# GTX 1080 to lower GTX 10XX (rename my GPU)



## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Hello all,

I have a very specific need and I am looking for your help.

I currently have a GTX 1080 on my Windows 10 Home PC but I would like to make it appear as a lower card, like a GTX 1060 for instance.

I first tried to fool it by renaming the card in the registry (regedit) which is not working unfortunately, see the How-to video here : 








So I came accross this excellent website where I see that I am able to use NVFlash to directly change the BIOS of the card.

According to you :

- Can I edit the current GTX 1080 BIOS to change its name?
or
- Can I subsitute my GTX 1080 BIOS for a GTX 1060 one?
- Will the card run as a GTX 1080 still or as a 1060?
- Is there anything risk for the card or the system?

I thank you for your help.

Regards.


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## Tatty_One (Aug 18, 2019)

Quite simply, you cannot flash a 1060 Bios onto a 1080, NVFlash will not let you do it, if it did the card would not work, different PCB, different voltage regulation, different clock speeds, different memory amounts, different amounts of TMU's, ROP's etc etc, you get my drift.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Hi Tatty_One,

I thank you for your fast reply.

I see, it makes sense, okay.

So would it be possible to edit the current GTX 1080 BIOS in order to change just the name then so it is recognized as a lower card?

Regards.


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## TheMadDutchDude (Aug 18, 2019)

You might be able to, though I am struggling to see why you'd want to do this...?


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Hi TheMadDutchDude,

I really think there is a possibility but I am not skilled enough to find by myself, this is why I am asking for help as it is something very specific as you guys can see lol.

I would like to measure the impact on some games and softwares.

If anyone can guide me to modify my GPU name you are more than welcome! 

Regards.


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## P4-630 (Aug 18, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> I would like to measure the impact on some games and softwares.



Plenty of GTX10xx reviews on the internet I'd say.


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## dorsetknob (Aug 18, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> I would like to measure the impact on some games and softwares.


You probably won't see any Difference as it will still run on the supplied hardware irrespective of the name of the card


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## FreedomEclipse (Aug 18, 2019)

But why? it sounds like youre trying to dupe someone.

Someone like your parents. you told them you were gonna get a 1060 but ended up spending $200 more on a 1080 so you gotta cover your tracks to save getting hanged by your parents.


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## dorsetknob (Aug 18, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> But why? it sounds like youre trying to dupe someone.


Don't understand it myself unless its a learning exercise that can then be used for nefarious reasons ( Oh not pointing any digits at anyone )


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## natr0n (Aug 18, 2019)

Devious.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Hi folks,

As said, I want  to run some tests.

Let me know if you think of a software or any way that is able to do that.



> You probably won't see any Difference as it will still run on the supplied hardware irrespective of the name of the card



You got my point, this is exactly what I need to figure out in my specific case.

I thank you.

Regards.


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## Voluman (Aug 18, 2019)

I think you can rename it (only rename, no other else should change, i cant do it, but i cross my path of these long time ago)
If you messing with bios, it alawys risky, do it your responsibilty and bear with consequencies.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Aug 18, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> Hi TheMadDutchDude,
> 
> I really think there is a possibility but I am not skilled enough to find by myself, this is why I am asking for help as it is something very specific as you guys can see lol.
> 
> ...


That would not work even hypothetically since even if you could change just the name , which is not easy to do.
It actually still has way more memory bandwidth etc etc and wouldn't be representative.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Alright,

I think it will be hard to have informations on this specific need as it is not something common at all.

I underestimated the diffculty of it actually, I simply told myself it was a just matter of letters you know, which is true in a way, but when it comes to modify these letters to change the name, that's another story lol.

Regards.


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## FreedomEclipse (Aug 18, 2019)

@heyitsme 

There are only a handful of people on these forums that know stuff like that. One would be @R-T-B 

Maybe he may have a few words of wisdom. @OneMoar is kinda one guy as well but i dont think he's likely to be interested in helping.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

Hi FreedomEclipse,

I appreciate your input and hope these members will be able to help me out.

Regards.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 18, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> But why? it sounds like youre trying to dupe someone.
> 
> Someone like your parents. you told them you were gonna get a 1060 but ended up spending $200 more on a 1080 so you gotta cover your tracks to save getting hanged by your parents.



Great minds think alike? 

You called it though.

Topic needs a lock TBH, this reeks of barely legal - and pretty pointless.



heyitsme said:


> You got my point, this is exactly what I need to figure out in my specific case.
> 
> I thank you.
> 
> Regards.



If that is what you need to figure out, then consult the hardware documentation or send Nvidia an email.

Devices are not identified on a system through their 'name'. They have a hardware ID. That pretty much answers it. It will either not run, or it will perform as it should.


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## R-T-B (Aug 18, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> @heyitsme
> 
> There are only a handful of people on these forums that know stuff like that. One would be @R-T-B
> 
> Maybe he may have a few words of wisdom. @OneMoar is kinda one guy as well but i dont think he's likely to be interested in helping.



The signed bioses are going to make this impossible on anything newer than maxwell.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

@Vayra86 ,

What you think belongs to you, I have said why I have this specific need but if I you don't want to believe me it means that you indirectly say that I am a liar, which is not fair and correct to me.

Plus, who are you to tell that a topic is pointless? This totally goes against a forum purpose and is not respectful regarding the issue I am asking help and myself.

So I don't need your approval to ask for help.

I don't need to be judged and would appreciate help from people who are able to.

@R-T-B 

Hi,

Alright, I will try to dig that then, thanks you.

Or is there a way to change the name in the device manager?






Regards.


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## R-T-B (Aug 18, 2019)

You could try force loading an alternative driver.  That may hurt it's performance though.


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## heyitsme (Aug 18, 2019)

@R-T-B

Alright, so according to you, I will not manage with regular (signed) bioses so I might go look for unofficial ones you think?

Regarding the drivers, for this example with the GTX 1060 it shares the exact same with the GTX 1080 if it helps maybe.

Regards.


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## R-T-B (Aug 18, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> Alright, so according to you, I will not manage with regular (signed) bioses so I might go look for unofficial ones you think?



Neither will work.  There are no unofficial ones because they must be signed, and 1060 bios would brick a common 1080.

The driver route is the only feasible route I know of, even if not ideal.


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## Toothless (Aug 19, 2019)

This is just full of "why." 

There isn't a way unless you want a big ol' brick in your case. Either buy an actual 1060 and leave the 1080 alone or go forth and break it.


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## mbeeston (Aug 19, 2019)

well if you want to just change the name in windows.. you could just download and extract the drivers the to a folder, go into the display.driver folder. open and go to the bottom of the nv_dispi.inf file and try changing all the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 lines to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and then try installing it. always used to have fun doing that with drivers. not sure if it still works and it won't change anything else though.


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## arbiter (Aug 19, 2019)

About only thing I can think of as reason to do this is maybe to scam a refund. Make it say its 1060 so you can go back to who you bought it from and say this is what i got so you can say instead of sending it back, refund me the difference then they got a 1080 for 1060 price.

Not saying that is what you are doing but that is really only reason to do it as there is no other benefit from it.


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## Athlonite (Aug 19, 2019)

If your thinking along the lines of fooling software/games into thinking your 1080 is an 1060 it wont work 

Hardware ID (not the human readable name ie: GTX 1080) presents capability to driver the driver then tells the software what capabilities your GPU has 

so simply changing it's human readable name to GTX 1060 from GTX 1080 wont do a damn thing and even if you could change the hardware ID to that of a GTX 1060 all you'll end up doing is bricking the card as there are way to many other things that are different 

your best bet is to just buy a cheap GTX 1060 instead


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## R-T-B (Aug 19, 2019)

mbeeston said:


> well if you want to just change the name in windows.. you could just download and extract the drivers the to a folder, go into the display.driver folder. open and go to the bottom of the nv_dispi.inf file and try changing all the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 lines to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and then try installing it. always used to have fun doing that with drivers. not sure if it still works and it won't change anything else though.



not with signed drivers.


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## Mussels (Aug 19, 2019)

The only valid reason i can think of doing this, is looking for driver cheats based on GPU name in programs (not that i've heard of this in years)

The invalid reasons is someone asking the reverse of what they want, so they can pretend a lower model card is a higher model card (like the INfamous GT450 into 1050ti fakes we see all the time here)


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## Toothless (Aug 19, 2019)

Mussels said:


> The only valid reason i can think of doing this, is looking for driver cheats based on GPU name in programs (not that i've heard of this in years)
> 
> The invalid reasons is someone asking the reverse of what they want, so they can pretend a lower model card is a higher model card (like the INfamous GT450 into 1050ti fakes we see all the time here)


I could only think of "hey look how good my 1060 is"


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## blobster21 (Aug 19, 2019)

or.....trick someone into believing that he bought a GTX1080 when all he bought is a GTX1060.

Anyway, assuming OP is honnest and has no second thoughts, crippling hardware is NOT the way to run comparative performance tests (and changing the name is not relevant at all for that matter)


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## Vayra86 (Aug 19, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> @Vayra86 ,
> 
> What you think belongs to you, I have said why I have this specific need
> 
> Plus, who are you to tell that a topic is pointless?



You haven't said anything, you just repeated your question. We still don't know 'why'. And this intentional vague behaviour sets off alarm bells. Call it intuition, you give me that typical Nigerian Prince vibe. Yes I don't trust you one bit. Even if your goal is just to cheat someone, you're attempting to hide information or change it, so yes you need a solid explanation.

And that quickly brings us to point two, forum rules, and helping in facilitating nefarious acts is not something we do here. But you've got enough mod attention as is, its up to them, not me. Lucky you eh.

A forum's purpose is to get response, and this is mine, take it or leave it.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 19, 2019)

Mussels said:


> The only valid reason i can think of doing this, is looking for driver cheats based on GPU name in programs (not that i've heard of this in years)
> 
> The invalid reasons is someone asking the reverse of what they want, so they can pretend a lower model card is a higher model card (like the INfamous GT450 into 1050ti fakes we see all the time here)



Or those and 550s that i've been restoring from time to time.

Tbf I feel the thread should be locked as he has not given a legit reason he is doing this.

Obviously he is trying to dupe people by making a 1060 appear like a 1080 or a 450GTS look like a 1050/1060.

I will not aid in this scam


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## Mussels (Aug 19, 2019)

@heyitsme  please give the reason you want to change the name of the GPU, or we'll just have to close the thread to avoid (potentially false) accusations.


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## Valantar (Aug 19, 2019)

Might be a bit OT to keep speculating on the OP's motives, but here's an alternate take (tinfoil hat warning):

A possibility is that the OP wants to test if there are artificial/driver level/game level performance limitations that disregard actual hardware capabilities and adjust performance based on the device id of the installed GPU - in short, if GPU vendors are "scamming" users by artificially segmenting performance. Of course this is nonsense (which anyone who understands how the hardware works or has looked at die size differences will understand), but it still strikes me as a somewhat plausible explanation of the OP's wishes.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 19, 2019)

Bios modding has been locked down in gf 1000. Id mismatching will brick the card too


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## xtreemchaos (Aug 19, 2019)

are you not sure your from Red Dwarf and live in a backwards universe   for the life of me I carnt see the point because what ever you do it will still be a 1080 and you will not get any fair stats from it.


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## Nuke Dukem (Aug 19, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> Obviously he is trying to dupe people by making a 1060 appear like a 1080 or a 450GTS look like a 1050/1060.


For some reason when I read the thread's title I pictured a 1080 being turned into a 2080 sans RTX and ending up for sale, dunno why...


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## heyitsme (Aug 19, 2019)

Hello,

This is pretty sad that most of the replies deal with something that has already been said and not helping the purpose of the topic.

I told the reason, it has not changed since the beginning, I want to run tests to verify my hypothesis, period.

If you don't want to believe or don't know how to help, don't be forced to answer.



Valantar said:


> A possibility is that the OP wants to test if there are artificial/driver level/game level performance limitations that disregard actual hardware capabilities and adjust performance based on the device id of the installed GPU



Yes, this is it, but it was exactly what I said since the beginning, but if some people don't want to believe it is their issue, not mine.

Thanks for all the members who bring their inputs in this project, it seems that it is was way harder than I first thought, but it actually makes sense, protect data and users and avoid fake gpus sales .

Also, the fact that the risks are way too high in regards of the benefits, I will not take this risk to break my 1080 so maybe it is a good thing in the end lol.

However I would have loved to be able to change its name and get data to check if hypothesis was right or not.

Now, you can delete the topic. @Mussels 

Regards.


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## Valantar (Aug 19, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> Hello,
> 
> This is pretty sad that most of the replies deal with something that has already been said and not helping the purpose of the topic.
> 
> ...


The thing is that changing the GPU's name wouldn't allow you to test your hypothesis as the human-readable name of the GPU has _zero_ impact on drivers, firmware, game code, or otherwise. PCIe device IDs and other identifiers take care of that, and those impact far deeper things (such as the interaction between drivers and firmware). For example, there are GP104-based GTX 1060s out there, which Nvidia did to get rid of an oversupply of Pascal chips. These perform similarly to other GTX 1060s. Why? Partly because the drivers identify them as such, but also (and crucially!) because the hardware capabilities match. A mismatch in VRAM or other available resources will result in unavoidable crashes. Also, because the removed hardware in the vast majority of cases is physically fused off - i.e. they use a laser to burn away parts of the chip to make these components non-functional. This allows GPU vendors to salvage chips with defects or similar issues that would make them unusable for the top-end SKU based off that part - this has been common practice in the GPU business for decades, and still is. The RTX 2060 is a cut-down 2070 (and now the 2070 SUPER is a cut-down 2080, and so on). And there's nothing wrong with it, as end-users also end up paying less for the parts. Heck, there's even a long and well documented history of users "unlocking" cores on AMD GPUs and CPUs, as they generally haven't fused off parts (AFAIK Nvidia always does so).

In short: if you managed to modify your 1080 so that the drivers, firmware and everything else thought it was a 1060 (without this causing immediate crashes), it would perform like a 1060. Why? Because both the GPU and the driver would be entirely oblivious to the extra resources "available". It would, in effect, be the same as those GP104-based 1060s. Of course, actually making this happen without crashes would be a _major_ undertaking as the firmware would need to know which specific SMs to not use, etc.

This does of course not mean that you could buy an off-the-shelf 1060 and do the opposite of this, as it wouldn't have the same extra resources. Even the GP104-based 1060s _have all the major specs of a 1060_. Everything else is either fused off (CUDA cores etc.) or physically not present (VRAM, VRM circuitry).


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## xtreemchaos (Aug 19, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> This is pretty sad


and we are telling you the stats you get from it will be useless and your wasting your time matey whats sad in that ?


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## heyitsme (Aug 19, 2019)

@Valantar

Alright,

Thank you for these details.

It is much more complicated than expected, plus considering all the risks it is not even worth a try to me, but I don't regret for having tried at least.

We will therefore never know if there are any restrictions/limitations in games or softwares based on GPU IDs, which I personaly think there are, in a few cases.

Regards.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 19, 2019)

@heyitsme I don't get the reason why you need your GTX 1080 to be shown as a GTX 1060 because what application or anything limits you with a GTX 1060 to not be able to run?

It's only Nvidia that has the power to do this like @R-T-B says with the signing that's only Nvidia and you can't compare it with their Super and non-Super RTX 20 series cards.


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## heyitsme (Aug 19, 2019)

@puma99dk| 

Hi,

I have never said that a 1060 was not able to run something, you didn't get the point of my project.

The reason is just above your post, to figure out if there are any restrictions/limitations in games or softwares based on GPU IDs, so fooling how a gpu is recognized and identified could answer my theory.

But it seems to be too hard and risky, so... I give up.

Regards.


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## Valantar (Aug 19, 2019)

heyitsme said:


> @Valantar
> 
> Alright,
> 
> ...


Sorry, but that's quite preposterous. Got any benchmarks to corroborate that? I.e. games where the performance increase from lower-end to higher-end SKUs is disproportionate to the increase in compute resources, VRAM, bandwidth, and so on?

Also, do you have any idea how difficult it is to make a modern game perform well at all, on any GPU, with modern visuals? Don't ever underestimate that. The work hours put into performance optimizations are massive whatever the game. For a game developer to intentionally hobble their game for the vast majority of gamers (remember, _very_ few people worldwide have GPUs beyond a 1060) the bribes involved would need to beat out quite a massive drop in sales. Do you think Nvidia or AMD are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter to hobble performance on lower-end GPUs to push sales of higher end ones? Don't be daft.


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## Tatty_One (Aug 19, 2019)

It's time to end this particular little journey as we have reached a dead end, to be fair we probably had after the first post


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