Just received a new RX 480 sapphire nitro 4gb from newegg.
They changed the design and removed features.
No led lighting just a chrome sapphire badge now
No dual bios switch, so single bios now.
Samsung vram
The card default core clock is higher now at 1326 mhz
I looked in the bios and it looks nearly identical to rx 470 bios but is different from the previous rx 480 4gb bios. What I mean is that in the bios you see straps for 2 types of memory (hynix and elpida) but in my 480 it had one type of memory strap only (samsung). The memory types that show up...it doesn't look like the bios editor is showing the samsung or sapphire has hidden the samsung memory straps to prevent bios modding.
I can't recommend the 4gb 480 for now, originally got it over the 470 due to that it was the same price. Go for the 470s if you buy cards, it makes no sense they would change the bios like this.
(edit I use a modified bios editor that works on 470 dual vram bios, it will probably have to be modified again to work for this 480)
That sucks. I have chosen to not do any bios mods. Just ends frustrations you and many others have.
I am running all gear with simplemining. Xmr stable simple easy.
If I could see what good a low volt stock clock bios mod does I would consider doing one with low power in mind more then over lock.
I use 2 "low energy" custom roms from Eliovp.
RX480s (ETH-29MH-low-energy) and R9-Nanos (-100mV rom)
Working very well, and saves me on power bill.
Although I have access to hydro power at my ISP in Labrador/Crytoboreas for my other BTC farm.... I cannot send my open cage rigs over because its not secured in a suitable chassis. The Pandaminer was a good solution but that's another story all together.
Since having the modded roms, I dont mess with Afterburner, Wattman etc. anymore.
And since moving my rigs to smOS Linux -- the custom roms were perfect marriage since no fiddling with Windows 10, GPU utilities, etc. And smOS will use use native AMD settings with the custom roms at Linux/Ubuntu/hardware level.
If you are not comfortable with modded roms, you can still use Afterburner etc to control the wattages. Ideally, you should try one of Eliovp's custom rom on 1 rig to compare notes. You can always change back to stock roms if unsatisfied.
For me, I took the scary jump to custom roms ever-since I saw my first power bill during the ETH craze a year ago....
I'm looking into modifying my own custom ROMs, but it's not for the faint of heart. Need to know the ROM layout, know which parameters to modify, and in the case of adding a negative voltage offset, know where in the ROM to add the offset. After all that, you have to regenerate the checksum of the file.
All possible, but takes a bit of a curve to figure out how to execute.
There seems to be a minority of people that are in the know, and they don't openly share how to do it. You can pay for customization, or figure it out on your own, or settle for what they openly share. I can't blame them, when it comes down to it, but I don't have to like it
I, too, use the LowEnergy ROM for the reference 480s I own, but I'd like to add a negative offset to some of my other "aftermarket" cards (480s and 470s) so I can move to a 6-card linux rig, and not have to deal with "windows", and enjoy lower energy usage.