video cards to mother boards to automotive PCM's by flashing from windows. I've learned my lesson. I'll flash from a command prompt whenever possible.

 

I would hope so, but the instructions on MSI's site would lead me to believe otherwise.

 

I agree, I too have bricked every component with a "windows" based flash utility, including MSI motherboards, with MSI's utility. I learned--> just don't do it period. It's a disaster in the making. A train wreck in the making. Just say no.

 

i should have said no.

 

tree, are you back to normal at least?

 

haven't had a chance to grab a flash yet, i'll pick one up tomorrow. only ones we have in the house are 256 mb or smaller.

 

256 is more than enough for these kind of jobs.

 

haha the file is less than 3 MB

 

oh well. needed new flash drives anyway.

re formatting the flash now, should be done with everything in about half an hour

 

all that i can find on the flash is the readme.txt from the iso, no pkg.zip


edit: ah, nevermind. working on it

edit 2: haha, someone help with the ultraiso? i can't burn it to my flash

 

use the bootable option to do it.
Maybe this helps :
YouTube - How to Burn ISO to USB

 

ok, burned it, still can't find the PKG.zip he talked about...

 

same here

 

What do you see after burning the iso onto the usb? Can you show me a screenshot of what you see in explorer?

 

yeah, i'll get that on either in a few hours or tonight. about to run out the door

 

alright, just need to see the files formatted on your usb

 

Guys, anyone else have these heat issues with the new VBIOS? I didn't have them with mine, but I did have serious heat issues before I added a copper shim to the heatsink. I think perhaps the new VBIOS doesn't kick in the fan as much as the original.

 

Is the fan even controlled by the vBIOS? I guess its one common fan to the heatsinks that remove the heat from both CPU and GPU.

 

It could be that the new VBIOS has a higher threshold temperature that needs tp be reached before it instructs the fan to spin faster. Perhaps the VBIOS talks to the main BIOS which probably does the fan controlling. I'm just pulling this out of my @ss of course, I really don't know for sure.

 

That'd be annoying. Honestly im not a sound nazi so the fan spinning at 50%+ all the time would make me happy lol. Rather have more sound and less heat then more heat and less sound. And from what ive read there isnt anything that lets us control the fan speed right? All upto the bios?

 

Its very weird way of fan control, at least I havent been able to figure out. The darn fan would sound the same at 55*C and at 100*C, it never kicks in.

 

It seems that overdrive has a fan control thing , does that work ? or is it another useless feature ?

 

where is fan thing? I dont see it in mine.

Anyway, it possibly cant be coz, we all know our fan lies in top right corner and the card in somewhere away from, so the card is nt controlling the fan.

The second and the only way the fan could work, is that there is a thermal sensor near the fan and it works along with the BIOS, otherwise whose sensor would the BIOS follow? The card? or CPU?

EDIT : I know there is no thermal sensor near the fan

 

Only 5series has the fan control thingy.

 

Any details on adding the shim? Mine runs cool but I'm compelled to modify it.

 

I detailed what I did in this post. Made a huge difference for me.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/482836-thermal-past-upgrade-worth-6.html

 

I just ran some Half Life 2, it ran really nice. A few things I noticed, with powerplay on in battery mode, the gpu\memory ran at 300/400, when I put it in performance mode, it ran at 405/1000. When i turned powerplay off, it went to 625/1000. Just for the hell of it, i turned overdrive on and tried to run the gpu at 700 then ran the test, it said it passed but for some reason it went to 100/150.... what's up with that?

 

Don't use ATI overdrive. Use the AMD GPU Clock tool from techpowerup.com. Also, with powerplay enabled and the GPU overclocked, I noticed that the overclock gets disabled after a system restart.

 

I ordered the shim and thermal pads you linked to in the other thread, newegg is all out of OCZ freeze. Seems like a cool mod. Looking at your pictures of the original thermal paste, it looks like someone over at MSI thought they were making a porno movie......

 

Make sure you sand down the shim on both sides. Use something like 600 to start and anything over 1000 to get a nice polish on it. Don't go too crazy though or you'll shave off too much copper. And don't forget, you need paste on both sides of the shim. Nice to see someone following my lead. I'm not a guinea pig anymore.

 

there you go NEM

 

I too burned the ISO, and looked on the CD for the files on the CD, but only saw the read me, but just for kicks, tried to boot with it, and it worked. I think the files are hidden. Strange, I know.

 

not trying to boot the bios. trying to change it. haha. already booted it.

 

hmmm thats odd. Try and reveal hidden files



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That is what you should see

 

Seeing lots of mixed opinions...Just want to know if anybody besides what I read about 4c drop in temp got same or different results?

 

dafinest: my temps went up. can't use amd clock tool without BSOD or Artifacts/Freeze.

notenoughminerals: i can't reveal hidden files... can't find the option

 

See go to the top left and choose organize under the drop down menu there should be "Folder and Search Options" choose that, second tab in that is "view" in it somewhere down there is an option to "show hidden files", choose yes and apply.
Many files should pop up, they will have almost 100% transparency kind of effect, so as to distinguish from normal files.

 

hmm. i did that and all that shows is still the readme file.

 

what was the size of that iso?