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MP All Models Sapphire PULSE RX580 8GB VBIOS Study

h9826790 said:
And if still doesn't work. Then you may disable Fuzzy fan mode. Change the byte between "max temp" (2A in this case), and "max PWM" (64 in this case) from 01 to 00 will change the fan mode from Fuzzy mode to Legacy mode.
Click to expand...

When I disable Fuzzy fan mode (wonder what exactly that mode does) and going to legacy mode for full manual control, Windows 10 crashes during boot. I then have to remove gfx driver and flash a bios with fuzzy mode enabled again and reinstall driver. Anyone else experienced that and/or found a work-around?

Misc observations to share:

On my dual bios Nitro+ I'm using the "Power Saving" bios. It runs by default memory at max 2,1 GHz and core at max 1,12 GHz with core at 900 mv iirc. If modding fan control on this bios to stay at 13% pvm (around 600rpm) it runs around 60 degrees celcius in Heaven in macOS almost inaudible with two case fans <500rpm.

I'd like to be able to run fan this low (lowest rpm for me reach at 13% pvm), but I require legacy mode for this, as Fuzzy mode does not seem to go lower than 20% pvm. I notice some annoying resonance at the starting 20% pvm, so much prefere the 13%. Any tip on getting <20% pvm working in Fuzzy mode, so I can still dual boot to Windows (which now crashes in legacy fan mode)?
 
holsen said:
When I disable Fuzzy fan mode (wonder what exactly that mode does) and going to legacy mode for full manual control, Windows 10 crashes during boot. I then have to remove gfx driver and flash a bios with fuzzy mode enabled again and reinstall driver. Anyone else experienced that and/or found a work-around?

Misc observations to share:

On my dual bios Nitro+ I'm using the "Power Saving" bios. It runs by default memory at max 2,1 GHz and core at max 1,12 GHz with core at 900 mv iirc. If modding fan control on this bios to stay at 13% pvm (around 600rpm) it runs around 60 degrees celcius in Heaven in macOS almost inaudible with two case fans <500rpm.

I'd like to be able to run fan this low (lowest rpm for me reach at 13% pvm), but I require legacy mode for this, as Fuzzy mode does not seem to go lower than 20% pvm. I notice some annoying resonance at the starting 20% pvm, so much prefere the 13%. Any tip on getting <20% pvm working in Fuzzy mode, so I can still dual boot to Windows (which now crashes in legacy fan mode)?
Click to expand...

It’s a dual BIOS card. If anything wrong with the ROM. Just switch to the good ROM. Boot the Mac. Switch it back to the problematic ROM, and flash the original ROM back in. No need to touch the driver etc.

You can switch the ROM when the card is alive, it won’t hurt anything. That’s the normal procedure to recovery a dual ROM card.
 
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h9826790 said:
It’s a dual BIOS card. If anything wrong with the ROM. Just switch to the good ROM. Boot the Mac. Switch it back to the problematic ROM, and flash the original ROM back in. No need to touch the driver etc.

You can switch the ROM when the card is alive, it won’t hurt anything. That’s the normal procedure to recovery a dual ROM card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this tip. Didn't think I could toggle the switch while card was in use. Works great.

i have ended up using modding the bios of the Power Saving dual switch setting, raising highest core clock from 1,12 (a little low default) to 1,25 GHz (900mv) and keeping memory at 2,1. Legacy fan mode (crashes Windows though, so using other dual bios setting here) with min pvm at 0, as fan stop didn't seem to work in legacy mode. Pleased with the quiet results now - no more audible on/off cycling around 50 degrees during normal use, just quiet.

Now if only I could get the gfx throttling to work after resuming from sleep... It often gets stock at full memory clock speed after resume, and my normal fix is to toggle display resolution, then it works again, dropping back to 300 MHz on idle. Today I realised turning the screen off and on after waking from sleep also reenables throttling, but of course an annoyance. Would looove to have this working. Then my hack was flying.

Using DP to mDP on a Dell P2715Q btw.
 
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holsen said:
Thanks for this tip. Didn't think I could toggle the switch while card was in use. Works great.

i have ended up using modding the bios of the Power Saving dual switch setting, raising highest core clock from 1,12 (a little low default) to 1,25 GHz (900mv) and keeping memory at 2,0. Legacy fan mode (crashes Windows though, so using other dual bios setting here) with min pvm at 0, as fan stop didn't seem to work in legacy mode. Pleased with the quiet results now - no more audible on/off cycling around 50 degrees during normal use, just quiet.

Now if only I could get the gfx throttling to work after resuming from sleep... It often gets stock at full memory clock speed after resume, and my normal fix is to toggle display resolution, then it works again, dropping back to 300 MHz on idle. Today I realised turning the screen off and on after waking from sleep also reenables throttling, but of course an annoyance. Would looove to have this working. Then my hack was flying.

Using DP to mDP on a Dell P2715Q btw.
Click to expand...

Good to hear that you finally able to create a fan profile that work for you.
 
Just a quick update from me...

I found a great deal on an Asus ROG Strix RX580 8GB OC card so I decided to upgrade from my Sapphire Pulse RX580 4GB OC card to achieve better thermals/noise and performance.

I edited the BIOS to match the Asus ROG Strix R580 8GB TOP card settings with 1411MHz core/2200MHz memory (from 1360/2000) plus increased the thermal range to 75c and 180w TDP. My Luxmark score has increased from ~15200 to ~17800 coming from the tweaked Sapphire card which did ~13200 out of the box.

I also applied a max fan speed of 1900rpm (from 2100rpm) and the HEX fix to spin up fans at 60c (from 55c) too. Next step is to try repasting wth Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste and undervolting using MSI Afterburner to reduce thermals even more before reflashing to a final BIOS.

Surprisingly the RGB lighting on the card can be adjusted using Asus AURA software in Windows which the card remembers once booted into macOS so you don't end up with annoying rainbow glowing lights, I imagine it must save this setting within the BIOS somewhere which is nice.
 
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Is there anyone can send me BOTH BIOS dump from his own PULSE RX580 8GB V2? (the one that has dual BIOS switch)

I've seen quite a few guys asked about which BIOS (gaming vs compute) they should use. My believe so far is doesn't really matter. But I want to check if there is any other difference besides GPU core clock speed.

Million thanks in advance!
 
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I could since my card has the compute/performance switch, what will dump the ROM?

Hopefully something in macOS..
 
Earl Urley said:
I could since my card has the compute/performance switch, what will dump the ROM?

Hopefully something in macOS..
Click to expand...

I think Darwin dumper may able to do that in macOS. But not 100% sure. Also, that may be dumping from the RAM, but not from the card.

GPU-Z and AtiWinFlash 100% can dump the image from the chip, you can flip that switch and dump another ROM, no need to shutdown or reboot (I am 10000000% sure you can flip that switch when the card is running). However, Windows is required. If you don't have that installed yet. May be we just wait for few more days and see if someone can do it.

At the meantime, you may try Darwin dumper.
 
Hello,
I recently was lucky enough to find a Sapphire RX 580 with the original bios to be recognized as "Orinoco" framebuffer (OSX 10.14.5)
Once plugged in my MacPro 4.1 (upgraded to 5.1) I experienced this strange behaviour with cooling fans, I have already searched the forums but I am not sure what to do to overcome this problem.
In the normal use the fans are stopped and I know this is normal and they start to spin when more GPU power is required.
When this happens the fan reaches a quite high speed but I am not worried about that, what really is annoying is the decay time for the fans to be back at normal speed once the GPU power request is ceased, it takes almost 5 minutes to go back to zero RPM and I know for sure that only a dozen of seconds should be enough to go back to a normal safe temperature, I have verified this with Wattman on Bootcamp side.
Would be the "Fuzzy fan" bit setting enough to eliminate the problem?
What I mean is: if I set to zero the "Fuzzy fan" parameter will I experience a shorter time to be back to zero RPM?
I would keep the bios as possible close to the original, for now I would not touch voltages and other critical parameters.
Many thanks in advance for any suggestion about this issue.
 
you can try setting the PCI fan to faster to see if it helps or set the RX 580 fan to never stop spinning.
apart from that, it's how all the new on-off fans work, I got used to it after a week or so.

if it relay bugs you set the fan to be always on, at 800rpm it's hard to notice.

are you using 1 display or 2+?

I saw the fans hardly start spinning with only one display but once two or more are used I saw it spin up once a min for 10-20 secs then spin down etc..
 
I am using only one display, attached to the first HDMI port from right to left.
I am really happy to report that in the meantime I have solved the problem (at least on OSX side) simply setting to "zero" the Fuzzy mode using the alternative "vvaske" Polaris Bios editor 1.7.2 and not touching any other parameters.
After flashing the so modified BIOS to the card the fans are always spinning at lower (inaudible) speed, then accelerate when the GPU load is required and quickly decrease the speed after ther need of GPU power is back to normal use.
Exactly what I was looking for, now I can send a positive feedback to the eBay seller I have purchased the RX 580 from.
Many thanks to everyone provided me useful hints to go in the right directions! :)

EDIT: As reported by other users I have subsequently lost the Windows 7 driver support on BootCamp, it crashes on early boot, the only way to access to Windows again is thru a generic VGA driver, this issue happens with every AMD drivers release, v17, v18 and also the new v19.
For this reason would be nice to do this modification on OSX side at kext (or framework) level so I could go back to original unmodified bios and use the RX 580 at full speed also on BootCamp.
 
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h9826790 said:
You have to test that before mod the VRAM clock. Do NOT just copy that figure.

My card can run at 2250MHz, but some other member's card can't do anything faster than the default 2000MHz. Even just extra 50MHz, the card crash.

My post at there was showing about how fast I can push in the high performance mod setting. Not my daily use setting.

In fact, few weeks back, I don't need that much compute power, I was with the WX7100 setting for daily use.

But these few weeks, I do lots of hwaccel test, I often push the card to limit. So, I want a higher performance setting to test stability, but don't want all the way to 2250MHz because I can't quite monitor the VRAM / VRM parameters.

Anyway, for this topic, we better go back to the RX580 VBIOS study thread.
Click to expand...

I’m going to continue from here.

Of course, I’ll be doing step by step, not just straight to the 2250Mhz settings.

I just need the time to do this and will report back.

My RX480 also seems to have Samsung RAM chips, so maybe it will fare better than other cards in that regard.
 
@donluca Hay do you have windows installed?
what RX 480 do you have?

i think it's nice to have a goal you want to get to, do you want;
less power used
low fan noise
pure speed
middle ground

from what i learned you want to use
-windows to tests in
-GPU Z https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to watch what the GPU is doing
-superposition benchmark https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition to stress the GPU hard
-HWINFO https://www.hwinfo.com/

GPU Z lets you see power use, fan speed, temps, core speed, etc in one simple way so relay useful

superposition benchmark was the most stressful benchmark i used, it's much harder than most but not as hard as firmark

HWINFO i used when OC'ing my GPU vram, when you play with GPU VRAM you want it open and to watch for memory errors. you don't want to see any ideally, a few are ok but not a lot (i may get 10 a few hours of stressing the card on windows last i looked)

when i did my tests i found out my card is not a 'golden' sample, im not able to OC vram or i get mem errors and i cant under volt like h9826790 can but my card is running much better in osx now with less fan noise thanks to a slight under volt and tighter mem timings relay boosted luxmark so i hope it boosted anything i do on the GPU plus down to 1340mhz.

hardware monitor show's my gpu power draw is a tad lower in osx which is nice too ( in windows you cant see all the power use of the GPU)

in windows most the time i run at 1000mhz (down from factory setting of 1,366mhz) & just over 1v as it's all i need for most games, the highest setting i use in windows is 1280mhz with about the same Volts, tad higher.
 
I’ll just follow the OP’s guide and that will be pretty much it. The only extra step for me is flashing the 480 to 580.

I’ll be doing the mods on a friend’s PCs who has windows, hopefully soon. I’ll keep this thread updated with my discoveries.
 
are you used to GPU flashing and know all the risk/complications ?
you dont need to flash a RX 480 to RX 580 and if you do you need to make sure you use the correct bios or it's not going to be fun.

if you know what your doing it'll be fine if not good to read up on it.

if you have a bio's switch it's fairly safe as you have a back up. (dont flash both bios)

PS good luck :D im happy with how it went for me, much nicer in osx with less fan noise and relay thats the only part i relay noticed
 
I’ve been mingling with all sort of PC things since I was 12, I know what I’m doing :p

Also, the RX480 has a bios switch (wish we had something like this back in the days) just to make it extra safe.
 
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Quick update.

Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 (ID 11260-07-20G, Samsung RAM) to Pulse RX580 (Samsung RAM) was successful. The important thing is to make sure that the RAM model used is the same between the boards. It really was a breeze and worked out of the box without an issue.

As per this thread, I downclocked the GPU from 1366 to 1340Mhz and used a voltage core of 1V, couldn't go lower than that or the system would crash. Still, a very nice result, if I may say so.

RAM didn't want to go to 2250Mhz, no matter what. So I settled for 2150Mhz with 0,975V and has been worked without a hitch.

My personal recommendation, at this point, is to go for a the 8G 480 which go for ~100€ used, make sure it's a Nitro+ so that you know it uses Samsung RAM and flash it to RX580 and do the mods explained in this thread and you end up with a *very* nice GPU working 100% and with great performance.
 
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@donluca that's really nice settings did you check for memory errors in HWINFO during benchmarks with the vram at 2150Mhz ? (is that with the tweaked timings too?)

as I mentioned with tweaked timings i was not able to push my Samsung RAM at all.
can't complain i still have much better performance than stock with the tweaked timings, just need to do the voltage setting in bios tempted to set a 1300mhz clock for OCD
E1cL62ZLGOmiXayjg7Zj5QaT3fkaIB9Gd-uppAkNTNLHUuvnueARY7ZzgnWkyjH6OLjdXovkAt5r3LrcHFClcH4qwCqwFEsFaS-tGWuTWrfklENf8uFSfbQc9AjA-eIqtYs2wYbA
, if i had dual bios id set one at 1000mhz for the low power use (that's what I use in windows)
 
orph said:
@donluca that's really nice settings did you check for memory errors in HWINFO during benchmarks with the vram at 2150Mhz ? (is that with the tweaked timings too?)
Click to expand...

I didn't, sorry, and have no way of checking that now. I did all of this thanks to a friend who brought his PC over here and let me mingle with the RX480.

Not sure what you mean by "tweaked timings", I just followed the "High Performance mod" guide on the first post and that was pretty much it. Only thing changed is that I had to use 2150Mhz for RAMs as 2250 would crash during Unigine Heaven benchmark.
 
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RX580 AS 2019-08-11 145752.png
Posting this here as its more relevant to this thread, I had a chance to flash an original Sapphire Pulse RX580 ROM from TechPowerUp, went ok, unique superposition bench mark was a little higher than the previous, anyway idle hands so I played with the settings in Polaris, saved to new file, I didn't apply the one click timing patch, should I have? it wont boot now, stops on startup saying amd driver issue. Popped in gtx680 with monitor attached in slot 1, rx580 in slot two, wouldn't boot says I need connect external power cables which are already connected to the GTX680, so Ive bought a cheap GT120 on ebay on its way, hopefully I can reflash the rx580 when it arrives

I did try the atipatcher, I did try uninstall AMD drivers and reinsert the card to no avail, have I missed something?



Other post

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cmp-userbenchmark-x5675-rx580.2190784/#post-27582794
 
andysa1966 said:
View attachment 852556 Posting this here as its more relevant to this thread, I had a chance to flash an original Sapphire Pulse RX580 ROM from TechPowerUp, went ok, unique superposition bench mark was a little higher than the previous, anyway idle hands so I played with the settings in Polaris, saved to new file, I didn't apply the one click timing patch, should I have? it wont boot now, stops on startup saying amd driver issue. Popped in gtx680 with monitor attached in slot 1, rx580 in slot two, wouldn't boot says I need connect external power cables which are already connected to the GTX680, so Ive bought a cheap GT120 on ebay on its way, hopefully I can reflash the rx580 when it arrives

I did try the atipatcher, I did try uninstall AMD drivers and reinsert the card to no avail, have I missed something?



Other post

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cmp-userbenchmark-x5675-rx580.2190784/#post-27582794
Click to expand...

You flashed a RX580 ROM onto a RX570?

The screen captures from that "other posts" shows that you have a RX570.
 
andysa1966 said:
Sapphire.RX580.4096.170302

This rom flashed no problem, only after i modified it, saved to new file and flashed it, the OS stalls and reports AMD driver issue.
Click to expand...

You should NOT mod the voltage pointer to an unknown number.

The original ROM voltage pointer is 65282-65288. Anything outside this range may brick the card.

If you read my post #1, I only recommend use pointer 65283, but not any non exist voltage pointer.
 
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