Monday, August 21st 2023
NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools
You can now play with NVIDIA GeForce graphics card BIOS like it's 2013! Over the last decade, NVIDIA had effectively killed video BIOS modding by introducing BIOS signature checks. With GeForce 900-series "Maxwell," the company added an on-die security processor on all its GPUs, codenamed "Falcon," which among other things, prevents the GPU from booting with unauthorized firmware. OMGVflash by Veii; and NVflashk by Kefinator (forum names), are two independently developed new tools that let you flash almost any video BIOS onto almost any NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, bypassing "unbreakable" barriers NVIDIA put in place, such as BIOS signature checks; and vendor/device checks (cross-flashing). vBIOS signature check bypass works up to RTX 20-series "Turing" based GPUs, letting you modify the BIOS the way you want, while cross-flashing (sub-vendor ID check bypass) works even on the latest RTX 4090 "Ada."
The tools bring back the glory days of video BIOS modding using utilities the likes of NiBiTor (now discontinued). The possibilities of such utilities are endless. You can, for example, flash the BIOS of a premium factory-overclocked graphics card onto your close-to-MSRP graphics card. For cards up to RTX 20-series "Turing," in addition to clock speeds, BIOS modding lets you raise power limits, which have a more profound impact on performance, as they increase boost frequency residency. BIOS modding also gives you control over the graphics card's voltages, cooling performance, and fan-curve, so you can make your card quieter, as long as your cooler can keep the GPU away from thermal limits (which you can adjust, too). With cross-flashing (without modifying the BIOS or disturbing its signature), you are now able to restore a voltage of 1.1 V on your RTX 4090 GPU, if you've got one of the newer models, which ticks at 1.07 V only. You could also flash your FE with a custom-design vBIOS with high power limit, to go beyond NVIDIA's power limits.
OMGVflash author Veii posted a comprehensive thread on the TechPowerUp Forums, which announces the first public beta of the tool, its development history, usage instructions, and some troubleshooting support. Find the thread here. The author has expressed interest in working with TechPowerUp on publishing future versions.
NVflashk author Kefi posted a similar comprehensive thread on TechPowerUp Forums, which can be accessed here.
OMGVflash and NVflashk are independently developed of each other. We've hand-inspected the binary code of both tools and they are free of any viruses or trojans. There's only few code modifications to the original NVFlash tool, to activate the bypass. There's no additional malware payload or anything similar. The file sizes are identical to the unmodified files. VirusTotal also confirms that these patches are legit.
Tampering with the vBIOS will void your graphics card's warranty. As with all modding, graphics card BIOS modding is not without risk, and meant for power users. It is fairly easy to recover from a broken flash, as all current desktop processors come with iGPUs that you can boot from, so you could flash a working BIOS onto the bricked graphics card. Just do remember to back-up your BIOS. You can use either of these tools to extract your current BIOS, or better yet, use GPU-Z for the task.
TechPowerUp editor and author of GPU-Z, W1zzard, will be answering all your questions in the comments section of this post. He has extensive experience with vBIOS internals from his worth with GPU-Z and he has also developed a parser that decodes, processes and organizes the ROM files in our TechPowerUp GPU BIOS Database.
Update 16:44 UTC: Kefi is currently working on a GUI version that makes it easy to backup and flash the BIOS. You can also search our BIOS Collection from within the app and filter on various properties.
Sources:
OMGVflash by Veii, NVflashk by Kefi
The tools bring back the glory days of video BIOS modding using utilities the likes of NiBiTor (now discontinued). The possibilities of such utilities are endless. You can, for example, flash the BIOS of a premium factory-overclocked graphics card onto your close-to-MSRP graphics card. For cards up to RTX 20-series "Turing," in addition to clock speeds, BIOS modding lets you raise power limits, which have a more profound impact on performance, as they increase boost frequency residency. BIOS modding also gives you control over the graphics card's voltages, cooling performance, and fan-curve, so you can make your card quieter, as long as your cooler can keep the GPU away from thermal limits (which you can adjust, too). With cross-flashing (without modifying the BIOS or disturbing its signature), you are now able to restore a voltage of 1.1 V on your RTX 4090 GPU, if you've got one of the newer models, which ticks at 1.07 V only. You could also flash your FE with a custom-design vBIOS with high power limit, to go beyond NVIDIA's power limits.
NVflashk author Kefi posted a similar comprehensive thread on TechPowerUp Forums, which can be accessed here.
OMGVflash and NVflashk are independently developed of each other. We've hand-inspected the binary code of both tools and they are free of any viruses or trojans. There's only few code modifications to the original NVFlash tool, to activate the bypass. There's no additional malware payload or anything similar. The file sizes are identical to the unmodified files. VirusTotal also confirms that these patches are legit.
Tampering with the vBIOS will void your graphics card's warranty. As with all modding, graphics card BIOS modding is not without risk, and meant for power users. It is fairly easy to recover from a broken flash, as all current desktop processors come with iGPUs that you can boot from, so you could flash a working BIOS onto the bricked graphics card. Just do remember to back-up your BIOS. You can use either of these tools to extract your current BIOS, or better yet, use GPU-Z for the task.
TechPowerUp editor and author of GPU-Z, W1zzard, will be answering all your questions in the comments section of this post. He has extensive experience with vBIOS internals from his worth with GPU-Z and he has also developed a parser that decodes, processes and organizes the ROM files in our TechPowerUp GPU BIOS Database.
Update 16:44 UTC: Kefi is currently working on a GUI version that makes it easy to backup and flash the BIOS. You can also search our BIOS Collection from within the app and filter on various properties.
209 Comments on NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools
My 4080 seems to run 2880MHz off the box even in RT loads. It doesn't mind at all, with no tweaking or offset involved, not even increased fan speed. Not bad, if I dare say so myself...
Sounds like your 4090 is very similar to the 3090 I had. Well there's only two things to do about it anyway, either enjoy it as it is or sell and try again :oops:
Increasing power limits likely won't help you with that bad behavior.
Could the Vrel perfcaps be Gigabyte's way of differentiating their 4090 product stack (i.e. to artificially limit max core frequency)? After all, the high power limit is mostly irrelevant except in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition.
1070 = GP104-200-A1
1070ti = GP104-300-A1
1080 = GP104-400-A1 / GP104-410-A1
I think they have to be same die like GP104-300 to GP104-300 for example , i dont think it will work after flashing a 300 to 400 and so on.
Good luck!
Someone should definitely try it
RTX 4090 24 GB
GameRock OC
1800w PS
which bios can I use now and where to get this flashing tool and how then to flash the card... ASUS maybe ??? 600w
please for help step by step
- I bought MIS 4090 in June
refreshed the VBIOS, but the reboot failed to load the graphics driver with code: 43- Reinstalling the driver doesn't work either
Due to a problem with the device, Windows has stopped it. (Code 43)In any case, author of the modified flash tool has deleted their account on TPU and disappeared. He hasn't been answering questions from anyone who reached out, so it's more than likely someone from Nvidia stepped in to prevent the situation from developing further.
Also, i see Kefi (kefinator) is still around here, has he gotten back from limbo or were you talking about another guy/girl and another flashing tool?
In case someone has had a different experience, has already made the modification and it worked, please tell me what you has to do and what exactly did you do after diverswise.
A long time ago, when quad-core CPUs were bleeding-edge, AMD released a 3-core CPU to bridge the gap between dual-core and quad-cores for those on a less-than-infinite budget. The Phenom X3 was, in theory, unlockable to re-enable the disabled core. I personally purchased around 50 of these CPUs and attempted to unlock every single one of them. I was buying 6 a month for most of a year and in hindsight, although about half of them "worked" as quad cores, time proved that many of those quad core Phenom X3s were unstable or ultimately a false economy.
Yes, it's true that sometimes manufacturers will label a fully-functioning part as a lesser part simply to meet market demand. Don't count on "sometimes" being very often. For the overwhelming majority of cases, things are branded as the best possible variant of what they are. AMD, Intel, Nvidia don't leave money on the table unnecessarily. If that 2060S could possibly have sold as a more profitable 2070, you know it would have been. Only marginal GPUs get cut and the 2070 was on sale almost all the way through the 2060S's sales life so I'll let you decide the reason your 2060S didn't make the cut to be a 2070.
I honestly miss the old days...
- 486's and Pentiums that would run at 50% overclocks simply by changing the FSB
- Celeron 300A @564MHz outperforming Pentium II 450 flagships by a wide margin.
- Adding 50% more clockspeed to an Athlon or Duron using a pencil to draw lines between dots on the CPU package
- Geforce2 and Geforce3 unlocks of disabled cores
- Radeon 9500 > 9700Pro mod using a single $0.04 resistor
- Low-end Core2 overclocks of over 50%
I'm trying to think about what the last decent overclockable or moddable hardware was, and it was probably at least a decade ago. These days you get what you pay for and all of the manfacturers make sure that nothing is left on the table because that's wasted profit.My first real powerhouse rig (a watercooled Swiftech triple rad custom mess nicknamed "Chernobyl") used such a chip.